Tuesday, February 12, 2008

DIY lightbox

Thanks Marichelle and Joyful Abode for their DIY lightboxes.

Here's the set up I did today:
Light Box Set up

I used clip on lights. I should have bought three of the larger sized ones, but I wanted to save a couple of dollars.... I used duct tape to tape the lamps right to my plastic tub. Since the lights are hot halogen ones, I have to be sure to switch off the lamps so I don't melt my plastic tub. (edit- I switched the tape to heat resistant aluminum tape and it works much better than duct tape. You can find it in the same area of the hardware store as duct tape.)

Here is the result:
P1000991

I was able to achieve this with my old method of laying the items out by a sunny window, but the light that way was too inconsistent. I only did some very small photoshop tweaks to get this to come out. I also got 4 separate angles of this item and the color matches on each photo. Yeah... I'm a lightbox convert. My camera is one of the littler digital ones, not one of those fancy SLRs people have so much success with.

It turns out that I thought I needed a tripod, but I have a good steady hand and it is easier to snap super closeups without the tripod set up. I love that little flower setting on my camera.

4 comments:

Rebekah said...

Oh my gosh that is so wonderful!! I think I will have to try this.

Thanks for the links. I craft late at night so all my pictures are taken late at night (or early morning) and this would be wonderful.

Bee

LindaM said...

Wow
I was actually looking for a tutorial like this but came across your site while surfing! Thank you so much! I'm passing it on to others.

donna said...

I now have a use for my empty plastic container with the broken lid. Brilliant (literally!).

Anonymous said...

I've found another great tutorial on a DIY lightbox, and I quite like the results I've had with it. I'll have to post them.

Check out the tut:
http://strobist.blogspot.com/2006/07/how-to-diy-10-macro-photo-studio.html