A Homemade DIY Light Box For Under £5

A £5 Light Box for Foodies, Ebayers or Crafters

So this one is a project of necessity. So I took a few pictures of the King Tiger but I just wasn’t impressed with the result. Partly down to the camera on my phone and party down to the surroundings. So the way to go is a light box. I don’t have the money to buy one and I don’t have the time for a serious build so here is a cheap, cheap! Lightbox to get these pictures done.

Just using stuff from around the house or other freebies. I already have a couple of desk lamps. LED and regular bulb, I will be using one on each side so hope that the different lights will blend. Some sheer fabric, I got hold of some muslin from work. You should be able to pick some up for about £1 a meter. Probably an old white bedsheet should do. We will also need a cardboard box, the size depends on what we are doing to be taking pictures of. I just happened to have one of these at work which is perfect. The last thing is a large piece of white card that is larger than the back of the box. To put it all together we need a craft knife and some tape possibly scissors depending on how much fabric we have.

The Bits I'm Using For My Under £5 Light box — For My Homemade Under £5 LightBox We Have; A Couple Of Light Sources, A Cardboard Box, White Craft Paper, Cutting Implements, Sticky Tape And Some Muslin.

The first thing to do is cut out the sides of the box like so, make sure your fabric is wider than the holes you make.

£5 Light Box Step One — First Step Is To Cut Squares Out Of Both Sides Of The Box.

Once we have the hole on each side we can either drape the fabric over if we have enough or tape squares on each side.

£5 Light box Step Two — So Now We Have Stuck Our Craft Paper To The Back Of The Box, The Bottom Of The Paper Loosely Curved.

The last thing is our piece of white card, we cut that to the correct width and tape it to the back of the inside of the box, letting it curve onto the base.

£5 Light box Step Three — Next Step Is To Drape Our Fabric Over The Box If You Only Have Small Pieces Of Fabric This Is The Time To Cut Them To Size And Stick Them Over The Holes In The Box.

Next, we put a light source on each side and pow our light box is made. All this has cost me £1.50 the price of the white pastel paper. The rest I managed to get for free or already had. I want to have a look and see how an LED strip would perform as a light source.

£5 Light Box Finished And Ready — That’s The Basic LightBox Finished. We Just Need To Position Our Light Sources And Away We Go.

So here is the lightbox and here is one of the photos.

£5 Light Box In Use — So Testing Out My £5 Light Box, Getting The Lighting Right To Take Some Pictures Of A Model Tank.

£5 Light Box Test Picture — So First Picture In The Light Box, As We Already Know, Every English Man Has Pickled Onions On Him At All Times!

All in all, it has only cost me £1.50 for the piece of white pastel paper from a craft shop, I could have probably used a piece of wallpaper or lining paper will try that in future. The thing I have noticed is that on some of the pictures you can see some of the lines on the paper, this is my fault for being cheap and buying pastel paper and not spending the extra 50p to buy the white card. The end of the day it has cost next to nothing and took me under 10mins to put together. It is totally reusable and will do the job I need for the time being.

So here’s a test picture, straight away it looks good enough for my purposes.

Side By Side Images Left One Taken Normally And The Right One Taken In The Light Box.

Here are a few of the King Tiger Tank. The first as is, the second with the flash on and finally with another light source added.

King Tiger First Picture In Homemade Light Box The First Photo Too Dark And Can’t See The Track So Will Have To Do Some Tweaking.

Second King Tiger Picture In Light Box This Time With Flash. Tried Using The Flash But It Has A Detrimental Effect. Lots Of Shadow.

Third Picture Of Tiger Tank In £5 Light Box, I Have Moved One Of The Light Sources And Added Another. At Last Happy With The Current Situation. A Nice Clear Picture And Minimal Shadow.

So with a little bit of testing, it seems like I have a setup that works. The great thing is it pulls apart and puts together in under 5 mins. So it really is a £5 5 min Light Box.