Folding softbox 60 cm with interchangeable backgrounds and adjustable backlight

Soon­er or lat­er, while doing “sub­ject” pho­tog­ra­phy, you come to the issue of improv­ing equip­ment to get bet­ter pho­tos. And here the ques­tion does not always rest on the cam­era. Soft­box is the solu­tion to this issue, and the abil­i­ty to quick­ly change back­grounds, install and adjust the back­light makes it eas­i­er to solve.

Per­haps ques­tions imme­di­ate­ly arise about the appro­pri­ate­ness of this device and you can sim­ply set the light, lay the back­ground and get an iden­ti­cal result, but spend­ing much more time.

Despite the low price, the kit turned out to be quite rich and includes not only a soft­box, but also 4 col­ored inter­change­able back­grounds (and giv­en that they are dou­ble-sided — glossy / mat­te sur­face, then all 8), a mobile back­light with con­trols, a case and a stor­age bag . There is also a small instruc­tion with pic­tures on how to prop­er­ly store and fold the soft­box itself. Why fold? Because it is not col­lapsi­ble and folds by anal­o­gy with a self-fold­ing tent.

Characteristics

Equipment

The instruc­tions describe this in detail, with pic­tures, but no mat­ter how much I tried, it did not work out. Either I’m from the wrong plan­et, or the pic­tures are wrong.

But the man­u­fac­tur­er went fur­ther and offers a video ver­sion of how to fold the soft­box, every­thing is beau­ti­ful, but it still doesn’t work. So far, I left this idea and gave it to the lucky own­er of his pur­chase.

Car­ry­ing case for the pho­to­box. Round, fold­ed and did not work. Well stitched, com­fort­able han­dles, but I think it’s not worth fold­ing every time, nev­er­the­less it is fab­ric and can tear.

Large bag to car­ry the whole set. Sewn from a denser mate­r­i­al, the whole set will fit inside. It is pos­si­ble to car­ry and can be used, but it is still worth stor­ing, espe­cial­ly back­grounds that are not in such a dense line­up.

As men­tioned above, the pack­age includes 4 back­grounds: white, black, green and blue. Dimen­sions 120*60 cm. Installed inside the soft­box on Vel­cro tape. Before use, it is worth smooth­ing, because dur­ing deliv­ery they wrin­kle a lot. Along the entire edge, the fab­ric is swept with high qual­i­ty, but there are pro­trud­ing threads.

To expand the pos­si­bil­i­ties of pho­tograph­ing and increase the back­grounds, the fab­ric is made in such a way that it has a glossy fin­ish on one side and a mat­te fin­ish on the oth­er. Although not much dif­fer­ent, in rare cas­es it may be required.

The back­light con­sists of a plate on an alu­minum base-radi­a­tor with 96 LEDs. Although it is indi­cat­ed on the prod­uct page as 192. On the front side, there is an addi­tion­al pro­tec­tion made of trans­par­ent plas­tic that pro­tects when installed in a soft­box. To con­nect from the back, a wire with a plug at the end is brought out. There are 2 such LED plates in a set.

Installed quite sim­ply. We stretch under the rub­ber hold­ers, bring the wires out, through the holes of the soft­box locat­ed in the cor­ners of the square. Odd­ly enough, LED plates are uni­ver­sal and are designed not only for rub­ber mounts, but also for plas­tic guides.

After 1.5 hours of use, the heat­ing is sig­nif­i­cant and the reverse side already burns the hand, so it is worth using either with an addi­tion­al radi­a­tor, which is unlike­ly to work in a closed space, or reduc­ing the time of use. And at the moment of chang­ing the back­ground or objects, turn it off. So you extend the life of the LEDs by pro­tect­ing them from degra­da­tion. After installing and turn­ing on at least one plate, the inte­ri­or is com­plete­ly flood­ed with illu­mi­na­tion, thanks to the sil­very coat­ing of the soft­box fab­ric, even the slight­est shad­ows from objects dis­ap­pear. The dif­fer­ence from the inclu­sion of 1 or 2 plates is almost invis­i­ble to the eyes

The pow­er sup­ply is com­bined with a dim­mer and allows you to smooth­ly adjust the bright­ness of the glow. The pow­er sup­ply is locat­ed approx­i­mate­ly in the mid­dle between the pow­er wires, and their length is only 2 meters, which is not always con­ve­nient when the dimen­sions of the soft­box are 60 * 60 * 60 cm. The PSU has an LED indi­ca­tor for con­nect­ing to the elec­tri­cal net­work. Near the reg­u­la­tor and it is also a switch for sup­ply­ing pow­er to the LED pan­el. At the extreme left posi­tion, a click is heard and the pow­er is com­plete­ly turned off. The max­i­mum volt­age giv­en out by the pow­er sup­ply cor­re­sponds to the declared one and is equal to 12.5 volts, although 12 is declared. There is a stick­er with tech­ni­cal char­ac­ter­is­tics on the bot­tom. After using it at max­i­mum bright­ness (the reg­u­la­tor is turned to the right as far as pos­si­ble) for about 1.5 hours, the heat­ing is not fixed.

Now let’s talk about the soft­box itself. Per­haps some­one has already encoun­tered this device or seen col­lapsi­ble mod­els. Here, every­thing is dif­fer­ent and resem­bles a chil­dren’s tent (self-fold­ing) and at first glance does not inspire con­fi­dence. But lat­er, when used, the design is quite reli­able and sta­ble. She arrived, of course, twist­ed, but one care­less move­ment and I could no longer turn.

If you go a lit­tle deep­er into the struc­ture, you can under­stand that met­al (rec­tan­gu­lar) springy plates are installed inside, cre­at­ing the effect of stretch­ing the side sur­faces, but even when exposed to them, they have quite strong resis­tance and do not add up. There­fore, when you try to fold accord­ing to the instruc­tions, it doesn’t work for me, and I think that the girl won’t have enough strength either. I achieved the max­i­mum effect when fold­ing to a flat state, and that’s it. The entire inner sur­face resem­bles a mir­ror and per­fect­ly reflects light. The out­er sur­face is com­plete­ly black.

For the hap­py own­er-pho­tog­ra­ph­er, sev­er­al remov­able win­dows are allo­cat­ed. In the upper part there is a round win­dow cov­ered with a mas­sive “patch” with a mir­ror sur­face.

In the front part, a sin­gle piece of the side sur­face is used, and if it is removed along the edges with a mov­able lock, then in the upper part with a reg­u­lar Vel­cro. Com­fort­able and prac­ti­cal and quite durable. In the mid­dle there is a win­dow that can be divid­ed into 2 parts to save back­light. Although in this pho­to­box there is a sur­plus of it.

Accord­ing to the assur­ance of the hap­py own­er, not only did the pho­tos begin to turn out to be of high qual­i­ty, but the process itself accel­er­at­ed in time. No need to expose addi­tion­al light, remove unnec­es­sary phan­tom shad­ows. A sur­face of 60*60 is quite enough for all the needs of prod­uct pho­tog­ra­phy.

Price can be found here

conclusions

Con­ve­nient in every sense bud­get soft­box (pho­to­box) with a set of inter­change­able back­grounds and adjustable back­light. “Con­ve­nient” stor­age, accord­ing to the sell­er, in a portable bag is achieved by fold­ing, but you have to get used to it. The back­light is adjustable in bright­ness, but unfor­tu­nate­ly the per­mu­ta­tion is not pro­vid­ed, but there is enough light.