DIY Lightbox

This article is taken from Five Gallon Ideas, which features over 100 uses for 5 gallon buckets with more being added all the time.

Ever wonder how those great photos with the pure white backgrounds on websites like Amazon or Apple are taken? It’s almost as if these pictures are taken by heavenly photographers against a backdrop of pure light.

Bet you never thought the answer could be a 5 gallon bucket.

More specifically, it’s a construction called a “lightbox.” You can very easily make your own lightbox and produce pictures just as good as the one above.

Here’s a peek “behind the scenes” of the lightbox that served as the backdrop for the photo above. Notice how the brightness from the 2 desk lights is being diffused through the fabric walls and ceiling of the light box to produce the most well-lit image possible.

The Bucket Lightbox

Naturally, the easiest way to make your own lightbox is with a minimally modified 5 gallon bucket.

In the bucket lightbox, a 4 inch hole is bored so the camera lens has a good view in. Most of the bucket remains intact to ensure the best lighting possible. A small stage made of white coroplast is mounted inside the bucket just below the camera’s view angle. This surface can even be propped up with books.

This setup is using a couple of remote flashes instead of photography lights and takes pictures of little lego people or something. Lighting is the most important part of good photography – when in doubt, add more lighting!

The Finishing Touch: Blow your Highlights!

Although a lightbox does a great job of making a background pretty white, it rarely is able to make something pure white. That’s why most photographers use a little program called photoshop to do post production on photos.

Above is the before and after footage of a star wars lego robot my brother shot for one of his websites. What a difference! The surprising thing is it only takes a couple seconds to make this transformation in Photoshop – I’ll show you how now.

“Blowing your highlights” means adjusting the color levels - not the brightness levels - of a photograph to eliminate the data closest to white by turning it pure white. This process actually loses about half the information contained in a picture file, which is why it’s called blowing your highlights – it’s a fundamentally destructive process.

To adjust your levels in photoshop, just select

Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Adjustment Layer > Levels

Notice the 3 triangular selectors in the adjustments panel. From left to right, they are colored black, grey and white. I’ve indicated them below with a red arrow.

We’re going to blow our highlights by moving that white arrow on the end to the middle, right before the second spike of color data.

Play around with the slider until it looks like something from the Apple website. Pretty easy, right?

Photo sources: Aswirly, LegoDifferential

For many more ways to use 5 gallon buckets for self sufficiency, visit Five Gallon Ideas. When citing this article, please link to