More Studio-In-A-Box Tests

Wow. I just really don't know how to use this. I don't even know if the diffusion cube is arranged properly. I'm assuming that I've set it up the way the makers intended, as it sags horribly if I try to set it lengthwise. These new photos haven't been tweaked very much - just sharpening - as I wanted to see what I was getting in terms of raw, pre-massaged material. The results still aren't very promising.

I tried three different light set-ups this time, as well as moving the whole shebang into the Blair Witch Room (what I call the particularly desolate, unlit end of the basement, back behind the laundry area). First, I put a light on each side of the cube, shining through the sides. I got what I call "Irwin Kershner lighting":


Not bad, but I can still see plenty of the cube's fabric, and it's not really a look I want all of the time. Then I tried backlighting it, while leaving the right-hand light on the side. That didn't work at all:


Then I tried aiming moving the back light into the front, shining through the cube opening. Better, but there's still shadows and fabric wrinkles all over the place:

On all of these shots, I'd placed the figure on a white box, in the hope that I could eliminate the ground seams, but that didn't work - the box just showed up plain as day. So I got rid of the box, and used the same lighting set-up:

Which pretty much brings me back to where I started. It's not that much different from the first shots I took.

So far, none of the pictures look anywhere near as good as the shots on the plastic chairs in natural sunlight. They look like, well, shots taken in a dark room inside a lit tent. This is clearly not going to be a immediate gratification thing. I think I have some options left before I write this off as wasted money:

1) Add the third light. Maybe that'll help wash out some of the cube details.
2) Add a ramp background, for the same reason. Maybe I'm mistaken, but I'm beginning to think that the cube is only good for diffusion, and not for a backdrop. I may be overestimating the versatility of each part of this set-up, which is an easy trap to fall into, as I felt that I was encouraged to feel this stuff would be all that I'd need.
3) Also, maybe the cube can only handle displaying objects well away from the top and bottom seamwork - smaller items elevated into the center of the cube. That'd be disappointing, as I was hoping I could use more of the cube's real estate. #2 might be able to help with this.

Unfortunately, all of the options involve spending more money. I'll see if I can find a good photo supply store nearby, and see what they recommend.

Photo Studio-In-A-Box: Test #2

I thought some of the problems with the previous photo might be that the lights were too high, so I set them on the floor, the left light aimed at the top of the figure, the right light at the lower half. Since the card table was still set up, setting the lights on the floor spread them apart to some degree.

Well, it didn't work at all - almost everything got worse. Even after tweaking it in iPhoto and Photoshop, the bottom seam and fabric are still pretty clear. The back shadows are all over the place, and the good ones (like the one under the hat brim) are a lot weaker. Ugh! I guess I'll try moving the card table out of the way, and placing them closer together next time, as well as a little closer to the cube and the figure. The figure's color is different because I tweaked the 'temperature' sliders in iPhoto.

To be honest, I'm not even sure that I've got the cube set up properly. Maybe there's a better way to postion it so the seams son't show as much. The other potential tactic is to figure out the proper focal length to keep the figure in focus and blur out the background. I took a community college photography course a while back, but most of that has totally fallen out of my head!

Photo Studio-In-A-Box: Test #1

After moving in the card table and setting up the lights, I shot this at about 10 PM. The lights can help blow out a lot of the bg details, but in this case, I think I had the lights much too high. I had to darken the hat in Photoshop to get it back in sync with the rest of the figure, and the bottom seam/fabric are showing up a lot more than I want. Not a home run by any means, but educational.

Photo Studio-In-A-Box: The Set-Up

So I thought I'd devote tonight to setting up a little photo studio in my basement. The one thing that strikes me right away is that anyone else considering this purchase might not want to get the large version - as it turns out, that white nylon cube is BIG. It's about as big as my old 30' picture-tube tv set. I've set up two wide folding tables in front of one another down there, and I still don't have enough room for the lights yet! I'm going to set up our card table in front of those, and hope it's the same height as the other tables.

I think I might pack it in for tonight, and finish the set-up tomorrow morning - if I'm lucky, maybe get one test shot in before I go to work. The instructions do indeed have numerous and sundry warnings about how hot the lights get - they recommend only turning them on when it's shutter time. I haven't even plugged them in, I'm so paranoid now!

It's Here!

At last! My Photo Studio-In-A-Box arrived in the mail yesterday. I'll try setting it up tonight and see how it works. Hopefully, 3:00 PM won't be my cutoff (when the light goes in the living room) for taking toy photos any more!