Oxalis Flowers; © reserved 2009, Richard Lovison
This is an indoor shot using natural light of a group of tiny Oxalis flowers. Helicon Focus software was used to increase the depth of field by merging a group of five images of various focus points taken at 1/6 sec @f11.
Oxalis; © Copyright Reserved Richard Lovison, 2008
My wife brought home a sheet of cardboard a few days ago and wondered if I had a use for it. It was approximately 40 inches wide by 27 inches high and tri-folded with an intended use as a project display board. What caught my eye was the bright white surface on the display side.
With a little effort I thought I could build an inexpensive lightbox using five project boards to produce images like the example above using a flash unit for illumination. After approximately one hour of time I constructed a five sided box, 19 ½” wide by 27” high by 19” deep.
Since I don’t have a flash cord, my Olympus T-32 flash unit had to be mounted on the flash shoe of my E-1. Thus, I had to place my subject far enough inside the box so that my camera and flash unit were just slightly outside the plane of the opening. I added a diffusion plate to the T-32 to produce softer light and tilted the flash head up towards the inside top of the box to bounce the light.
Overall the lightbox produced good results. Given what I’ve learned thus far, a smoother surface provided by a material such as white foam core probably would have given better results as the white cardboard has a slight texture. A two flash setup located off-camera would provide more even illumination and subject to camera distance options.
This site contains original content held in copyright by the author, Richard Lovison.
