Light Studio for Photographers Part 2
This instructable shows you the easy, inexpensive, and quick way to create a light box that can get you the same photographic results as a 150 dollar light box. The only difference is that this one can ultimately be built for under 10 dollars. For those of you out there that don't mind spending a few extra bucks or for some reason hate recycling, you can spend up to 30, but hey, its still cheap and way less than those "official" light box rip offs.
Step 3 Cut and Apply Light Diffusing Material to Box Windows
This step involves cutting your material, in my case a vinyl shower curtain to fit the open spaces on the sides of the box.
Get your measuring tape or w/e you have and measure the square spaces in the sides of your box to get an idea of how big to cut your squares of material. Going past the edge is key here, in case you may not have realized that. So if your square space is 18 inches by 18 inches then you want your square piece of material to be 20 or 21 inches.
The look of the box isn't important, so going over the edge and doing a crappy tape job isn't the end of the world. You can still make it look neat if you tape the material on from the inside of the box. You could also glue it if that floats your boat. The 2 or more inches of space you left at the edges is where you will attach the light diffusing material to, whether you do it from the inside of the box or outside of the box. As you can see I just taped mine on the outside with duct tape. Look at the image notes.
The bottom of the box does not need covered with the light diffusing material, leave the hole..as a hole. The poster board will be covering the bottom anyway.
Note: Try to keep your material tight or "stretched" so to speak so its not all saggy or droopy in effort not to cause serious shadows or detectable light distortion....creases aren't a big deal as you can see my shower curtain has creases in it and I have found no effects in my photos.
Step 4 Buying Poster Board and Lights
Now your box is basically done. All that we need now are light sources and backdrops. You can use anything as a backdrop if you are one of those creative types and can make it work. I find that poster board works very well. The thing to make sure is that the intersection of the bottom and back of box is underneath the curved portion of your backdrop. This is crucial in order to create a photo without having a crease revealed, and rather makes an illusion of having an infinite nothingness behind your subject.
The more gradual the curve of the backdrop, the less immediate gradient of shadow. It just takes some experimenting, but you will find that it works fine the first time you try it.
You can use lamps that you already have or buy new ones from Walmart or something.
Step 5 Setting Up Lighting
Now that you have everything done you are ready to take some photos. The only thing you may want to do now is learn more about lighting and still life photography. Arranging the lights and angles can drastically change the effects or mood of your photos, along with other various factors. There are other articles and tutorials that go in depth about still life photography and studio shooting that you can look into, I figured you would get more professional advice by searching Google than me mushing a few things here and there in with this instructable.
I hope you enjoyed this instructable, it was my first one. Please let me know if you have any suggestions, or any questions that I may have left unclear.
Also, I only briefly proofread my sentences please let me know if something does not make sense or needs revised.
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