So whilst it was raining Sunday afternoon and I was waiting to get the motorbike out for a ride, I decided to do something that I’d been meaning to do for a long while – build a lightbox. As this was a trial, I decided to do this just with the stuff I had kicking around the house – if it worked I’d do a proper one.
The kit:
Glue. I’d be using tape for most of the build, but glue would be required to stick a couple of plastic supports.
Carpet lining. Odd, but I thought I’d give this a try as a diffuser for the light (this didn’t work too well, but more on that later)
Plastic L frame. For rigidity and needed if I want this to last beyond next weekend.
Some spare mounting board to cut on, an art knife, Japan tape (I normally use this when making a canvas) and a metal rule.
Finally, a large sheet of mount board, ‘borrowed’ for the stock for my next framing session.
Ice white, and more than enough for the job.
Firstly, I cut out 6 x 1 foot square panels from the mounting board. I really only needed 4, but a couple of spares would be good to replace the base if it ever gets scuffed (which it will, as I found out fairly early on).
I cut out suitably large windows in each of the sides, and then stuck them all together using the Japan tape, leaving enough room that the sides could fold together to make a cube.
And voila – the lightbox carcass. It was reasonably rigid, but I thought I wanted it to be a bit more durable, so I cut ¾ length pieces from the plastic L frame, and applied the glue.
They then fitted fairly neatly over the rear corners. The interior angle of them was slightly less than 90 degrees, which was perfect as it meant that the sides with the windows angled slightly inwards. That meant I could rest the top (the ‘lid’) on them quite comfortably.
The carpet lining. You can see that there is some diffusion going on, but maybe not enough.
Despite my doubts, I taped it to the windows of the box.
I then positioned the lights (borrowed from the spare room) and loaded them up with energy saver 100w equivalent bulbs. Something like 2700K light, and not really bright enough. As it happened, because they weren’t bright enough I think the carpet liner worked ok as a diffuser. Anything more though, and I'll either need more layers or a different material. I also put the 580EX on a gorilla pod for the forward lighting, adjusted the white balance after a few tries, and found out what would happen.
Apologies for not having anything terribly interesting to hand to shoot, but by this time it had stopped raining and getting out on the bike took priority!
My tripod wouldn’t go low enough, so these had to be taken by hand. Despite this, I was fairly pleased with the results. The whole exercise took me just under an hour, including taking the photos.
The kit:
Glue. I’d be using tape for most of the build, but glue would be required to stick a couple of plastic supports.
Carpet lining. Odd, but I thought I’d give this a try as a diffuser for the light (this didn’t work too well, but more on that later)
Plastic L frame. For rigidity and needed if I want this to last beyond next weekend.
Some spare mounting board to cut on, an art knife, Japan tape (I normally use this when making a canvas) and a metal rule.
Finally, a large sheet of mount board, ‘borrowed’ for the stock for my next framing session.
Ice white, and more than enough for the job.
Firstly, I cut out 6 x 1 foot square panels from the mounting board. I really only needed 4, but a couple of spares would be good to replace the base if it ever gets scuffed (which it will, as I found out fairly early on).
I cut out suitably large windows in each of the sides, and then stuck them all together using the Japan tape, leaving enough room that the sides could fold together to make a cube.
And voila – the lightbox carcass. It was reasonably rigid, but I thought I wanted it to be a bit more durable, so I cut ¾ length pieces from the plastic L frame, and applied the glue.
They then fitted fairly neatly over the rear corners. The interior angle of them was slightly less than 90 degrees, which was perfect as it meant that the sides with the windows angled slightly inwards. That meant I could rest the top (the ‘lid’) on them quite comfortably.
The carpet lining. You can see that there is some diffusion going on, but maybe not enough.
Despite my doubts, I taped it to the windows of the box.
I then positioned the lights (borrowed from the spare room) and loaded them up with energy saver 100w equivalent bulbs. Something like 2700K light, and not really bright enough. As it happened, because they weren’t bright enough I think the carpet liner worked ok as a diffuser. Anything more though, and I'll either need more layers or a different material. I also put the 580EX on a gorilla pod for the forward lighting, adjusted the white balance after a few tries, and found out what would happen.
Apologies for not having anything terribly interesting to hand to shoot, but by this time it had stopped raining and getting out on the bike took priority!
My tripod wouldn’t go low enough, so these had to be taken by hand. Despite this, I was fairly pleased with the results. The whole exercise took me just under an hour, including taking the photos.
