Cheap Diy System For Controlling Daylight In Your Studio

One of the advantages of artificial lighting is that you can control it and direct it as you like. Controlling daylight is another story. It’s not so easy to increase it or reduce it to your liking, especially not to be super-precise with it. Koldunov Brothers have come up with a clever DIY solution for adjusting the amount of natural light in your studio. It seems pretty simple to make, it takes very little investment and a bit of your good will.

You will need

Square wooden dowel rodsVelcroBlack fabricStaple gun/hot glue gunWood glue

How to make

First, you will need to use the wooden dowel rods to create a frame around your window. You should then divide it into 1 x 1 m squares (or 3 x 3 ft). If you can find readymade wooden frames, even better.

When you’ve made the construction, attach one side of Velcro to the wood. Koldunov brothers used a staple gun, but I believe you can also use a glue gun or any strong glue. There is also sticky back Velcro, but I think it’s better to provide it with some extra strength.

Now we get to the black fabric. Cut it into 0.5 x 0.5 m (1,5 x 1,5 ft) pieces and sew the other side of Velcro along the edges. This way, you will be able to attach the fabric to the frames both horizontally and vertically. You should use fabric that’s not too dense, but allows some of the light to pass through. If you want to increase density, you can overlap two pieces of fabric.

Here are some test shots from Koldunov brothers with different alignment of the fabric:

Of course, the measurements are not the same for everyone. It depends on the size of the windows you have and the amount of light you want to block with a single piece of cloth. The only downside to this project is that it takes too much effort to add and remove the fabric from the high parts of the window. It takes away some of the shooting time. So, if you’re a lucky son of a gun who has too much natural light in the studio, I wish I were you. Oh, I mean, this may be a good DIY project for you. [Daylight control system for photography | Koldunov Brothers]