DIY – A Lightbox Studio Setup

This Article will demonstrate how to build a Lightbox. A Lightbox is something you can use to distribute light when photographing a small object. This is a common solution for studio photography. it is similar to the origami studio, only this time your light source is inside the box.

The Idea is pretty simple, you have limited sources of light (Let’s say one or two flashes or hot lights) and you want to use them as efficiently as you can. Wouldn’t it be great if you could capture all the “spilled” light and use it to light your object? As the saying goes – “don’t cry over spilled milk light”, instead try and figure something out, that will help you and wont cost much. The lightbox shown here is the part of the setup used in the how to nuke a tomato article.

Here is the final setup plus some explanation on the various components of it (same picture as above – just bigger).

1. Slave flash – this is the actual light source in the final image
2. Hole for flash light – an old CD cover is used to protect the flash from ricochets
3. Microphone trigger – see here
4. Light-box – yap – this is actual thingamgig we are building
5. Black backdrop
6. shooting hole – OK, nothing to explain here, move along
7. Target – see here
8. Towards camera

If you understand how it works, read no more. If you (like me) need the ins and outs – keep on reading.

Creating the box: Use four 380mm x 580mm (15inch x 23inch) polystyrene sheets, and glue them together using a hot glue gun (or just glue). you should get a boxy thing with no front and no back. the front is left pen so you can shoot (that is camera shoot), and the back is left open for the backdrop. You acn use any other four sheets of white material (or just paint it white).

At the top of the box there is a hole for the flash, you can use a CD cover to protect it, if any debris are planned.

The backdrop is just a black T-shirt.

Here is an example of a nuked tomato taken with this setup:

This article was contributed by Karsten Stroemvig (aka Lullaby), see his other great photography projects