Are you a novice in photography looking for a good start to create good quality images? Or an online seller looking for good and professional looking photoshoot of your products? Or just a photographer by hobby or profession looking for a cheap photo studio to create the best illumination for their subject?
Well, here’s my DIY Photo Light Box which I created at home. I’m an online seller too and this is what I resorted to get good looking photoshoots of my products to sell. Why not?? Well, one of the best marketing strategies to sell your product is to attract buyers by how good you present your products. Good photos creates potential customers as well as sales. With this photo light box, I won’t need to hire professional photographer just to create an appealing & selling photo for my business. I won’t even need to spend a lot of time editing my photo and I won’t even need to have a DSLR just to have a well-looking capture of image. With this, you no longer need to depend on the natural sunlight anymore nor the filter/lighting effects of your phone alone. You can take more photos any time even in dark room or night time.
So here’s what you need to build you own Photo Light box.
Materials Needed:
You may find all or some of the materials to make a DIY lightbox at your own home. See below materials needed in making your own Photo Light Box:
- Box (Balikbayan Box from National Book Store) – you can use any size of box to which your product/subject will fit into
- Elmer’s Muli-Purpose Glue (2pcs 130g)
- Packaging Tape
- Ruler
- Blade Cutter
- Cutting Mat/Pad (Optional)
- Magnetized Vinyl Shower Curtain Line (available from Ace Hardware) – you can use any other material as long it is translucent, other translucent cloth or or any material for diffusing light (e.g. muslin fabric, white nylon or white fleece, Wax paper)
- White LED Bulb (3pcs 9W)
- White/Black Cartolina – this will be used as the background of the subject of photography thus you can get any color you want for your subject to diversify you photo shots.
How To Make Your Own Photo Light Box At Home
Step 1
First is to build your box. Assemble into box shape your your newly bought box (folded yet) from a store. Alternatively, you can also use an old or used box as long as the board and edges are still firm. Then using your packaging tape, reinforce the bottom cover/closure of the box and cut out the other cover/closure/flaps (top panel) using a blade cutter. Your box should now only have one opening similar below:
Step 2
Then with your box opening facing forward, cut out the 2 sides and top side of the box similar below. The size of the margin I used across all edges of the 3 surfaces is around 5cm. These 3 square holes are the windows which will be covered with the vinyl material for light diffusion.
Step 3
Then to reinforce the structural support of the box, I added 3 more layers of the board (using glue) to all columns and beams of the box. See below image. Optionally, you can add more paddings if you feel like your box is still not sturdy enough.
Step 4
Once your box is now firm, start covering the 3 openings with the vinyl using the packaging tape. Cut a square size of a vinyl 2.5cm larger than the opening of the box to be able to tape its edges on remaining 2.5cm uncovered edges of the box. While securing the vinyl across the opening by tape, try to stretch it until the vinyl’s surface straighten and lie flat on top of the opening. This ensures that the light passing through vinyl is evenly distributed inside the box. See below image of the box completely covered with vinyl:
Step 5
After the vinyl, you can now lay your chosen Cartolina paper inside the box for your background. Just lay it inside with the top edge taped on the upper part of the rear surface of the box. This way you can change your Cartolina anytime you deem necessary for your subject. (DONT fold the Cartolina paper) See image below:
Step 6
And Voila! Your light box is almost complete. Now all you got to do is just place you lighting on the corresponding vinyl-covered surface of the box. See below my setup. Of course you can device any setup you prefer depending of your available materials on hand.
Step 7
Here’s the sample raw (unedited) photo capture of a subject (LED Bulb) inside the photo light box.
Tips
Here’s my tips to capture your first professional photo using your own-built photo light box:
- Place your Photo Light box on smooth flat surface.
- Place your Photo lights to the respective vinyl-covered windows of the light box. Adjust the distance of the light source from the window according to your preferred lighting effects.
- Place the object you want to shoot inside the box on the middle point of the white area.
- Position your camera to get the best angle of your subject without the cardboard being visible (or you can just crop the photo to remove the unwanted part of image). Then take your shot!
For optimum result of your photography, you can do a lot of variations in this assembly. Like:
- Using other vinyl type or other translucent cloth or or any material for diffusing light (e.g. muslin fabric, white nylon or white fleece)
- You can opt for other light source with different wattage/luminance and experiment with the distance of light source to light box for preferred lighting effect.
- You can use different color of Cartolina for different background color you prefer for your subject
- You can try to use any different box sizes to adapt to the size of your subject. Of course, the bigger the box, the more extensive variety of objects of different sizes you can fit in. Or you can even build your own wooden-type box for a more rigid photo light box and it will serve you for a long period of time.
Or for ease doing all these stuffs, you can buy your own cheap photo light box at Lazada store or Shoppee store. Those are easy to assemble, foldable and portable which is all-in-one light packs up into a handy carry case. They are even easy to install and the only advantage is the cost. On the other side, doing this your own stuff is cheaper as you can use anything available around you. You can even customize any parts to get your desired effects for good quality pictures.
