This weird dome is a portable light tent for product photography

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/orangemonkie/foldio360-smart-dome#

Perhaps you’ve already heard of OrangeMonkie, the company behind Foldio collapsible lightboxes. They’re now back with another gadget made for product photography. Foldio360 Smart Dome is a futuristic-looking lightbox for 360 product photography, and it combines all of the OrangeMonkey’s previous projects into one.

The Foldio360 Smart Dome moves away from the usual rectangular light box shape. Instead, as the name suggests, it’s dome-shaped. It gives you uniform light and infinite white background, for those traditional, clean product images. There’s also a built-in mechanical turntable in case you need 360 product photos. A centering light will help you determine the exact location for your subject so the 360 photos stay centered.

You can also add a detachable ball head directly onto the dome and mount your smartphone onto it. Of course, you can also use your DSLR or mirrorless to shoot the products inside the dome. Either way, you can connect your phone to the dome and control the turntable and lights through a dedicated app.

The Foldio360 Smart Dome is available through Kickstarter. It has already exceeded the $100k goal with $143,955 pledged, and there are 43 days of the campaign still to go. You can order yours for $320, and it’s expected to ship in March 2021.

I must admit that this smart dome seems pretty interesting. It can be useful if you shoot product photography for e-stores and I think it could speed up your workflow. I would really like to play with one of these and see what I could make from it. But since I shoot product photos once in a blue moon, I think I’ll stick with my garbage can light tent.

[via PetaPixel]