Low cost Light box

Description

A foldable light box from a laundry basket and halogen work light

Features

• Low cost
• Easy to build
• Easy to store (foldable)
• Uses halogen work light and foldable laundry bag

Development

I needed to take some nice photos for this site and looked for a light box. Instead of buying one I built one from materials I had at home. The box itself is a foldable laundry bag. The problem with it is that the fabric mesh casts shadows on the object to be photographed. Instead of replacing the mesh, I simply covered it with a piece of white fabric. The fabric diffuses the light and the end result is good enough for my needs. Inside the laundry bag I placed 2 A3 papers as a floor. This makes it easy to swap between a white background and different colors. You can easily find papers in almost any color. For light I used two 150W halogen work lights with miniature stand (for right and left light) and one 500W halogen light with a tripod base (as top light). The spectrum of a halogen light is not perfectly distributed, but by using custom white balance the camera can compensate for this. Just take a picture of a white surface inside the light box and use that image as reference for the white balance. I added three radio controlled switches for the halogen lights allowing me to quickly turn the lights on and off.

Low cost 150W halogen work light (<15$)

Specification

Dimensions [mm]: 50 x 35.6