Easy, affordable DIY lightbox: Capture great product shots with this collapsible lightbox

John Park, a maker for Adafruit Industries, has written a comprehensive tutorial for building your own light box at home, perfect for product photography and other small-scale still life work.

The list of required materials is quite short and everything is easily sourced. For the softbox itself, you will need a 30” x 20” x 1/2" piece of thick foam core board for the flooring, a 30” x 20” x 1/4" piece of thick foam core board for the back wall and a pair of 24” x 18” x 1/4" tri-fold foam core boards, which will comprise the side walls and help envelop your subject for optimal light bouncing. In addition to the foam core, you also need 18 small magnets, 24 5/8” wooden cubes, a hot glue gun and some tape or spring clamps to hold work while you’re gluing pieces together.

Once you have your materials, you will glue magnets and wooden blocks to the corners of your foam core boards to create a lightbox which will be sturdy when in use, but also be able to be taken apart for easy storage. To see where you need to glue your magnets and wooden blocks, see the tutorial here for illustrated diagrams.

There you have it, an easy to make DIY lightbox that is as affordable as it is practical. For more tutorials, see Adafruit’s website. Also, if you’d like to see the above tutorial in an easy-to-print PDF form, click here.

(Via DIY Photography)