New Lightbox!

24 June, 2006 (19:12) | DIY, Photography

I’ve decided to make a new light box. The last one I made was constructed easily out of 5 pieces of white foam board, and some masking tape. While it worked, it’s not exactly portable. Plus, it’s pretty fragile. All of these qualities made it suck.

To remedy the situation, I’ll be making a new frame based light box out of PVC. It’s similar in concept to the other ones you maybe seen on the web, but the plans are much more simple.

Equipment

  • ½ inch PVC, at least 20 ft.
  • 4 PVC three-way corners (not tees!) — one end is threaded
  • 4 male slip-to-thread adapters
  • 4 caps
  • Optionally: 2 small plastic coated hooks

Additional

  • 2 cans Rust-oleum plastic primer
  • 2 cans spray paint
  • 1 can Plasti-dip
  • Spray paint trigger adapter
  • masking tape
  • Fine grained sand paper
  • String and a well ventilated area

Assembly

  1. Cut 4 legs of equal length
  2. Cut 2 legs of whatever width you want the box to be
  3. Cut 2 legs of whatever depth you want the box to be
  4. Shove the caps on to one end of each leg and the slip-to-thread adapters on the other end
  5. Shove the sides of the box into the corners as needed. It’s easiest to make a square, but you should go crazy.
  6. Test fit everything and make sure you like it: screw the legs into the corners.

Painting

It really helps if you have something you can hang the 5 major pieces off of.

  1. Mask off the female ends of the connectors. Trim up the tape so there’s not too much excess.
  2. Mask off the feet of the legs
  3. Sand everything down, then rinse it off and dry it
  4. Mask off the male ends of the connectors.
  5. Tie some string around the threads of each leg and tie them up for painting.
  6. Tie some string around some part of the square. If you wanted to be tricky you could drill a small hole somewhere, run string through it and tie a knot in the string so it hangs off there. Tie it up for painting
  7. Spray with primer. Make sure you can’t see the natural markings on the PVC. Anything that’s not white now won’t be the right color later.
  8. wait…
  9. Paint with your top coat
  10. remove masking tape, resume hanging, and wait… (you’re probably done for the day)
  11. Mask the bottom of the legs (just above the caps) and dip them in the Plasti-Dip. This will make them pretty grippy and non-skid. Awesome. It’s hard to get an even coat if there’s paint on them, hence the masking earlier.
  12. Optionally: Pick a section to be the back and screw the hooks in.

You now have a pretty (depending on the paint color you chose) light box for your photography projects! I’ll have pictures of mine up in a little while.

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