Light boxes, or light tents, come dear, and they are not things which are used very frequently, unless you specialise in that type of photography. If you wish to take pictures of an item around 3x4 inches or smaller you can save yourself some money by making a light box from a two litre ice-cream container. The white plastic makes an excellent diffuser and light spreading reflector.
[Ed's note: Derek calls his contraption a "light box" in this article. That usually means an illuminated box for viewing slides but since it's made from an ice cream tub it didn't feel right to use the more normal name of "light tent".]
Pic 1
Pic 1/ shows a padlock in the bottom of the container taken with a vertical shot. The flash is set on camera with a diffuser on the head. This gives even lighting although we can improve on this.
Pic 2
Pic 2/ still lying on the bottom – the flash is off camera and light is through the side of the box. But the flash is too close and inverse square law makes the light noticeably uneven. The side of the picture that is a bit closer to the flash gun is a lot brighter (that’s basically what the inverse square law says!)
Pic 3
Pic 3/ the box is upright and the padlock standing up. The flash is approx. 16 inches away and the light is more even. There is also a piece of white paper clipped to the left side of the box and slightly curved to reflect more light onto the subject.
Pic 4
Pic 4/ A shows how this shot was set up. I’ve moved the flashgun in so that you can see he angle I positioned it. For shooting it should be at the same angle but 14 – 16 inches away from the subject. I use a diffuser on the front of the flash in addition to spreading the light with the box side. If you don’t have a diffuser it is easy to make one. Many flashes now have a ‘speader’ to allow a wide angle lens to be used. All that is required is to cut a piece from the ice-cream box lid the same size as the flash head and slip it under the attachment. This will in fact soften the light better than most commercial diffusers.
Pic 5
Pic 5/ A chocolate taken using this method.
I normally use Paint Shop Pro 7 for my editing. I was given for a birthday present Photoshop elements 3. The disadvantage of colour and also digital photography is the inability to deal with extremes in contrast. I find that the ‘Quickly fix’ section of Elements is very useful in this respect. Taking ‘Lighten shadows’ to half way has brought up detail in the dark chocolate without altering the exposure colour of the white chocolate. The slightly curved paper reflector has helped with the modelling here and given a natural relief to the left side of the choc.
Using the contents of my kitchen cupboard costs nothing in the way of modelling charges when experimenting.
Pic 6
Moving the flash closer, or further away, can alter the balance between the two sides of the subject. One of the best things about using a digital camera is that it is easy to see what needs to be scrapped and the extra exposures cost nothing
Since taking the previous shots using a two Litre container I was lucky enough to mention to a caterer that I was looking about for a four litre one.
I was immediately presented with two . This permits articles of much larger size to be pictured. [Ed’s note: Personally I don’t think this is worth the risk. Buy yourself a 4 litre tub before any friendly caterer stops you. Chocolate chocolate chip works best – honest.]
Pic 7
This cocoa jar is just over Six by Three inches. The left shot was taken with no extra reflector. The bulk of the jar shielding the left side of the box creates too deep a shadow. The right side shows the effect of a piece of paper approx. six inches square folded in half to a 45 degree angle and clipped to the box edge, giving enough light to act as a fill-in. These pics were taken with no diffuser on the flash and I think that in future the larger size box will not require one to be set. The bigger box has slightly thicker sides and this worksout well.
I am lucky in that I had some flash accessories that I used with my Minolta X5 and my 9000. My Dynax 7D had a flash socket which enabled me to use my Vivitar 283 with an extension flash lead. The Sony Alpha has not got this and is one of the things that I miss most on this otherwise excellent camera. If only someone would invent a shoe that could enable standard flash cables to be used for off-camera flash guns? Really cheap extension flash is too much to hope for I suppose.
