Building a Window Box for Cheap "Studio Lighting"
Nice soft lighting doesn't necessarily require expensive softboxes or umbrellas with studio flash units. The same can be said about those wonderful isolated on white shots that sell so well in the microstock world. Last summer when I was first getting interested in microstock I read a book on general photography. I didn't get much out of the book, but the one thing I did get was the idea of using a window box for lighting. I used one quite often to start out and even now that I have several Alien Bee flash units I still break it out on a fairly regular basis. I am sure there are lots of articles on building a window box out on the web and many, if not all, are better than mine, however what I want to emphasize is how versatile, simple, and cheap they are.
Materials: Cardboard box, white paper, tape, card stock of various colors
Step 1: Take the cardboard box and cut the top off, one side off, and one end off. You now should have a piece of cardboard with a bottom, one side, and one end.
Step 2: Use white paper (the bigger the sheets the better) and tape to cover all of the inside with white.
Step 3 (optional): Cut the card stock so that it is the same width as the cardboard box and long enough to curve from the bottom front to the top back.
Step 4: The card stock is now used to form a seamless background within the box. It should start at the front and be relatively flat as it moves back and then curve up to the top. This way you can set an item near the front and have a nice seamless background. You can tape it in place if you want or if it stays in place on its own, then all the better.
Now you can place your homemade studio next to a window (not in direct sunlight). Place the open side up against or close to the glass, so that light pours onto your subject, bounces of the white side and fills in any shadows. This creates nice soft shadows, if any at all.
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Sorry for the simplicity and low quality of these image, I took them real quick last night before the sun went down. Nothing was done for post processing, other than shrinking the images down for the web. The truck was shot with +1.0 EV. A little overexposed, but you get the idea.
Use different colors of card stock to get different looks and use the brightest, purest white for doing the isolations that buyers of microstock seem to love. Often it will come out perfect as shot, sometimes I have to use levels or curves a bit in photoshop to get a nice white. You will want to check your histogram as you are shooting and may have to overexpose by 1 to 2 stops because there is so much white in the frame. I would also recommend setting a custom white balance before shooting or shoot in RAW so you can set it later.
There you go, now you have a custom made, portable, lighting studio. They are truly very handy and I still use mine. I even use mine at night with a studio flash unit and softbox acting as a window.
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