Well, after a week of trying to find all of the pieces I needed I FINALLY got my light tent set up and functional! It was actually quite a bit harder than I had though it would be, especially since I started out with no real design, just a rough idea. The first thing I bought was the PVC, which I assembled into a rectangle after cutting down a little, this was probably the easiest part although I did have to re-cut it once as I made it a little too big.
Next came the sheet, which I got at a fabric store. Some felt-like stuff that was 108" wide, but I cut it all up when I got home before I realized that I actually wanted it whole...dang. Back to the fabric store the next day, to buy another 3 yards this time being sure NOT to cut any of it. Before I bought any lights I made sure to get the tent set up straight, which took quite a while because I couldn't figure out how to set up the sheet. Finally I did a little research and found this great Pbase site which I wish I had found before I started this whole project. Ohwell! After I got the sheet set up I needed a backdrop, which I got a thick sheet of poster board like the one on the Pbase instructions.
Finally I needed some lights. I tried first two 500w halogens, but those weren't really positionable the way I wanted, so back they went. I was going to buy a set of clamp lights at Lowes but the ones they had were a little too expensive. I looked instead for office lamps like the guy on the Pbase site used and I didn't have much luck with those either. Finally at Fred Meyer I found some clamp lights which weren't too pricy and got three of them with 100w bulbs.
The last hurdle came after it was all set up and I discovered that I didn't really have the right white balance to get the shots colored properly out-of-camera. I did, however, finally figure out how to use the Custom White Balance, and I set it to a fully lit shot of the background...now everything works great!
Anyways, just thought I'd share my experience. I'd recommend something like this to anybody who doesn't have one. At least personally, I love clean isolated shots, and this setup didn't cost much at all. Had I known what I was doing, the whole setup would be less that $50. It's also big enough (about 39"x30"x21") that I can get some larger objects in there. Now I'm just really excited to play with it some more!
Here's my first shot with it all working the way it should:
And the thing itself:
 |
