Day 26: Homemade softbox
I did a project this evening that I really wanted to try. I built a softbox. I used a box that a chocosphere order recently came in, some aluminum foil, glue from Ada and my craft box, an old desk lamp, a 75W light bulb, some craft fuse for diffusing the light, and some foam board for reflecting light. My only concern with it is heat, but I turned it on, took pictures, and then turned it off. It didn’t feel super hot.
Ada was a champ at being my first subject, especially since it was waaaay past her bedtime. I still have a hard time with her because she does not sit still. I did shoot a toy with and without the reflector. I might save those for another day.
I also downloaded the 30-day trial of Lightroom which is Adobe’s Aperture product. I like the interface for Aperture better, but I never did figure out why the color & exposure of my photos were so much different in Aperture than they were viewing with anything else. I checked and checked the colorspace, and could never figure out how to make it stop. Lightroom doesn’t have that problem. Considering that I use Photoshop mainly for editing RAW, I think that Lightroom on my Mac would be a wonderful replacement! And if I needed to do anything more detailed, then I can start up Parallels and use Photoshop. Also, the tags that I used in Lightroom for my photos were pre-populated in my flickr uploader. That means I don’t have to tag them twice! Lightroom, you win. And I’m sure that since I saved soooooo much money making a softbox instead of buying a softbox, that Mac will have no problems with a Lightroom purchase. Heh.
More photos are here. Tomorrow will be James’ turn.
…of course, maybe we could figure out the color issue and write an Automator script for populating your tags, which would save even more money.
Lightroom and Aperture cost the same dollar wise, so Aperture would cost me more in time, and with two kids and a job, my time is very precious to me.
I like the interface for Aperture better, but Lightroom still works great, and having used it for two batches of photos, I’m getting used to the interface quickly. I’m going to use it for the full 30-day trial, and decide then.
I thought you already had Aperture.
Nope, I tried the demo for Aperture and didn’t figure out the color/exposure problem before time ran out, and I didn’t want to spend the money on it in case I never figured it out.
Lightroom has the advantage over Aperture in that it supports Canon 40D RAW whereas Aperture still does not (according to the latest camera list). It also takes up smaller disk space and uses less memory than Aperture.
Hey… you don’t have to sell me on it.
I just thought you had already purchased it. I’m sure you could do what you need with both. It’s just that one way will feel more Windows, and the other will feel more Mac. 