DIY Light box

As shooting still life is sometimes a requirement and having experienced how hard it was doing so without proper equipment I've decided to build my own light box.

Here's a breakdown of the material I've used:

-Cardboard box

-Tracing paper

-Duct Tape

-Gift wrapping paper

I went for quite a big box, allowing me more flexibility or perhaps shooting vertically.

I then cut square holes on the sides and added some duct tape to make it more sturdy.

I then taped tracing paper on top of the square holes.

For the seamless background I used gift wrapping paper. Even though I went to a specialist store finding anything else than A4 print paper seems to be quite a challenge in Switzerland. the wrapping paper is originally yellow, using the back of it seemed to do the trick and I hoped it wouldn't do any colour cast. Anyway, for the time being that's all I have.

I was then ready to make a test shot, I just used a simple lighter and although the paper does have a few "wrinckles" I'm quite happy about it. I'm hoping to improve it with time and customise it along the way.

 

After reviewing my test shot and seeing the background turned out dark grey I thought it would be useful to create a custom white balance by taking a shot with the white background filling the frame, then setting it to the cameras custom balance mode. 

Exercise: Control the strength of a colour

5 photographs

Shooting Manual:

Find a strong definite colour, fills frame


This is the object I've used for this exercise:

Normal exposure:

50mm, f/8.0, 1/320s,  ISO 100, EV 0

50mm, f/8.0, 1/160s, ISO 100, EV +1

50mm, f/8.0, 1/250s, ISO 100, EV +2/3

50mm, f/8.0, 1/250s, ISO 100, EV +1/3

50mm, f/8.0, 1/400s, ISO 100, EV +0

50mm, f/8.0, 1/500s, ISO 100, EV -1/3

50mm, f/8.0, 1/500s, ISO 100, EV -2/3

50mm, f/8.0, 1/800s, ISO 100, EV -1

Overall, Increasing the exposure value makes the colour more washed out and decreasing it more saturated. My favourite Red here is probably the -1/3 EV.


This makes it an important thing to remember when photographing colours, it might make it more appealing to me to slightly decrease the exposure or trying different ones when colour is a main feature of an image.

Colour Spectrum

Colour Spectrum

Things to improve

- Set my camera white balance for each scenario 
I usually set my  camera to auto white balance and not worry about it then, knowing I shoot in RAW this will be modified in post processing. But I soon realised that for speed or space availability it is sometimes only possible to shoot in JPEG. When this happens I'd better get my settings right from the start to prevent from damaging the JPEG format if processing is required. Plus, having the picture on the LCD screen of the camera the closest possible to reality would help in making adjustments for the next pictures.