I got this idea when a friend sent me a link to someone else's DIY lightbox. I thought it would be a good afternoon project so I decided to try it. I've seen them before, but no one really made it look this easy. A cardboard box, a utility knife, a couple of sheets of computer paper and a sheet of white construction paper later, I had my very own lightbox.
This is the first time I've done something like this, so I had to experiment with a lot of settings. Also, the forum post from the person who made his DIY lightbox used bright work lights. Unfortunately, I didn't have a pair of any bright lights around the house, so I had to substitute with two gooseneck desk lamps with standard 60W bulbs.
The incandescent bulbs really gave everything a yellow-orange tinge, so auto white balance was obviously not going to work. Even the tungsten setting wasn't enough. I had to adjust the custom white balance a few times to get the right color.
I used a Tamron AF 17-50mm F/2.8 XR Di-II LD Aspherical lens.
The setup:
Ghetto lightbox, ghetto stand [computer cover]:
Just as an example, here's white balance on auto:
I didn't tweak the camera settings quite enough in the beginning, and without the timer, the camera moved a bit whenever I hit the shutter, so some shots are blurry.
One of the subjects I used was my new Archos 605 Wifi media player. Note that the slight bubbles on the Archos are from the protective covering that is still on the screen; I didn't feel like peeling it off just for the photos.
My trusty F10:
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