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Hello,

I'm in the market for a lightbox, so I can try and show off my figs with real lighting that isn't yellow-tinged

Poking around on Amazon, there's a lot of options, but I thought I'd ask to see what sort of setups you all have had success with. In the past, I've just rigged one up with tracing paper and cardboard, but it's time for something real.

I'd looked at a few portable ones that collapse, but the reviews are either love it or hate it - and the folds look like a great way to mess with lighting.

What's your setup look like?

M.

What camera and lighting are you thinking of using, just stand lamps, flashes, natural light?

Cameras...probably my phone (LG G2) for the most part. I have an old Fujifilm FinePix from years ago, but I don't remember much about it's specs.

Lighting is overhead though if I'm getting a lightbox, purpose-bought lamps need not be far behind.

M.

A few thoughts:

1) It sounds like a large pop-up type might well suit you well, they are simple to setup and quick to use and don't take up that much space when folded down.
The only area you need to worry about creases is the background material (which can be anything you want and can be stored separately so that it can stay flat or just ironed before use). The edges creases won't really matter (unless they are excessively extreme).

2) Getting good light* is about achieving a constant colour of light and also a soft nature of the light

a) Constant colour can indeed be achieved by using a light box approach as the material assures the light is filtered through it.
b) Increasing the size of the light relative to the subject size; so the sides of a lightbox will indeed give you softer light.

3) You might consider the alternative which is using a cardboard box and cutting out the sides, then sticking white paper over the covers. Essentially building your own. The bonus is its cheaper, the downside is you can't collapse it down after use.

4) Overhead light is good, but yes you will want a couple of stand lamps to give some light either side.

5) You might want to consider a small tripod. Standard lighting indoors is dark by camera standards and thus you might well need a longer shutter speed in order to get a clear shot.


*for standard model shots

There is a bit of a mixed up knowledge here, so let me straighten things up a bit:

- what lightboxes and softboxes do is change CHARACTER of light (soft vs spot). You can achieve exactly same results with cheap sheets of tracing paper and cardboard as you can with "pro lightbox". You HAD to use pro equipment in days of analogue films, you don't have to use those in digital era. If you use tracing paper, then, depending on actual filter color of said paper, you might get slightly warmer sides vs slightly colder front of a mini (when using single light source), but nothing really drastic.

- "yellow/blue tint" on your gallery pictures is from bad white balance and/or mixed light sources, not from using or not using tracing paper or pro-box. The trick here is using either a single light source and a set of white styrofoam "bouncers" to direct it onto every side of your mini (you do this if your "lightsource of choice" is sun), or a set of identical lightbulbs (preferably strong tungsten/halogen lights, not LED or fluorescent) and regulating intensity of each light by distance to, not power of, a bulb. With small side lamps and overhead mix you'll still have discrepancies with light colour resulting in yellow/orange tinting as bulbs of different power have different white points.

Your phone camera uses auto white balance feature (you should check if you have a settng for this, usually described as daylight/cloudy/tungsten/indoor/fluorescent options or color temperatures in thousands of degrees in Kelvin scale (5500K, 3000K etc...). If you have such setting, you should use one, because Auto White ballance will sometimes give biased results when shooting close-ups of wildly coloured items. If you don't have a setting, then shot slightly wider shots, so that your white background is large enough to be dominant and then crop your photo afterwards.

No matter how you lit your model, geting/improvising a tripod is always a good idea, especially with phones, as tapping or using volume buttons always introduces quite a big shake that image stabilising algorithms cannot counter when shooting "macro" photography in not bright enough conditions.

One last thing about color in photography - unless you have color calibrated screen, what you see on your monitor is usually HUGELY biased toward blue end of a rainbow, even if it has "perfect white point" when shot. So never compare actual mini vs screen side-by-side to measure if your setup is correct. This should look better when comparing phone screen vs actual mini, as built in cameras usually are calibrated vs built in screens.

I'm curious about the part you mentioned about LED lights. Why are they bad for photography?

 chimeara wrote:
I'm curious about the part you mentioned about LED lights. Why are they bad for photography?

Photographic sensors are designed for a full spectrum, "black body" light sources, like sun or tungsten lights. Fluorescent lights have selective spectrums and even have something called Color Rendering Index, measuring how natural colors appear when lit with such lights (usually very poor, especially reds). In photography, "fluorescent" camera setting artificially boosts most typical "holes" in spectrum, but even with great care you cannot achieve results as good as with "black body" lights. And LEDs have.... bizzare continous and greatly varying spectrums. They are "all over the place" really, varying from manufacurer to manufacturer, model to model, power to power... You can of course buy "pro" photographic LED lights, which are carefully designed and calibrated or come with "color correction preset", but home appliance LEDs are hit-or-miss. They are usually good for showing "overall palette" of a model, but will render some colors "untrue", sometimes heavilly. Here is quite nice page showing various spectrums of different light sources: https://www.soundandvision.com/content/led-vs-cfl-bulbs-color-temp-light-spectrum-and-more

Cheapest way to "go pro" for single models is to learn how to use sunlight and styrofoam difusors/lightboxes, but you if you want to shoot well-lit dioramas, it is best to invest in a good flash lamp (or three) and some styrofoam difusors/softboxes to direct it where needed.

But of course this all depends on how exact reproduction of color do you want or need... I'm a bit biased towards "overkill" in this subject because of my profession (full time graphic designer with a degree in photography from long past days of analogue cameras).

The Ex got this for me a number of years ago (when she was still The Wife). I think it was $40-50 on Amazon. LimoStudio is the brand name on it. Came with 4 different backdrops, 2 LEDs, a tripod, and a little adapter to use your phone with the tripod.

I kept on meaning to toss together a box/paper/desk lamp set up, but never got around to it. I’ve been really enjoying this lightbox. The LEDs feel like cheep plastic, but put out a lot of light and haven’t broken yet. The whole things folds up nicely for storage; a key feature these days.

The light quality is good enough that I don’t have to white balance my pictures these days.

I would recommend it to anyone looking to improve their pictures. It’s done a lot for mine.

Best DIY lightbox

Step 1) Open refrigerator
Step 2) Empty top shelf
Step 3) Insert mini
Step 4) Photograph