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Built a nice little light tent according to the instructions on
this site. It cost all of $6.31 and about 30 minutes of work. It's just a 12 x 12 x 12 shipping box from Mailboxes Etc ($3.50) and some sheer white fabric from Michaels ($2.79), and some duct tape. I already had the lights. Can't really take credit for it but thought it was worth sharing.

Here it is:



Here's a picture of a miniature I took inside it. At first, I thought it looked a little dark, but the shot turned out just fine.



In hindsight, I think I need to find some fabric that is a little more sheer, to let more light through and I need to get a 14 x 11" piece of legal paper from work to eliminate the seams where I have 2 pieces of paper taped together.

I love the opening line to your site "If you're looking to paint
Golden Deamons, you're probably at the wrong place."

I'll have to get to this point someday.

Heh, I have a pair of 5-year old kids underfoot who want to know everything I'm doing at all times, so I focus on doing tabletop quality, quickly, and encumbered by 1-2 boys sitting on my lap.

I normally dislike white backgrounds, but this has be interested.

The nice thing about light tents is that you can swap out the backgrounds pretty easily. Get a piece of black or blue fabric and hang that off the end.

I'm still learning about taking photos. Have a long ways to go.

I think I might have to gets me one of these. Nice Juggie too!

You should turn this into an article (just make sure you reference the site you got it from originally). Very cool, I may have to make one now...

Ozymandias, King of Kings

I can do that.

'In hindsight, I think I need to find some fabric that is a little more sheer, to let more light through and I need to get a 14 x 11" piece of legal paper from work to eliminate the seams where I have 2 pieces of paper taped together.'

try greaseproof paper / baking parchment. very cheap & works a treat.

Yup, I use a similar set-up with baking paper, and it works just fine for me.

Does the baking paper you chaps mention have a waxy coating?

will be trying this when I've got the house move sorted and a proper space for it. What light do you use, a normal desk lamp, day light bulb, what? also how many, one from each side, one at the side, one obove/infront etc?

VermGho5t wrote:Does the baking paper you chaps mention have a waxy coating?

Waxpaper = bad.
Parchment paper = good.

Waxpaper's wax coating will melt and be destroyed by the close proximity of the light bulbs.
Parchment paper is used in cooking to line cookie sheets and other baked goods - it is similar to waxpaper but is coated in silicon rather than wax and has a high heat resistance.

I'm going to stop by the store today, after work, to pick up some baking parchment. Will post pics when the tent is revised

Ifurita wrote:I'm going to stop by the store today, after work, to pick up some baking parchment. Will post pics when the tent is revised

COOKIES!

I think i can see lots of light tents being made and after a week of people over using them rather than eating all of them being used to make cookies! If you had a light bulb hot enough could you theroetically put a heat proof coating on the models and use the light box to photograph them AND make cookies at the same time?

Revised it slightly with baking parchment. I think I need to find better lights. I'm taking them with sunlight on one side and a lamp on the other, but it's still not as bright as I would like


Results after a little brightening in a photo program

Very cool topic and if I may make some suggestions...

I did a level adjust / cleanup on your ganger photo which shows the real colours a lot more clearly, and the one thing that stands out is that I think you really need a front light source as well (also diffused), as the shadows on the front are a little too harsh. Keep playing around though, it is certainly an interesting topic!

(btw, I did the level adjust using the GIMP which can be downloaded for free from our downloads section. Just download it, open an image, choose 'Colors' then 'Levels' then click 'Auto' and 'OK' if you want to replicate what I did.)

Hmmm, don't see an option like that in PaintShopPro

I used to have a homemade lightbox as well. I used three halogene (sp?) lights from IKEA (7 euros a piece or something) as lightsource.