Lit Your Food Subjects Nicely With Little Budget

When you are doing food photography at home, you have two choices for lighting your food subjects.  Either you use natural light or artificial light.  Using natural light means you need to set your food subjects near the window so that the sunlight can actually shine on the subjects.  That isn't always an option if your window is far away from the food subjects.  For me, my dining table is far away from the only window in the living room so I cannot use natural light on my food subjects.

The only other choice left for me is to use artificial light.  There are many options but I opted for an option with relatively little money.  I got a photography softbox set for about US$37.  It comes with a halogen light bulb (5500K), a stand and a softbox.

The halogen light bulb is big and it is rated to provide 5500K color temperature:

There is a cover on the softbox and I can remove the cover if desired:

Here is a picture with the light bulb on:

Here is a picture with the cover on:

This thing is called a softbox because the kit looks like a box is designed to soften the light.

This picture was shot without the softbox lighting:

This picture was shot with the softbox lighting:

The difference is quite big.  A softbox kit is relatively inexpensive and can provide the necessary artificial lighting at home.  Another good thing about this kit is that it is portable and can be disassembled and stored easily.  This kit is highly recommended.