Mini photo studio at home: an overview of equipment for product photography

Enthu­si­as­tic peo­ple and begin­ner pho­tog­ra­phers will be inter­est­ed in such equip­ment for sub­ject pho­tog­ra­phy. With the help of such light­box­es, they pre­pare mate­r­i­al for a prod­uct (descrip­tion of WB, Ozon lots, etc.), take pho­tos for a hob­by or for the pur­pose of sell­ing in pho­to­banks. I need­ed a sim­i­lar “pho­to stu­dio” of my own for the con­ve­nience of shoot­ing the unpack­ing of house­hold appli­ances and a num­ber of gad­gets. I share my expe­ri­ence and show how it looks.

The real­iza­tion of the need to pur­chase equip­ment for his own pho­to stu­dio came grad­u­al­ly. Before that, there were sev­er­al com­pact light­box­es (cubes with sides of 40, 60 and 80 cm), which were an eas­i­ly assem­bled struc­ture made of a frame and reflec­tive mate­r­i­al. In the kit, as a rule, there is a back­light and pho­to­phones. As a result, the choice fell on a rather expen­sive and large light­box set mea­sur­ing 200x120x100 cm. The mass of the kit is about 18 kg (!). For com­par­i­son, below is a bag from a Tra­vor F80 light­box (80x80x80 cm in size) and a set of two stu­dio lamps with stands (bag below).

The pack­age includes steel stands (16 pcs + 1 pc), plas­tic mount­ing cor­ners, back­ground clips, three PVC pho­to back­grounds, light dif­fusers, LED light pan­els, pow­er sup­plies, reflec­tive fab­ric for the box. That is, the kit has every­thing you need to start. Assem­bling is quite sim­ple — first the racks are con­nect­ed into a cube, then the reflec­tive fab­ric is fas­tened.

Racks of dif­fer­ent sizes, since at the base there is a rec­tan­gle of 100 x 120 cm, and for the ver­ti­cal there are meter-long com­pos­ite racks. The frame is rel­a­tive­ly light and strong. The fab­ric has the shape of a cube sweep with sides 200x120x100 cm. Sewn-in plas­tic zip­pers along the entire length of the faces are used as fas­ten­ers. The back­ground is mount­ed on a sep­a­rate hor­i­zon­tal stand.

For con­ve­nience, Vel­cro is used, pro­vid­ed at the junc­tion of the faces. I note the pres­ence of tech­no­log­i­cal holes for light­ing wires. There are also wide “pock­ets” in the side walls for access or instal­la­tion of addi­tion­al light on the sides.

This is what the assem­bled light­box looks like in the “lying” posi­tion. Col­lect­ing one is real, but incon­ve­nient. The rigid­i­ty of the racks is suf­fi­cient, but the frame should not be sub­ject­ed to exces­sive loads.

Now light. The kit includes 8 (!) LED light pan­els at once, pro­vid­ing light­ing inside the box. The LEDs (96 pcs per pan­el) are applied direct­ly to the alu­minum sub­strate, which pro­vides not only rigid­i­ty, but also the removal of excess heat dur­ing oper­a­tion. Mount­ing method — using two mag­nets to the steel racks of the frame. The kit includes pow­er sup­plies with reg­u­la­tion (from 7 to 12 V at the out­put, cur­rent sta­bi­liza­tion up to 2 A). But cable man­age­ment with a sim­i­lar amount of wire is not pro­vid­ed. It turns out quite incon­ve­nient — you will need 2–3 net­work exten­sion cords, because each light pan­el has a sep­a­rate pow­er sup­ply with a plug.

Despite the declared bright­ness at the lev­el of 12000 lx, I got about 2200 lx when mea­sured in the cen­ter on the bot­tom of the box. Nat­u­ral­ly, the illu­mi­na­tion depends on the loca­tion of the sources, you can “play around” with the group­ing or place­ment of light pan­els. There is no flick­er­ing from the LEDs, which is very nice.

But in the end, the light was not enough for me. Addi­tion­al LED pan­els, halo­gen lights or trig­gered flash­es can be used. I chose addi­tion­al stu­dio light­ing in the form of a kit with dif­fusers and stands.

The kit is sup­plied in a bag, the set includes two stands, two dif­fusers with an E27 base and a pow­er cable, as well as two LED lamps with a remote con­trol and a pow­er of up to 70 W. It is pos­si­ble to adjust the col­or tem­per­a­ture of the glow and bright­ness. One remote works simul­ta­ne­ous­ly with two lamps, which is very con­ve­nient.

An exam­ple of the loca­tion of reg­u­lar light pan­els inside the frame, as well as the appear­ance of addi­tion­al light with racks. With addi­tion­al light­ing, it became quite com­fort­able to work.

Option­al­ly, you can use col­ored back­ground light­ing. There are many options, as a rule, these are var­i­ous RGB sources that allow you to adjust the desired light tem­per­a­ture or choose the col­or of the glow. In the pho­to, one of these kits is an RGB Light Stick in the form of a “stick” with a remote con­trol and a built-in bat­tery.

The built-in dis­play allows you to set the modes direct­ly, or can be con­trolled from the remote con­trol. There are ready-made modes, includ­ing col­or alter­na­tion, as well as set­ting the RGB glow with set­ting the inten­si­ty for each com­po­nent.

Such illu­mi­na­tion can be used to obtain the desired effects when glow­ing against the back­ground. By the way, the rack from the kit has a ball head, which is very con­ve­nient. Mount­ing method — 1/4″ thread. An exam­ple of one of these “artis­tic” pho­tos can be seen in the title pic­ture in the review.

So, the light­box is assem­bled, you can get to work. The rel­a­tive­ly large size of the work­ing area of ​​the impromp­tu “pho­to stu­dio” makes it pos­si­ble to film the unpack­ing of house­hold appli­ances in any form, with a set or as an assem­bly. The light used (no flick­er) makes it pos­si­ble to shoot video direct­ly in the light­box.

Take care of the sur­face of the pho­to­phone. because find­ing a replace­ment PVC ver­sion mea­sur­ing 1.6 by 2 meters will be quite expen­sive. The pho­to shows a black back­ground from the kit, which is suit­able for obtain­ing con­trast­ing shots of equip­ment with a light col­or scheme of the body.

I cer­tain­ly liked this light­box as a turnkey kit. Received, unpacked — and calm­ly work. It is con­ve­nient that there are spare plas­tic cor­ners in case of break­age. There are three pho­to­phones in the kit at once, and not fab­ric ones, but dense plas­tic ones (PVC), which are quite expen­sive sep­a­rate­ly. On the oth­er hand, there are obvi­ous down­sides. The assem­bly takes a decent time, and it is incon­ve­nient to con­stant­ly dis­as­sem­ble and assem­ble. It’s eas­i­er to col­lect once and leave for use. Fur­ther, from the base of the fab­ric there is a rather notice­able chem­i­cal smell, which should still dis­ap­pear. Above, I point­ed out the lack of light, indeed, for a work area of ​​this size, there are not enough com­plete LED pan­els and addi­tion­al light­ing ele­ments or a high-qual­i­ty flash will be required. Of course, for pho­tos of most house­hold appli­ances and gad­gets, a small­er light­box (meter by meter or 80 x 80 cm) will suf­fice. But in a large ver­sion, it is quite pos­si­ble to shoot in full growth, and also, using the appro­pri­ate fil­ters, use the Chro­ma Key tech­nol­o­gy.

Link to light­box 200x120x100 cm from the review. Of the use­ful points, you can add rota­tion­al demon­stra­tion plat­forms here — con­ve­nient “twists” for shoot­ing pre­sen­ta­tion videos or ani­ma­tions. More detailed mod­els of equip­ment for sub­ject shoot­ing can be viewed at the link.

Exam­ples of reviews of light­box­es 80x80x80 cm (Mod­el F80) and 40x40x40 cm (Mod­el F40) can also be viewed at the links. For oth­er tests and reviews of gad­gets, see my pro­file and the links below.
Thank you for your atten­tion!