hello friends today i am going to attempt to make a diy softbox light now you can buy these cheaply
on amazon or in my case talkingpedia it's like an indonesian amazon i could get a softbox with
a stand for about 40 or 30 pounds but i thought that's not gonna make an interesting video so
let's do this maybe you want to follow along with me and these are the things that you will
need you will need some cardboard this is just a cardboard box from a vegetable delivery you
will need a ruler or in my case i've got a tape measure because i don't have a ruler you will
need also some scissors or one of these like a box cutter knife thingy whatever just something to cut
the cardboard and you will need some glue i've got some really extra like super duper spray glue but
you could just be normal and use like a pritt stick or something and you will need some
aluminium foil or aluminum aluminum foil if you're american and most importantly would be a light now
you could just get the light bulb and get a light bulb holder thing with a cable but i have this
pretty nice lamp and i thought well it's very adjustable why not try to add the soft box like
here that's my vision and this light is pretty bright and it's very very harsh so hopefully
with a soft box it will be a bit more normal this light bulb is 10 watt led so it's like 100 000
watts of a normal light bulb because led use less watts but they're super bright and it's gosh it's
really small is 6500 kelvins so this is a daylight bulb it's the ones i use all over my house because
i like daylight and i don't know what the sun is in calvin's but i think it's
pretty close to that it's also 1020 lumens which i think it just means it's super bright as you saw
i think it's a good idea that i draw like a rough plan off what's gonna happen so let's
have a look okay so the general premise is that i will have a sort of um what's this shape called
again trapezium is it a trapezium shape and they will form a kind of square around the
lamp it's going to look something like this is the ridiculous drawing i have come up with um
the long side here is going to be 40 centimeters maybe and then it means that the whole softbox
surface area will be 40 centimeters squared which i think is quite a good area to diffuse the light
um and then the sort of length is going to be 30 centimeters and then the smaller side
is going to be what did i put 15 centimeters because then it's enough to go round here and
yeah i don't know how we're gonna attach it on but we'll we'll figure it out as we go just trust
me i i'm good at diy also on my little drawing here you can see there are some like flappy bits
um because one i'm flappy and two i think it will be easier to stick all the sides together
so yeah let's get cut in since this box is already folded into like four parts i've just measured
this part and actually it's only 25 centimeters so instead of um having the longer edge as
whatever i said 40 centimeters we're just gonna have it 25 centimeters because it just makes
a lot more sense and then on the smaller edge we're still going to have that at 15 centimeters
and we will leave a little bit of this flat bit there because i just feel it will come in handy
later so we're just going to cut down here okay well that was an absolute mission impossible
but of course it's not impossible is it i don't know i've never seen the movie but um this is
what my cut out piece looks like so it's this sort of is it a trapezium shape i really i forgot like
my key stage three maths um and it's got a side flappy bit that hopefully will just help when it
we want to glue it all together and a bottom flappy bit so i'm just gonna do the other three
sides and then uh we'll rendezvous i've now cut the shape out for four of these pieces
and i'm just gonna take the aluminum foil and um stick it onto one side and i'm just gonna spray
oh i don't know i'm just gonna spray the glue on there like that and then take okay
i should probably do this outside then take my aluminium foil and just stick that on there and um
yeah i will trim the edges or oh god it's stuck to the bag now i will trim the edges and do something
let me unstick it from the back it's very noisy oh yeah one thing to note make sure that you put the
like the really shiny side up not the not the dull side because you obviously want the shiny side
all right so now i have the four pieces of cardboard with the reflective foil i folded over
the foil on the back it's gonna look a bit ugly on the outside but who cares you won't see that
i mean i'll see it you won't see it um and then we're just going to stick these together to make
the sort of square shape i'm just going to try and put glue on this bit but with the spray it's a bit
it's a bit difficult so okay that's way too much if you have like a pritt stick or just like normal
um liquid glue that would work a lot better here okay so now i have a soft box i'm not gonna lie
i'm actually pretty impressed with this um i don't know how good the glue is but i just put sellotape
in the corners and also on the outside just to keep it together and then i've put the flaps
here so essentially it can just like slot on here but then obviously we've got the issue off
the back um so i think what we should do is make a card a piece of card to go here and then
somehow have a cut out with maybe like a slit so it can like flap open and closed around this
i don't know i'm just gonna try figure something out what i have got now is a square with a circle
cut out and a cut here to make it like a flap so then this will fit around the back like that
i have now constructed the soft box um i'm not gonna lie i'm pretty impressed with this i've just
wedged this in the back there without the use of tape because of my um kind of flap system um it's
just sort of staying in there now one important thing i've forgotten to mention the whole video
is that you should use something to diffuse the light so i'm going to test it with this old shirt
that is like a sheer shirt and solution is that the word and if this is too thin i might just try
a plastic bag because that also lets the light in so let's try that okay so this is the light about
arms width away from me without the softbox and the light with the box on it and then i'm going to
put this shirt sort of over it okay i'm actually pretty impressed with that that's actually pretty
good um i think that lighting is i don't know what do you think and then let's try with the plastic
bag okay i just realized my microphone wasn't plugged in for the last few takes but this is the
soft box with the plastic bag carrier bag diffuser on it and yeah again i'm not gonna lie i'm pretty
impressed like i i think this looks quite good and if i turn it off completely this is just
not ideal is it like it's later in the day now obviously because i've been making this all day
and yeah i think with the softbox it looks a lot better i think i look pretty good to be honest
now this took me an hour and a half maybe two hours to make so was it the best use of my time
probably not but i had fun making it i had fun making this video it was definitely more of a one
for me type of video but if you're still watching it then it's also for you and maybe you can make
one of these soft boxes or you at least enjoyed following my journey my struggle of making this
will i use it forever probably not i'm pretty sure i'm going to order the one on taco media
next week and yeah just because the one like the proper one for it's like 20 pounds you can't
really beat the price and it's a lot bigger and it comes with the the light stand whereas with this i
don't know how i would put it up higher i would have to like stack some boxes and i just don't
feel like it's so stable but i'll probably still use the same light bulb because i i like this
brightness and this color which is just not really a color it's daylight of course i could
practice with putting it at like different angles and different lengths like if i
moved to a different angle i wouldn't have the reflection so much of my glasses
but that's just part of life part of wearing glasses i guess anyways if you were still
watching and you followed this whole adventure then thank you you know what to do give it a like
give it a thumbs up and yeah subscribe if you haven't already that's all bye