Home made light tent

There have been a few posts recently about light tents and product shots, so I thought I'd share my method.

The light tent is a frame made of PVC pipe and a cover made from a cheap white bed sheet. The corners of the frame are glued at the T pieces, and the 90-degree angle piece is glued to the leg, but the legs are loose, just press-fit in, which lets the whole thing fold up. If you make one yourself, be sure to get the T pieces aligned square to each other.

Here you see the corner, and how the frame is set up, with the tripod in position for later. I clip posterboard onto the top of the frame to make a nice background.

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Here's how the tent is stored. The legs fold up, and the whole thing lies flat under a bed.

the frame is 30 x 30 x 30 inches, approximately, and I used 2 lengths of PVC pipe to make it.

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Here the frame is covered with the bedsheet. I sewed the corners of the sheet together to make a snug fit, and cut small windows into the sides. In the upper right corner you can see large paper clips which hold the background posterboard.

If you've seen some of my other posts, you might recognize my son and my dog helping me out.

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great post, I am sure this will help alot of people.

I cut windows into the covering sheet to shoot through. The windows are covered with flaps of the same fabric, so that reflections of the windows don't show up in the final picture. There are a total of 3 windows at different heights, allowing shots of different perspective.

It helps to use a tripod that lets you position the camera right up against the openning. Seen here is my gitzo explorer, which is tripod heaven.

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Great idea. I was actually considering to build a small box out of word but this is much better (easier too).

Do You have any lights inside or do You just use flash?

Here are four shots of my wife's pottery. Pottery is particularly tough because the glaze is highly reflective and any uneveness shows up as glare or hot-spots on the final photo.

I shoot using custom white balance (take test shot of the white background within the tent), and in this case natural light. Position the tent so that the amount of light falling on the top, sides, and front is even. Sometime's I've added small desktop lamps as needed. Exposures are ISO100, f22, 2 to 3 seconds. I use mirror lockup and a cable release. Because I can get the exposure and white balance exactly right, I don't use RAW -- jpg comes out just fine. These are with a 1D...N and a tamron 28-75. The zoom helps to properly frame objects of different sizes.

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Hope this is helpful. The tent cost about $5-10 for the PVC stuff and the bedsheet was lying around the house. My wife's pottery is beautiful and is for sale. Happy shooting.

Nice job. The results are fantastic.

Great job! I like it how you made leggs fold up, very portable.

As I'm in the market for a larger litecube (which work very well, I might add), I am now in need of a larger one - I have only borrowed the 2 foot version.

Trying to get hold of the 4ft one in a hurry is a problem as is the cost!

I am going to try your suggestions, which seem simple but brilliant.

Many thanks for sharing your inspiration.

Graham

I also this weekend made a small light tent. This time I didn't use white material (which I wish I had because it softens the light very well). I used cardboard. The thick kind with the corigated inside which holds's it's shape. I saw somebody use it on another website that I found instructions on.

Small pic:

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Now that is a helpful thread right here. I'm going to Home Depot as soon as I can find the saw.

What kind of cheap lights can be used for this?

Hmmm...very interesting set up w/ very interesting results...