16 March 2022

I finally bought a lightbox

If there's one thing that bothers me about my minis, it's the photography. I'm hoping this new toy will help improve it.

I had a lightbox years ago when I got into macro photography with my then-new DSLR (a Rebel XT). It cost the best part of $80, and the lights — a pair of what were basically desk lamps — cost extra. It was a hassle to set up, put away, find room for, and generally to use, despite giving great results. I ended up getting rid of it, and didn't think about getting another one until I stumbled across this post on Dai's awesome site

So off to Amazon I go, and after a bit of looking around I picked this lightbox. For just over $16 I figured that if it turned out to be a pile of crap I could just send it back, but with 7,716 reviews and an average of four stars I feel pretty hopeful.

As Alicia's currently using the kitchen table I had to set it up on the counter near one of our many, many USB chargers, so these pics taken with my phone aren't great... but you're probably used to that.

Anyway, the box itself is a one-piece plastic job that comes flatpacked, so you just have to fold the top and sides up and clip them together which takes all of a minute. It comes with six coloured backgrounds that you can place under and behind your model, or you can use your own.

One thing that's awesome is that it's got 40 built-in LEDs at the top, which are pure white light. They're powered with a USB cable and you can have one or both sets of lights switched on. This cuts out so much of the hassle I had with my old lightbox, and it's great.

You can take photos through the front or the top, making it pretty versatile. So, grabbing a few random minis, my DSLR and macro lens and the printed backdrop I use, I tried it out. Just bear in mind that I'm having to squat down to take these pics, and as my gym days are long over I have the quads of a newborn kitten.


Here's the whopping Cthulhu I painted for last year's Monster Mayhem. On the left is the photo for his original post, and on the right is a new photo taken in the lightbox. Ignoring the different angles, the colours on the new pic are way closer to the model's actual colours thanks to it being lit by white LEDs instead of the kitchen lights.  


Here's my Night Lords Tartaros Terminator. I wanted to try a smaller, darker figure and it does show a bit of a limitation; with all the light coming from above, his lower half is pretty much in deep shadow. I'll have to bear this in mind and maybe turn off the top lights when shooting another dark model, and try putting it further back in the box.

Dragoth takes his turn in the box. He's not quite as shadowed as the Night Lord, but at this point I was wondering if the fact it was dark outside and we had all the kitchen lights on might be affecting the lighting (Dragoth's original pics were taken in daylight). Still, he looks pretty good, and the added shadows make him look a tad more menacing.

Finally, here's some Marines. Even the brightly-coloured Renegade on the right looks way too dark, and the details on the Plague Marine and Ashen Claw are almost totally hidden. It looks like I'm going to have to get some more practice in with the box, and probably change my camera settings too.

Still, I'm happy with it and hopefully once I get the swing of things my photos will be better than they have been in the past. As usual, stay tuned!

16 comments:

  1. Nice purchase Matt, as with everything with photography, I find it takes a lot of practice to get the set up right, so hope you get yours worked out quickly.

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    1. It's certainly going to take practice to get the shots I want, but I have a feeling it won't be too hard. Famous last words LOL!

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  2. Nice find Matt. The one I got way-back-when was similar, though I don't think it had lights in the back like yours. It died about 4 months after I bought it and I have yet to replace it, though now I am REALLY pushed for storage space, even for a flatpacked effort like this. Still, the thing definitely made a difference so I intend to get a new one when things change storage-wise.

    Thanks for the shoutout my friend. :)

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    1. No problem on the shoutout, Dai! I'm glad I found your post because taking pics on the kitchen table with the crappy light in our kitchen was driving me up the wall, and I hadn't even thought about a lightbox till I saw the one on your site.

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  3. Hmm, interesting. I've thinking of a lightbox for some time, I think I'll be taking a look at your impressions and progress on the subject!

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    1. I'll hopefully be using it in the next few days for a newly-painted mini, so we'll see how it goes :-)

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  4. Excellent posting Matt. Just had a look for this light box on Amazon UK, and its as cheap as chips - so I've bought one. Should be delivered later today too :-)

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    1. Cheers, Simon, and I've made a bit of a dent in your wallet recently LOL!

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  5. I have a very similar one to that, as well as a large cloth one, but it only has one light strip at the top.
    I find I have to raise the figure up, as the lighting isn't powerful enough and doesn't light the front of the miniatures very well so a flash needs to be used, which is where I fall down since I smashed mine!
    When I had a flash, I found I got better results using a larger lens, like a 50-200, and bouncing the flash of a reflector to light the front. Now I have to set up my larger lights and to try and flood the thing with as much light as possible - I really must invest in a new DSLR!
    Anyway, have fun and experiment, you can get some really atmospheric shots by playing with the aperture🙂

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    1. Yeah, Justin, one thing I realised the next day was putting the figure on something to raise it up and get it more evenly spaced between the top and bottom lights. I used my 50mm macro lens for these pics, and I want to try my 18-50, 28-80 and 50-200 next.

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  6. Good stuff, might have to look into something like this myself, as I been having a nightmare getting decent pics of late. One thing, have you thought of putting slightly angled mirrors at the sides of the box to reflect the light back across from the sides? don't know if this would work or not, photography isn't my strong point.

    Cheers Roger.

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    1. It's certainly a help, Roger, and I could get some mirrors or even cheap LED strips to use on the sides. Decent pics of minis are a pain in the arse to get, and even when they're good they're not as good as they could be.

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  7. I think the lightbox is a step forward for you, Matt so I'm glad you made this purchase. I think you've already hit upon the one area where your photos with it can be improved further. I would recommend getting a desk lamp with an adjustable head or two with lightbulbs that match the white light in your lightbox. You can point those desk lamps towards the bottom half of the mini and that should fix the issue you're seeing now. It is more work to setup but that is more or less what I use and I'm generally happy with the results. I bought the desk lamps at Meijer years ago for about $10-15 each so its not a huge outlay either which is nice. I'm excited to see more photos with your new toy in the near future too! :)

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    1. I have a desk lamp with white LEDs so I'm going to give that a shot to get some more light on the front of the minis, Jeff. Hopefully it'll help, and if not there's always the camera's external flash. There will definitely be more photos using the lightbox coming soonish :-)

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  8. I have enough trouble with just using a camera, never mind gtting additional kit. Given my photographic skills it would be a waste of money, but I reckon with your perserverance you'll get a lot of use out of your new bit of kit when you're practised.
    I photoshop every photoograph I show on my blog and that's an art ininself that takes time to master. (yes, I know it doesn;t show, but I've only been using it for ten years)

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    1. I find that photographing these minis is the biggest pain of the hobby, Joe. Most of the time it's blind luck that they come out looking good. I too use Photoshop or some kind of image editor and they can be bugger to learn too.

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