Best cheap lights/softboxes to get for indoor shoots?

Remember that the dolls aren't all that big.
A fashion photographer might use a softbox 4' across.
Scaling that for a 1/4 doll makes it 1'
Personally I use LED panels that are about the size of my iPad.
Call them 10" across. They aren't expensive and work magnificently.

Mira on red by Tom Beach, on Flickr

 

I like to photograph my dolls inside the rooms of my 1:6 scale
doll house, which has three stories. My husband gave me two clip-on battery operated lights which have a bendable wire "arm" that can adjust the light. They work fabulously well!

 

@chiakisenpai Personally, I think both photo's look very lovely. Different from each other but equally nice. But, I can understand if the lighting conditions in the first photo isn't what you were going for.

A couple of things to keep in mind when doing indoor shoots with lights or even a window. The bigger your light source and diffuser relative to your subject, the softer your lighting will be, as in less shadows and less highlights. Here's a video illustrating that.
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The distance of your light from your subject will also play a key role. Here's Daniel Norton explaining it better then I ever could.
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Then there's directionality. The angle of the light relative to your subject. Different lighting angles will create different shadowing patterns. You may have heard about things like Rembrandt lighting, or spilt lighting, or butterfly lighting etc.

Taking those things into account if for your first picture you happened to be using a very large lighting source relative to the doll and scene with a softbox, then you'd end up with very soft lighting with little to no shadows, since shadows are created when light can't reach an area. The softbox would also act as a diffuser which would soften any highlights or hard shadows. And if the doll was facing or almost facing the light source head on then you'd also lose any directional shadows.

Contrast that with your outdoor picture, where your light source is direct sunlight (or appears to be). While the sun is technically huge, because of it's distance from the earth it acts more like a small-ish light source. So, the lighting is harder in comparison to your first picture. The angle of the light is also above and behind the subject (backlighting) creating more shadows, and highlights, like the rim light along the top right (viewers right) of her hair. And, because you've taken the picture around Golden Hour your still getting some softening to the light (as opposed to harsher mid-day lighting) while also getting those nice golden/yellow hues from the sun.

I've kind of spewed out a lot so I'll stop here, but hopefully it's given you some things to ponder over when doing your next indoor shot.

 

@chiakisenpai You're welcome!

I really like the Adorama YouTube channel for photo tips. Daniel is just one of the many photographers that does videos for them.

Lindsey Adler (https://www.youtube.com/@lindsayadlerphoto) is a favorite of mine when it comes to studio photographers.

Julia Trotti (https://www.youtube.com/@juliatrotti) & Irene Rudnyk (https://www.youtube.com/@IreneRudnyk) are great natural light photographers, and Irene also has some nice videos where she does photoshoots in her Livingroom.

 

Yes, light can be too soft which is the problem here. There needs to be some directionality to the light. This is a common problem when you use a ring light.

 

I bought a 60cm square popup photo studio on Amazon. It has a top LED ring light and a remote control to change the colours. It also came with a few different colour backdrops. It's really neat but the downside is it's too small for regular Dollfie sized dolls to stand up in. For the photo below both Asuna and Uzuki are kneeling down. It's possible to get larger photo studios but then space becomes an issue.

As a bonus it's an awesome thing to have if you have an etsy store or sell stuff on eBay.

I also have a three pack of Smallrig mini studio lights. They are really terrific and as well as using them for doll photography I also use them to light my microelectronics Youtube videos.