Is there an adapter to rotate softboxes?

Mystery

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This is my first post on the forum. I am a total beginner with photography. My Dad was an amateur photographer and he taught me ho to shoot on a Minolta SRT 101 many years ago. I don't have the Minolta any more, and I never really kept up with practicing when digital cameras became popular because everything was all about point and shoot. Anyway, long story short..... I am starting to learn more photo skills because I want to do product photography for my website. I am learning from the ground up and my first problem lies in learning the equipment like lights. I purchased a low end lighting kit from Cowboy Studio. It came with 3 softboxes, 2 stands and a boom stand. The softboxes are 20"x28". My first issue is that I am trying to use the softboxes where I probably should be using a tent, I know that. I will probably get a tent too, but for now I am using the 3 softboxes. I have a softbox on each side and the boom over the top. My issue is that I need the softboxes on the sides to be close to the product and since they are 28" tall, much of the box is either lower than the table or blocked by the softbox over the top on the boom. I was wondering if anyone makes something that I can use to mount the softbox sideways so its dimensions would be longer instead of taller.

In hindsight, I should have bought 3 small lights and a tent instead of 3 softboxes for small up-close work; but I was hoping to be able to use the lights for small work and larger items like portraits too. If there are no options for rotating the softbox, I guess I might have to buy some more equipment. :grumpy:
 
SOME manufacturers offer what are called "rotating speed rings". Others do not offer them. That is what you want...a rotating speed ring.
 
Derrel,

Thanks for the info. I am learning quickly that I probably bought the wrong equipment. From what I can tell, Cowboy Studio lights don't allow for a standard speed ring like what we are talking about. I will continue to use the lights in the way they are meant to be used, and I will start to look for some more lighting that will work the way I need it to. Thanks for the help, I appreciate it.
 
Sure thing! You "might" be able to cobble something together....not sure how the Cowboy Studios stuff works, but a couple years back I bought a Chinese softbox from a League City, texas e-Bay vendor, and it came with a heavy-duty steel-and-aluminum (HEAVY!!!) rotating speed ring that spun through a full 360 degrees, with a set-screw locking mechanism to allow the user to lock the box in ANY orientation desired. "Maybe" there's some way that another brand's softbox speed ring could be taped or screwed or glued or even press-fitted onto the end of a Cowboy Studio light unit??? Maybe???

With lighting and grip accessories, there is usually at least "some way" to cobble some kind of solution together, with the right pieces, or the right parts, or enough screws and bolts and washers and nuts and wing-nuts and plywood pieces, a drill, and a few hours invested!!!

Also, on a rectangular softbox, there is also the possibility that the box AND the strobe can be rotated as a unit...not as handy maybe as a rotating speed ring, but changing the orientation of a softbox can often be done with the right kind of boom arm, or swivel head,etc.etc.
 
Lol, I'm a fabricator, sometimes I forget that DIY to me is paying someone else to make it to someone else.
 

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