Cutting Down On The Glare – Or My Very Cheap Light Box

Last Updated on Friday, 23 October 2009 08:20 Written by lisianblue Thursday, 30 July 2009 06:00

First off, I’m not claiming to be a pro at taking pictures, far from it!  We all know that getting good pictures of our items is very important when it comes to selling our creations on line.   I’ve had my digital SLR camera for just about a year now and I feel like I’m just beginning to really make better use of it.

However, the extremely hard part for me is getting good pictures of my glass items (which is pretty much everything I do) without a lot of glare.  I have several ornaments that I finished almost a year ago, but haven’t listed until just recently because I was unable to get pictures of them without a lot of glare on them.

Until now.

This is my very make shift “light box” – now, you have to understand, I don’t have any lights to use with it, so I’m at the mercy of the sun.  Which is a bit ironic, because I usually get some of my better pictures on cloudy days.  But, we don’t have very many cloudy days here, so I had to come up with a better solution.  After reading about another light box and some other solutions, on the HAF blog, I finally came up with this idea.

Using 3 pieces of foam core,  I cut a rectangle out of each one,  leaving about a 2 inch border all around.  Then, I took white tissue paper and taped it to 2 of the pieces and the top of one side. Then I laid out the foam core side by side and ran tape down the edges, connecting the 3 pieces together.  Originally,   I left the side that was facing away from the sun open so I would get more light.  I eventually put tissue paper on this side too, as I was getting some dark reflections from my maroon door.  The paper that covers the top, is taped to the top of the front and the top of one side, which means every time I use it , I have to tape it to the top of the other side.  I did it this way, because it makes it easier to fold up.  Before you tape the paper on top, test out how easily and which way it folds best.

On the front, I overlapped two sheets so I would have room to get my camera lens inside this opening, and have enough to completely close up the front.   Since I will often take at least 5 pictures of my ornaments, I needed to have fairly easy access to the inside.   So far, it’s working pretty well – it’s not the most beautiful thing in the world, but it did fit within the budget.  I want to try it with some white lining material so I don’t end up with rips like I have in the paper, even that little hole I currently have on one side is enough to put some glare on my ornaments.

So, I offer my somewhat hasty attempt, but very inexpensive “light box” as a jumping off point for anyone who needs to come up with something  to reduce the glare on their beautiful creations.

If you have any questions about how I constructed this,   I’ll be happy to do my best to answer them.

Ideas For Inexpensive Light Boxes

Last Updated on Monday, 1 June 2009 08:43 Written by Jeanne Monday, 1 June 2009 08:41

Why buy an expensive light box, when contructing one is easy. Below are two ideas for lighting set-ups that won’t break the bank.

Jeanine from MyGrandpasPen has this unique idea:

“One of the areas that seems to cause huge issues for new Etsy and online sellers in general is pictures. I wanted to show you my very simple lighting setup. In the top picture there are 4 pieces of white cardboard – 3 of them taped together to form the backing and one forming the floor. It’s sitting on a chair in my bedroom and I move the chair around depending on how strong the outside light is.

Light Box

I then use the macro setting on my camera (Digital Canon Rebel XT) – it looks like a little flower, and the general use lens that came with my camera. I also take every picture in a portrait orientation (up and down) and use the smallest picture setting. That way I don’t have to crop any of the pictures – it’s the proper size for Etsy. I use Vista to auto fix the colors and then upload.

Picture from light box

Hope this helps someone!”

Jeanne found this second method for constructing her own light box, shown on this link, which is from a photography school site.

(more info coming later from Manic Butterfly)