Making Your Own Lightbox

[ComputerWhiz]

Lightboxes (also known as light tables) are a piece of equipment that can make for some great pictures. Some examples are things like placing sliced fruit in a glass of bubbled water and then placing the glass on top of a lightbox. Light boxes were originally designed to allow people to view negatives in the old film days, but plenty of great photos that you can find in magazines and such, were taken using a lightbox.

I feel like I may have done a terrible job explaining what a lightbox is. If I have, I apologize and would like to direct you to the Wikipedia article about them, here.

I really wanted one of these cool devices, but after some research, found that they can be quite expense. Then it hit me: you can use a tablet/iPad as a lightbox. I did some searching on the Google Play Store and found that there are actual lightbox apps that you can download. If you don't really feel like downloading an app, you can also just save a blank, white image from the web and view it on your device. It is great because you can adjust the brightness and you can even find some different coloured backgrounds from the web to give your pictures a different look.

I am fairly certain that I am not the first person to have thought of doing this, however, I didn't see any topics on the TPF talking about this, so I thought I would start one.

 

[Derrel]

Here you go. Disposable styrofoam ice chest. Put the lid on upside-down. Put a flash inside, facing upward with the flash set to a relatively wide-angle zoom head setting. Place a piece of plexiglas or real glass from an old picture frame above, on top of the upside-down lid, which acts as the flash diffuser. Flash travels through styrofoam relatively well, and it diffuses flash superbly. These are gonna go on sale all over in the next two weeks as retailers try to thin down their summer inventories.

LIFOAM 30-Quart Styrofoam Cooler - Walmart.com

 

[ComputerWhiz]

Here you go. Disposable styrofoam ice chest. Put the lid on upside-down. Put a flash inside, facing upward with the flash set to a relatively wide-angle zoom head setting. Place a piece of plexiglas or real glass from an old picture frame above, on top of the upside-down lid, which acts as the flash diffuser. Flash travels through styrofoam relatively well, and it diffuses flash superbly. These are gonna go on sale all over in the next two weeks as retailers try to thin down their summer inventories.

LIFOAM 30-Quart Styrofoam Cooler - Walmart.com

Great idea.
I think I may have to go pick up a few of those

 

[gsgary]

They are also good for looking at negatives to decide which to print