Today I was looking for an easy way to improve my photos: a light box. A quick google search reveals many helpful resources. Yery inspiring is the post at Strobist: How To: DIY $10 Macro Photo Studio and this one at Evil Mad Scientist: Lamdshade Light Tent.
I played around with a small box, paper and scissors, only to realize that I am missing the required lighting equipement. My small lamps simply aren’t bright enough.
Sitting in the sun, sipping on my coffee, I came up with this micro light box. Actually it’s a tube. What would you need to build one?
- 1 x piece of A4 paper
- transparent tape
- sun light
- 30 seconds to acquire materials + 15 seconds to assemble the parts
Although the sun light is coming only from one direction the unwanted shadows are almost completely gone. This light box is only suitable for very small objets, an Arduino board, about 5*6 cm, is the largest you can put into it.
Not bad for this micro light box. Still a bit dark.
More at Flickr.
tinkerlog 
I know what Arduino is, but I dont know what a lightbox is. Could you please explain to me what it would be used for?
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Hi Fatima,
a lightbox is used to take pictures.
If you take pictures of small objects you want the light to be more diffuse to reduce hard shadows. That can be achived with lightboxes. You light them with strong lights and in the lightbox you will have very smooth shadows.
Cheers,
Alex
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Hi-
What about if you want to take pictures of something as large as a gift basket. Is there a way to do that with a diy lightbox?
Thanks,
Michelle
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Hi Michelle,
just follow this links in the post. There are some more DIY light boxes. Another option is to use some strong light sources with reflectors or diffusors attached to it to.
Cheers,
Alex
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