I'm building my own light table/mini cove

[DavidMoyle]

It's for shooting product work, like a studio table, only larger and a different configuration than anything I could find pre-built.

I'll have some shots of it tomorrow or Wednesday when I finish setting up for Wednesdays shoot. I'll post them.

[GKruts]

Products? Never heard legs referred to as "products." [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

Looking forward to the pics, thanks!

Glenn K.

[DavidMoyle]

Ya, well, in my real life as a paid designer and photographer I photograph things like car jacks, hand lotion, and hand towels...it's a living!

[GKruts]

Gotta have something to pay for that addiction we have! [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cool.gif[/img]

I was wondering what the load-bearing capacity of a 6x8 sheet of Lexan was. Granted, most models are well below a buck fifty, that'd still need to be a pretty thick chunk o' plastic. Of course, you could make a name for yourself by being the first person to steal the drive-thru window from a bank!

Glenn K.

[DavidMoyle]

ROFLMAO

[DavidMoyle]

Heres a shot for you.

I gotta get flourecents in it...hot lights live up to their name after 8 hours!

[photopro34]

Dave,

thats prety (insert expellative here) cool. When u get it done..you should start building them for other people and put the other manufacturers out of buss. But here is my stupid queston for the day...why not just shoot it on high key? Or am i missing something?

Thanks man,
Michael

[GKruts]

Ah, very cool! I've seen baby versions of that on E-Bait.

And no kidding about the hot lights, even with my two wimpy 75W modelling lights in my even more anemic strobes, the garage heats up in a matter of minutes.

Looking at your setup, a second layer of lexan might soften and even out the light a bit more, like most lightboxes that have an inner and outter layer of fabric. Mount the lights where you have your lower horizontals and the second sheet two-thirds of the way down. And if you really wanna get crazy, enclose the entire lower assembly in some type of shiny sheet metal. I'd also suggest providing controls for each tube.

Do all that, add some bubbling water, and a Jacob's Ladder and sell it as cold fusion! [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cool.gif[/img]

Cheers!
Glenn K.

[DavidMoyle]

I'll have to give that second lexan some thought once I see how the tubes look when mounted. I'm definitely looking at controlling each light individually.

[DavidMoyle]

Actually, the product in this shot is a bad example of why I built this. I originally built it because a client of mine asked me to shoot a jack and matching jack stands they were selling with their company logo on it. The jack needed to have the handle in the photo (I can't post the photo as I'm not sure if the product is officially available yet), and the customer wanted it on a smooth, seemless background, and wanted it to be easily removed from the background in photoshop. So, not having the major studio setup with strobes, seamless paper, etc, I decided it was cheaper to just build a product table that I could back light to get it to have that floating effect when I was done. Most of the stuff I shoot won't be that big, but, now, I can do it again if I need to (I need a good car part client I guess...maybe a company that sells 20" rims).

Anyway, did I get your question answered or did I mis-interpret what you meant?