27 Nov 07 Ikea Photography – Tent Softbox

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Materials:

• Ikea Tent $9
• Bit of wood,
• Ikea Shower Curtain Liner $3
•  Mylar/ Foil $5
•  Spray Adhesive $5

Store bought equivalent cost +$500

Last time i made a softbox out of tinfoil and card board, the result worked (and got front page of digg.com) but it was a little small for anything larger than a face so i wanted a bigger one, but these things don’t scale as well as expected (think a second about a 5′ cardboard box.

My kids have this tent from Ikea which is very basic since it’s not meant for sleeping in, but perfect for re-purposing! I didn’t have the heart to take away their tent so i splurged on a new one for less than 10 bucks. They got really excited when they saw me getting interested in their toy, so we played a bit while i built my plan of attack.

The execution was simple, i cut out the blue stuff from the bottom and sewed it over the ‘door’ way on the side. Then i turned it inside out and used spay adhesive to glue down the mylar foil (from ax-man surplus). Then i placed 4 bits of velcroe to the edges and placed the shower curtain liner over it to trim to size. The bracket i made is a bit flimsy but consists of some squares clamping the cross of the tent poles and a ball bunjee to hold the flash in place.

Here i am cutting up the sheets of mylar to be spay adhered to the inside of the tent, while wathing some videos. Libby is playing classic gameboy Tetris on a gameboy that has a backlight. The cats being lazy.

I used little bits of Velcro to stick the the front diffuser on. This way i can remove the cover for whatever bizare reason, i haven’t thought of yet.