Make It or Buy It, Homemade Softbox vs Store Bought Softbox

(If you want to see the video go to The Slanted Lens on YouTube!)

Should I make a softbox or should I buy one? My pieces of foam core from the dollar store cost me $15 to make a softbox. My Westcott softbox cost me $70. Can I get the same quality of portrait from my $15 softbox as I get for my Westcott? Let’s take a look and see. 

I’m going to start with that Westcott small softbox. So this is a purchased softbox. You can get these for around $70 now. It’s like a 16”x20”. It’s a smaller kind of version. So let’s just take a couple images with that to see the quality of light. And we’ll get a reflector in there to bounce a little light in and just see what that looks like. And then we’ll go on to our homemade softbox. So let’s go for it. 

So I really have that box around closer to the front than I normally have for a portrait. I want to get it out front here because I want it to wrap around the side of her face. And so it’s easier to get it out front and I have a much nicer look. If I put it back too far in a Rembrandt it’s going to become a little dark. It’s going to be a little heavy on one side. But if I bring it a little more forward into a loop light it’s going to look nice in that. So here we go. We got a loop light and then we got the reflector in there. So it should open it up. Oh yeah, that’s beautiful. 

That gives us a really beautiful open image of her face. That’s a beautiful light. There’s really a very, very pretty light. 

So let’s go ahead and let’s make our softbox. I started with four sheets of 20”x30” foam core that I bought at a local dollar store. They were $1.38 each. All right, inflation I guess. I cut each sheet into a triangle using a mat knife. I laid them on the table and taped the edges together using tape. I taped a piece of old diffusion on the end for diffusion. I bought a Bowen’s mount speed ring for $7.50, super cheap. So let’s switch it out now. Let’s see what our homemade softbox looks like. 

Hi, I’m Rob Shanahan. What’s in my SKB case? Magic! Couple D5s, 24-70mm, 70-200mm, a couple auxiliary lenses, batteries, cables, light trigger and yes a light meter. That’s what’s in my SKB case! 

So now we’re using the homemade softbox. Our homemade softbox, as you can see, we didn’t orient the speed ring correctly. So that Bowen’s mount speed ring has got to be put on correctly because you don’t have the ability to spin it in the front to orient the box correctly. So it’s a little off to one side. That’s okay, it’s square so it kind of gives us an even area of coverage anyway. So let’s shoot some of these images with the homemade softbox. The cover, the front cover on this, you could use shower curtain. You could use tracing paper. You could use an old sheet. There’s a lot of different things you could use to give you a soft light. And they’re all going to have their own kind of properties, their own kind of look. So that’s an interesting thing to play with and experiment with. This is an old piece of diffusion material we had hanging around. So let’s take a shot and see what it looks like. Okay, I’m going to put the reflector in and get some shots with that reflector. Here we go. 

So let’s take a look at those side by side. There’s the box from Westcott and there’s the homemade box. Can you tell the difference? 

So here’s what I’ve learned. I think that commercially made box and the homemade box have a very similar look. Whatever kind of surface you put on that homemade box is going to change the quality of the light. It’s going to change everything. It’s going to make it much softer or much harder. So you have the ability to really change that box up and make it into different kinds of lighting tools. So you have that advantage. But the disadvantage is that it just doesn’t collapse. That’s why soft boxes are so amazing. You can collapse it, put it in a sleeve, throw it in your car or put it in your backpack. It’s just an easy thing to move around with, carry and to be able to set up and shoot with. So there’s no portability when it comes to that one that you create. You know if you put it in the back seat someone sits on it you’re in trouble. It’s pretty much done. It is much cheaper. It saves you a lot of money. But I think portability is a very big thing. 

Plus, quality of light, they’re very similar. Certainly that homemade box did not overwhelm the commercially made box at all. I mean, they seem very similar. I think the really commercial made box looked really good. It didn’t have the baffle inside which is another layer. We could put that baffle inside with the one from Westcott which is going to make that even softer. And it’s going to be very difficult to put a baffle inside of the one that’s homemade. It’s going to be very hard to do that. So those are some of the things I kind of learned in this process. 

So let’s wrap this up. You know what, as we made this box and we shot with it and we compared it to the Westcott, I’m thinking to myself, they both have beautiful quality of light. They really do. You can change the front of this out to different types of covers like shower curtain or tracing paper, whatever. But in the end portability wins out for me. It’s just too hard to move this around. It’s going to get beaten and battered and it’s not going to last very long. Buy a box like this for another, you know, what $50 more. It’s going to last you for a long long time. And it’s worth it because it collapses. It also has the ability to put a baffle inside of it. So I think that makes sense. So if you really don’t have the money that’s a box that costs $15 bucks. This is going to cost you about $70 bucks or more depending on the the box you buy and the quality of the manufacturer. So it’s pretty interesting, $15 versus $70. But I’d still pay the extra money if I had it because I want portability and it’s going to last a long time. So you keep those cameras rollin’ and keep on clickin’!