How to build a Light box for Food Photography

After many months of thinking about it, I finally did it - A light box for food photography! It really is as easy as they say in many sites and blogs around but before you jump ahead, I would ask you to consider a few things, based on my experience.

- Do you really need one? Although a light box gives you the flexibility to click pictures of your food whenever you'd like, nothing can beat natural light when it comes to food photography. Let me repeat that - nothing. A lot of professional food photographers may go for fancy studio equipment but the beauty of food blogging from our homes and kitchens is, this is what we make for our family meals, we are sharing our recipes and what we cook on a day-to-day basis. I wouldn't compare that to commercial food photography any day.

Another thing to consider is, do you usually plan before you cook for the blog or do you cook something and then decide you want to blog about it. If you find yourself doing more of the latter, then a light box may be a good idea because half the time I think that way, its night time on a week day when I am at work all day.

- Do you have the space for it? You can always dismantle your light box and set it up only when you need it but trust me, that won't happen often. So you will end up building it but hardly ever using it if you don't have a fixed spot for it in your house. We recently moved into a three bedroom apartment and I am using the third bedroom as my studio. The wardrobe is where I keep my photography accessories and the light box sits to one side of the room. I don't intend to move it from there or dismantle it.

So here it is, my very own light box!

I pretty much followed the instructions from Food for 7 Stages. The few differences I made are:

- I used a smaller box

- I used tracing paper instead of fabric to cover the slots through which light enters the box

- I used 18W daylight bulbs that give a 100W output

A few initial shots with varying light input - both Straight Out Of Camera (SOOC) and edited.

This is the first picture I took, without bothering with a background sweep or anything. I was super eager to see the results. Remember, this was taken in the night, at around 8:00pm. Taken with one light - SOOC.

Another macro shot, taken with one light - SOOC.

The first food shot, taken with one overhead lamp - SOOC except for watermark and straightening. I didn't have the other two lights set up when I took this so I had to depend on editing to make it look better.

Same picture, after editing.

Enter three lamps - first food picture with all three lamps as shown in the light box picture above. No editing done - SOOC.

One of my favourite light box pictures to date (I haven't taken that many yet, I always turn to natural light if I can help it). This is a very lightly edited picture taken in the light box, again, in the night.

I have taken a few more and recipes are coming up soon for this dishes. Going forward, I will clearly mark the picture setting when posting pictures because I expect a good mix of both kinds of pictures in future posts.

Comments

Manasi

January 13, 2011 at 8:25 pm

What a delightful idea! one of these days I will try this.. of course after artfully dodging my toddler's SHARP eyes and inquisitiveness!

Anu Nandu

January 13, 2011 at 8:19 pm

Nice informative post. I do get enough sunshine here - that's actually what we get all the time!I think the little editing adds a whole lot of oomph to the pictures - love how the colors just turn up a notch.

Fathima

January 13, 2011 at 3:16 am

love this... As Sig said, I live in Seattle and have no light most of the time these days that I find it hard to post in my blog... I should try these out!

Kanchan

January 13, 2011 at 1:39 am

Very Informative post , loved the details. I've been using only daylight and trust it, but would love to click @ night. Now this is a TO DO for me 🙂

Jayasri Ravi

January 12, 2011 at 10:06 pm

Good job but I think you get more natural light :), for me this is a necessary!, I saw this kind of box some time back in Food for 7 stages of life, I had planned to do this then but still I haven't done it, I do not have a camera, I take my photos from my mobile and usually I take them during night (as I cook only during night during the week!), Hope to buy a camera this year, I checked your Nikon it's (£750 in Amazon), Mmm.., that's going to be too expensive for me :(, may be some day, I was just showing my son your box and asked him to build me one!, thought that I can make him stop playing games and sitting on comp watching cricket!, he is already interested, I always click on my kitchen table top a very very small space that's the only place I have tubelight which seems to work well than anywhere else, sorry for this long comment, reading your post I just thought of talking to you, O' I loved the last shot and of course the leaves one and the mixture cup one!, all the three are really good...

Nithya

January 12, 2011 at 5:27 pm

Wow.. awesome job 🙂

I made one almost a year back and just used it twice if I remember.. The story of the light box had a sad ending when my little niece sat over the box which was neatly covered with a cloth 🙁 I am still lazy to make one more. But your post is motivating me to get it done again 🙂

Harini

January 12, 2011 at 5:27 pm

I got some direction as to what to do to take pics at night! Was too lazy to google! Thanks for the post

Gayathri's Cook Spot

January 13, 2011 at 4:12 am

Thank you so much Nags for such a wonderful tutorial.

RAKS KITCHEN

January 13, 2011 at 12:23 am

Wonderful,I too love the last picture very much!It will be useful for night time clicking!

Radhika

January 12, 2011 at 12:41 pm

Nags, what a great job. The last click steals the show though.

« Older Comments

Newer Comments »

More Food Photography Tips

Reader Interactions

Comments

Leave a Reply Cancel reply