DIY Lightboxes - box vs. can

Trying to come up with a good way of taking pictures with my cell phone of my minis has been a frustrating experience. I didn't get very good results with my stand-alone camera 4 years ago, which I figured was operator-error with both camera and lighting. I had hoped that cell phones would have made it easier for my brain to handle, but we'll see. The first step is to get decent lighting.

I've tried two different approaches: Light Box - from here:

And then from Wesley Camp on Google+ - the coffee can approach.

Set side by side, they don't appear to be that different. The light provided seems to be about the same. The coffee can provides light from above, which changes the shadows, but I like how I can get in close with the shadow box.

If you have any tips and tricks to taking good minis photos with cell phones - and a Samsung 5 in particular, please share!


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  2. I don't have any advice. I just wanted to say that the photos look great and that it's good to see you posting again. We both seem to have resurfaced from long absences around the same time. :)

  3. I'm impressed that I am sufficiently connected well enough to stumbled across your exposure of this blog some 21 hours ago. I thought I was hopelessly out of the loop.

    Rhetorical exploration of one's satisfying desires is a good thing. I'm steadily coming around to realizing that myself.

  4. One small photography tip: try the same shot with a dark background and a middle background (say green) and see what you think. The camera is set up to think the whole scene is about an average mix of light and dark, so putting miniatures against a white background tends to make them too dark to see the details.

  5. Great suggestion, Rob, thanks! I'll have to try that and see. I thought the white balance would work it out, but I'm still learning.

    Thank you for the kind comments, Christian and Alexis.

  6. White balance is actually something else, having to do with making sure the color isn't distorted by the light that you're using. Things look different in daylight, flourescent and incandescent light, and the camera can correct for that, but it doesn't have anything to do with things being light or dark.


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