Made a DIY Lightbox
coldclimb
Registered Users Posts: 1,169 Major grins
So yesterday I put together a lightbox, and since it was so easy and a good deal cheaper than the kit you can buy at the local photo shop, I figured I'd post a quick description here and see what people think could be done better, or just pass the idea on to others. 
I used 1/2 inch PVC pipe and plain white cotton fabric that looked like it would work and was cheap. I made a box from the PVC first. My sides were each 30 inches long, which I figured would give me more than enough room inside for anything I ever need to shoot. PVC fittings don't come in three-way corners, so I stuck a 90 onto a T for each corner, and that turned out helping me a whole lot down the road. You'll see why, I just wish I could say I engineered it that way on purpose.
After putting the box together, I sewed a seam along a piece of backdrop cloth so it could slide over the rear top pipe and drape properly. Then I spent some time sizing, pinning, and sewing seams on one piece of fabric that warpped across the box covering both sides and the top.
Here's my bottom-front-left corner. You can see how I sewed the seams to fit the pipes, and it's really easy to pop the pipe off and slip it out of the cloth to dismantle things. The backdrop just drapes across the bottom. Note the positioning of the T and elbow, as that became important later on...
The final product went together pretty smoothly and worked really well, but it takes up so much space in our tiny apartment I had to stand in the bathroom to get my shots. :rofl
And lastly, the brilliance of the engineering that accidentally fell together really well: As I said, it takes up a lot of space, so I needed it to be collapsible. Flip the background out of the box and remove the two bars across the bottom, and because of the orientation of the Ts you can rotate the sides, flipping one side around to the top and the other to the bottom in a Z shape, and the whole thing flattens into a more convenient shape. Slip the two bottom bars back into their sockets, and they too will rotate and stow. Check it out:
So that's yesterday's thought and labor. My only issue so far has been wrinkles in the backdrop, I think I need to make it from something less susceptible to creasing. Let me know what you guys think, and if you like the design, go ahead and steal it. Here's some results after a little PP to clean up some wrinkles:
I used 1/2 inch PVC pipe and plain white cotton fabric that looked like it would work and was cheap. I made a box from the PVC first. My sides were each 30 inches long, which I figured would give me more than enough room inside for anything I ever need to shoot. PVC fittings don't come in three-way corners, so I stuck a 90 onto a T for each corner, and that turned out helping me a whole lot down the road. You'll see why, I just wish I could say I engineered it that way on purpose.
After putting the box together, I sewed a seam along a piece of backdrop cloth so it could slide over the rear top pipe and drape properly. Then I spent some time sizing, pinning, and sewing seams on one piece of fabric that warpped across the box covering both sides and the top.
Here's my bottom-front-left corner. You can see how I sewed the seams to fit the pipes, and it's really easy to pop the pipe off and slip it out of the cloth to dismantle things. The backdrop just drapes across the bottom. Note the positioning of the T and elbow, as that became important later on...
The final product went together pretty smoothly and worked really well, but it takes up so much space in our tiny apartment I had to stand in the bathroom to get my shots. :rofl
And lastly, the brilliance of the engineering that accidentally fell together really well: As I said, it takes up a lot of space, so I needed it to be collapsible. Flip the background out of the box and remove the two bars across the bottom, and because of the orientation of the Ts you can rotate the sides, flipping one side around to the top and the other to the bottom in a Z shape, and the whole thing flattens into a more convenient shape. Slip the two bottom bars back into their sockets, and they too will rotate and stow. Check it out:
So that's yesterday's thought and labor. My only issue so far has been wrinkles in the backdrop, I think I need to make it from something less susceptible to creasing. Let me know what you guys think, and if you like the design, go ahead and steal it.
Here's some results after a little PP to clean up some wrinkles:
John Borland
www.morffed.com
www.morffed.com
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