My DIY Project : Strip Soft Box

Something troubled me and I got upset. So, I got into my DIY room, and I made this: strip soft box !

Hmm... what is a strip soft box ? It's a light modifier that limit the flash spill to a strip shape. Its effect is particularly noticeable when shooting a curve shape bottle where you can see a strip reflected flash line along the curvy bottle line.

This strip soft box is so far the easiest to DIY so far. The materials required are rather simple and can be easily found locally. What I need is a strip box, which is the box of my flash stand, aluminium foil paper (as usual), some black cloth tapes, glue, ruler and knife for cutting.


First, cut out the "front opening" of the strip soft box. I didn't completely cut out one side of the strip soft box so I could control the opening of the strip flash by just closing the door for a tighter beam of light.

Then for the flash hole. Trace down the flash head at one end of the strip boxes, and cut out the hole. Secure all the losing joins with the black cloth tape.

After that, the internal reflective surface. Stick the aluminium foil paper at inside the strip box. Of course the shiny surface must be facing out of the strip box.

Fine tuning the edge of the strip box, and walla, I have my strip soft box ! Test shot and see the result :

Not bad, right ? I was so upset until I made two strip soft boxes ! LOL. Quickly I went and test it out to see if I got a nice reflective highlights on my curvy glass vase or not:

Please mind the underexposed photo. :p
Looking at the reflective strips on the vase, I didn't satisfy on what I got. The reflective strips don't look good. I figured out maybe I need a layer of mah jong paper as diffuser to further diffuse the flash light. Hence, some "upgrading" work were carried out by putting a layer of mahjong paper on the soft box opening, and reshoot:

Yes, it's much much better !

And this strip soft boxes also can be a great portrait flash softboxes as well. It gives two lines of catch lights on the eyes of a person. So, again, without a hot model for testing, I called my favourite and never complaint supermodel to be my model again:

Look at the catchlights on my eyes ! Not bad, huh ? Oh, and these two strip soft boxes produce very nice soft light over my face as well. :p

A bigger crop on the eyes area:

Nice, right ? :p

By the way, do I look good while I'm not wearing my glasses? LOL