the blog at eric moon dot net

I’ll blame it on the weather.  With a December cold front blowing in a couple of days ago, and me being ultra-productive nowadays (it’s all relative, don’t forget), I decided to get all artsy-craftsy while staying inside and warm.

I’ve had a couple if posts I want to do for this site, but they all involve taking photos of small items.  Having only an older point-and-shoot Sony digital camera, I was destined to end up with some lousy shots.  That is, until I remembered reading about something called a light box or light tent on the internet.  A quick google later and I was in business.  A light box is a setup that diffuses light a bit so when you take your shot, you end up with no harsh glare or shadows, and don’t have to use the horrid flash.

There are about a million how-tos on the net on this project, but I was never keen on originality, so here’s the million-and-first.

By the way, this is super cheap.  Grand total of purchased goods was well under 3 dollars.

Start with a cardboard box, a ruler, a marker and a utility knife (knife not shown, use your imagination):

This one came on Friday containing a new shredder

Decide how you want to orient your light box.  I’m going for a longer, but shorter field of view.  Read through and it’ll make more sense, if it doesn’t yet.  Mark about 1.5″ along each of the corners on 3 sides of the box.  Slice those sections out with a utility knife, or similar.

Here’s what I ended up with after marking and cutting:

After marking and cutting - 2 sides remain intact.

Same thing from a different angle, and sideways. I guess I still have a lot to learn about photography.

I then took a piece of white poster board and cut it to fit exactly within the box, curving it from the bottom of the box to the back wall to eliminate the corner.  This will give any photo a seamless background.  Using white tissue paper, I covered all the open sides of the box.  Two sheets seemed to be optimal, but some experimentation may be required to see if a certain thickness is better than another.  Here is the box with the poster board installed and 2 sides done with the tissue paper.

Just need to add paper to the top.

That’s all there is too it.  Add a bright light source (anything from a fancy detached flash bulb to a 35 watt lamp with the shade removed) and take some photos.  Move the light source around to get the shadows that best highlight what you are shooting.  Here’s the result of about 3 minutes of playing around with it.  I think it came out pretty good.

Toy VW bus shot in the light box

Tags: DIY, just for fun, lightbox, photo

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 5th, 2009 at 5:38 pm and is filed under DIY, Photos.