'No Frills' $75.00 home studio tent/lightbox

[rhrocker]

Great stuff Buddy! Actually you can get the softboxes fairly cheap thru Ebay, just another route to go with the photography. They would also be good for something large like a rocking chair maybe.
Good tips on the outside situations.

[SharpByCoop]

I just spent twenty minutes writing a lengthy response, only to lose it when a 404 error came on submission. Aaaarrrggh.

Shane, you are getting very close. Thanks for sharing photos of your setup. If I could help you even further, I would suggest you pushing the lights away and down--come in more from the back. This will take some of the harsh lighting off the blade and allow you to get more light onto the handle. Plus the light coming in from the rear will bounce off the front panel back into the handle. Right now it's bouncing back up.

Thanks Buddy for your setup photos. I will take yours and my friend Tony's advice to look towards a *really* good tripod. I have two, but both are lightweights.

Not much beats the great outdoors for good lighting!

Coop

[Bill Vining]

I posted two more experimental shots after taking some advice from Coop. Thanks Jim. It seems that the cloudiness I was experiencing was from too much reflective light. I added a black pad to the bottom of the lightbox and placed a smaller piece of my background on it. This reduced some of the reflection. I think the photos are much better. They are the two on the bottom.

What do you think??

http://www.medawebs.com/knives/photo.htm

Thanks
Bill

[SharpByCoop]

Whatever you did worked noticably. That second-to-last shot is outstanding! I'd charge a small fortune for that one!

Good work, Bill!

Coop

[Buddy Thomason]

Bill,
Nice! The darker cast covering the pointy end is either unbalanced lighting, dark object reflection (like tripod or camera/lens) or, my bet, picking up black from the surrounding black pad you used to 'soak up' some excess light. You are quickly closing in on the 'pot of gold.'
BT

[mrsjoan]

Hey Coop,

Started reading this thread this morning and this afternoon after church went to John's shop and he and I put this together in just a jiffy from your instructions:



I already had foam board and my lights are "reptile lights" but I also tried it with 3-60 watt Phillips Natural Daylight ligts. The reptile lights to me did the best, but John liked the regular Phillips and since he is "boss"........

Here is my picture w/o any touching up in Photoshop using the 3-60 watt bulbs:



And here it is after using a shadow reduction plug-in set at level 4



You guys help make this stuff FUN!! A big thanks to you, Terrill, and Buddy for taking the mystery out of this stuff!!!

[SharpByCoop]

Terrill's gonna kill me. He just lost one of his better customers....!

...NOT!

Good work, Joan. You got it goin' on!

Coop

[Stephen F]

Well I built my 110Euro No-Frills set up today based on Coops design - I am delighted with how simple it was, and seem to be getting pretty good results, with loads of potential in there - THANKS COOP for the motivation and inspiration!

Stephen

[Buddy Thomason]

Here's some more information concerning home-made light tents and techniques for photographing small shiny objects: http://www.creativepro.com/story/feature/19002.html

The article contains useful lighting ideas and technical 'how tos' that compliment all the other great information in this thread!

[mrsjoan]

Thanks for the article Buddy. I like the lampshade idea and will remember it next time I'm in a larger town where I can just purchase a light shade. But what I found most interesting was the placement of the lights. I have solid sides made from foam board and light from the back / top. I'm wondering if the side lighting might not be better. Coop gave me some good tips on my shots and I'm beginning to develop (rather slowly as I am "artistically handicapped") an eye on things to look for.

Now I just need more hours in a day to try out everything I learn from you guys.

[dogman]

I joined the light box club Shot with D70, Tamron 90mm manual macro lens, 125 shutter, f5.6-ish ap (I was scaling up and down, so I forgot which came out best). I lost a little focus toward the tip of the blade, but when I brought my shutter speed down, I couldn't get a aperture that got as rich a picture.

[dogman]

Here is the same knife shot under the same general conditions, except I used f22, which gave me better overall focus from the tip back, but has an overall grainy look to the image that I do not like. It is tough finding that perfect balance.

[SharpByCoop]

I'm thinking the camera adjusted itself to a MUCH higher ISO--like 400? That would explain that graininess.

With only three bulbs and manual settings, I think you would need a tripod to exact F22. How did you achieve this and were you on manual ISO?

Coop

[dogman]

Tripod, ISO set to 200 (lowest setting for D70).

[JJ Roberts]

Is there any preparation of the metal before the picture is taken..such as a spray, baby power, put into the freezer, Kroylon Dulling Spray? We have tried with a tent white background, plastic screen on 3 sides, without a tent, outdoor, indoor, indirect light, and we still get a lot of glare...any help appreciated.

JJ Roberts