DIY – Poor man Light Tent

Sock Peng has became more frequent on asking me to helps her taking photo of received items from her fellow friends that she met online and also stuffs that she bought, designs and even foods that we cook in order to shares them in the Blog. I have tired of the inconsistent lighting, backdrop / background of the taken pictures and partly is also Sock Peng has now having higher requirement on the pictures taken and no longer wish to have pictures taken against the carpet that we always do.

I have then tried a few simple solution including covering chairs with white bed sheets, purchasing white foam type of art paper to act as the backdrop but yet, it is my turn to be picky that I don’t like pictures with strong casted shadows. Then I recall that I have read something on the web on DIY a light tent for simple shooting. After doing some googling to those, I decided to just go out to buy one since I am pretty lazy to do any DIY without much tools on hand. I am a DIY guy most of the time but having leaving my tool box at Penang, Malaysia. I don’t find myself keen on doing much DIY as I feel handicap without my proper tools.

We visited the only 2 more established Camera shops around Colorado Springs ( Wolf camera and Shewmaker ) to find out the cheapest small light tent cost about USD70 without lights and about USD100 with two tiny light stands.
Well, we are not really earning USD and could spend that kind of money.. so, we ended up leaving both shops without any purchases and I went back to DIY one.

Basically, there are 4 types of common DIY light tents / light table that Peoples DIY so far.
– The water pipe version
– The Carton Box version – You will see it here
– The Laundry Basket version
– The “Carefully arrange” setup version

I decided to go for the carton box version since I still keeping a lot of carton boxes that originally used to ship my stuffs here when I came to the US. The other reason is, I normally like to do things without waiting once I have the idea of doing something. Naturally that seems the only material I could have without going out for making purchases.

I cut away the 3 of the side walls by leaving about 1 inch on the frame to maintain the box supports, lay in the white foaming art paper in it. Put the box on the bed and cover the whole box with the white bed sheet, put the table lamps close to each left and right and let the top ceiling lamp shine on the top of the box. Walla… a DIY light tent in less than 1/2 hour.
These pictures posted at 马来西亚的特产来了 are taken with this setup. I have then made another smaller one using a small box with sticking Plain white paper on the top and sides, replacing the bed sheet. The small one is more flexible and convenience to use when taking normal small items.

Having the bigger box in the bedroom lying on the bed with bed sheet is not something that could be convenience.. we ended up going for material shopping at Home Depot and also Office Depot over last weekend. These are the additional materials we bought.

– Home depot
– 4 x 8.5 inches diameter Clamp lamp stand (@ $6.97)
– 1 x pack of 4 Soft white energy saving lamp ( equivalent to 60W each ). I only found out I bought the wrong color when I switch them on at home, this is not a big problem since we can adjust the white balance to correct it. ($2.44)
– 1 x 2 feet by feet fluorescent light diffuser. I only buy one so that can test it out before getting more. ($2.92)
– 1 x Gang adapter ($2.95)

– Office Depot
– 1 x white poster size art paper ( too bad, it is not really white but rather pearl / milky white that we can find ) ($0.99)
– 1 x pack of 3 blue / light blue poster size art paper. Each sheet has light blue on one side and dark blue on the other side. ($4.99)

Total Expenses = $20.52 included tax.

I found a spot between living room and kitchen that I can put the setup.
Following is a few photos of the setup in use with 3 light sources. The sides are covered by white pillow cases which I will buy another 2 pcs of the light diffuser to replace them. The poster art paper is placed to the box with Velcro.

Things to do –
– Get another 2 more pcs of the 2 feet by 2 feet light diffuser to replace the pillow cases.
– Experiment with the light sources placement for various lighting effects.
including using the 4th light source to minimize the shadows casted by the top light.
– Experiment on controlling the amount of light from each to creates more appealing pictures with depth and not all pictures will appear to be flat looking.

If you are wondering, where is the sample shots using this DIY light tent.. well.. the pictures taken for the bulb, the Lamp Clamps are actually taken with the tent itself.

Here are couple more of the photo taken..