Photography Studio Equipment: Soft Boxes

Series Summary

Photography is an art of making pictures by exposing film or another medium to a timed flash of light. The basic equipment used for photography includes a digital or mechanical camera equipped with a flash and film or a memory card. Mastering the art of photography is a technical and challenging experience. One has to learn how to focus the lens, control the aperture of the lens, filter the light, the importance of the focal length and the duration of the exposure among other things.

In this free video series professional photographer, Scott Vallance, will show you the equipment that you will need to set up your own photography studio. From lighting to backgrounds, from boom stands to tripods, Scott will explain each piece of equipment so that you can proceed with confidence. Start watching and be on your way to having your own photography studio.

Video Transcript

"On this clip we're going to be talking about soft boxes. Soft boxes are a way to diffuse the light source and make it appear a lot larger than what it really is. This is a mono light, which has a very small light source and if, if you're to use this on a shiny object, it would give you just a point of light, but we can attach the soft box. Okay, each of the soft boxes attached in a different way depend upon the type of light that it's going on. After you get it on you just want to seal it up so you don't have stray light coming out onto your, onto your set. These soft boxes come in different sizes. This is a medium. The one above me here is a large soft box. This is also a medium. These are used for strobes of all different kinds. They can also be used on hot lights, tungsten lights. The ones for tungsten lights are a little sturdier and a little less, a little more fire resistant. What these actually do is they soften light to make it look like a window light. In fact, one of the things we do a lot of times if we're shooting something specular, it's we actually run strips of cardboard across and make it look like window panes, and then when it reflects into, like a wine bottle or something like that it will actually look like a window."