DIY lightbox

A friend I work with, needs to have pictures taken of her collection of vintage jewellery and asked me if I could do it. So I started researching DIY lightboxes online. Fairly easy to make really!

So this morning, first thing I did, went to Staples, and Home Depot, and bought boards, a roll of white paper, more powerful (still cheap) work lamps and bulbs... Sat in the middle of the livingroom, and built the box! I had never taken photos using a lightbox before, so it was a learning experience, but once I started, I could not stop taking pictures of silly things in the house! The phone, a can of tomato paste, my little Mr Tek, a shoe... I use it with two lamps on each side, and my 550x flash pointing up... I am pretty proud of myself! Hehe,... now I am just wondering if the lighting would be better with two slave flashes on each side, instead of the lamps...

Not very creative shot, but I found that's the one I liked the best... I seem to have a hard time with my white balance though... Everyone, I present to you... My phone!

Good work. It does have a red/magenta cast but I think the metering is off by a stop or two. In any case, it wouldn't take much work to fix it in Photoshop.

None of the shots came back with the same coloring/hue... it's weird! But I had fun doing it...

I'm not an expert on white-balance as I don't use digital cameras but perhaps the underexposing is throwing the camera off when its processing the image resulting in different colour-casts?

The camera is underexposing because of the white background. A meter will think that it should be middle gray. If your camera has a spot metering feature, I suggest that you set it to that, then stretch out your arm and meter the palm of your hand in the same light as the phone. With negative film, can keep the resulting aperture/shutter-speed settings. With slide film or digital, take those settings and underexpose by a stop.

I would take a picture of the white background with nothing on it and set that as your custom white balance. Might not be perfect but it'll be close and consistent from shot to shot.

Set the exposure to manual once you figure out the proper exposure to ensure the photos are consistent.