We went to Canadian tire and picked up some clip lights. I had some in the garage for the dart board and wasn't going to spend the money for new ones but they were under ten dollars each so I splurged. I guess you could say this makes my $13.00 light-box into a $43.00 light-box........ But it's still very inexpensive to make (even better if you already have clip lights) and it works like magic.
Here's how it went.
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I am using an old tv stand to hold the light-box. The clip on lights hold nicely onto the stand frame. You could use directional desk lamps with goose-necks also. I just happen to like me a good clip lamp. Use what you have around the house. The only important thing to remember is you want to use a warm light. The curly bulbs give a much warmer light than an old school solid bulb. Having three lights, one aimed at each of the three tissue paper windows has eliminated most of the nasty shadows. I played with the light angle and layered and un-layered more and less tissue paper to adjust the shadowing.
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Keep the light bulbs away from the issue paper. They get warm and could start a fire if you leave them on and walk away. I only light the lamps when I'm right there using the light-box.
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There is still some shadow in this shot, but overall I like what I'm seeing in the picture as far as detail and correct colours. I can see loads of fingerprints in this project. Something I'll have to watch in future if I'm going to be taking clean shots like this.
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It's hard to get good shots of clear anything. So I threw a plastic bead bracelet in the box to see how that would work. Once again I'm pretty pleased with the results. I used the macro setting on my little digital camera for most of these shots. I'm still getting some shadow here and will have to play a bit more with filtering the light.
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Here is another clear item. It's really hard to get the detail inside resin pieces. It's a leaf inside the resin with loads of gold sparkle. I'm not very happy with this shot and will have to practice loads more with resin pictures.
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Some of the shell pedants I made after our vacation. Thought I would try to get some professional looking shots with these. It was tricky. Propping successfully without seeing the prop is difficult. I used a black twist tie coiled up to prop the piece up a bit and give some interest with the angle.
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These next shots show how different a piece can look on a different background. I tried a few different pieces of scrap-booking fabric. I'm not sure what one works best. I may be partial to the plain white.
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Let me know what you think about the whole homemade light-box thing. I'm really interested to know if you have used one and how dealt with it.
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