DIY Light Box for Photography

I’ll say it….photography has never really been my forte.  I love a good craft and I enjoy writing, but when it comes to photography I fall short a little.  I don’t have a nice camera, I just use my phone camera (which is good, but nothing like a DSLR).  I do, however, try to do everything I can to make my pictures look presentable.  That’s how I found out about this little tool….the light box.  You can buy light tents starting at $20, but I didn’t really want to buy it if I could make it for less.

Looks pretty rudimentary, but works great!  This was taken at about 10:00 pm and as you can see, the mason jar looks well lit (granted, it’ll take a little editing to get it to the right exposure, but that’s not a big deal).  It’s really easy to make and can be used with lamps or natural light.

Materials:

• Cardboard box (as close to square shape as you can and as big as the objects you’d like to photograph)
• White tissue paper
• Posterboard at least as wide as your box and about twice as long
• Packing tape

Making Your Light Box

If your box is broken down, tape the bottom shut with packing tape.

Flip your box so it’s on its side.

Make sure no kitties find their way in.

You will cut the top and both sides of the box.  On each of the four edges of each side, line up your ruler with the edge of your box and make a line along the inside edge of the ruler.

The top and the two sides should have pencil marks around the edges.  Cut along these lines with an X-Acto Knife or box cutter to cut the rectangle out completely.  Your cuts don’t have to be perfect.  Be gentle with the box or it will bend.  (I left the flaps on for this part because it made the box sturdier.)

Cut all of the flaps off of the box.

Cover each open side with one sheet of white tissue paper.  Use packing tape to secure it to the box.

Cut a piece of white posterboard to the width of your light box and about double the length of what you would need to cover the back and bottom.  Insert your cut piece of posterboard so it covers the back and the bottom, making a gentle curve at the back corner.  This creates that great infinity effect so your picture appears to have no corners.

You can use your light box with natural light as shown above or you can put lamps on the side of your light box to illuminate it.  I ended up taking the tissue paper on the top off because it seemed to dim the light too much and I wanted to be able to take pictures from above, but it’s up to you if you want to do that as well.  (I don’t think that’s technically the right thing to do, but it works for me. When I want the tissue paper on, I just slide a piece of tissue paper on the top.)

Have you found anything that helps you take quality pictures for your blog or business?