Photo Tent Win!

Those who know me well know that I hate to pay full price for anything. Especially if I think that full price is overpriced, or that I can easily make it myself. This is the case with photography setups. My glassy friend Bette recently bought a photo setup. I will admit that it is VERY nice and includes everything you could ever possibly need. It also cost in the hundreds of dollars, as do most decent setups. I would have to sell a lot of beads and jewelry to pay for that! After much research (that IS what I do in my "real" job anyway), I built my own setup. It does not include quite so many parts, but it has several features I think are very nice. Here are the details.

Photo Studio in a Basket, ready for storage

The most important part of a photo setup is the lighting. This is therefore the part I spent the most on! In this case I am using 5000K daylight bulbs that put out 2000 lumens. I got them from Energy Superstore (www.energy-superstore.com). I cannot say enough nice things about this place. I talked to them a couple times on the phone after placing my order online, for various reasons, and they had great customer service. Also, their prices were the best I found anywhere, no minimum purchase, and free shipping if you order over $50 (get some friends together for a bulk buy!). I have only dealt with them this one time, so I hope everyone else has the same great experience that I did. I put the bulbs into worklight reflectors that I got a Lowe's. I got the smallest reflectors - if you are planning on a bigger tent for bigger objects, you might splurge on the larger ones. The worklights clamp onto whatever you have around. You can see that I have a handy plant stand that I use, but I'm sure you can find something creative around your house (empty boxes from all your glass purchases perhaps?). Also, since they are fluorescent, they don't take much energy and don't get terribly hot. Cost per light = $13 total for bulb and fixture. Total cost = $39.

Next, the photo "tent". You can buy these from about $20 to $30 and on up depending on all the options. To build mine, I bought a $10 basket at Lowe's. It has a metal frame and the fabric attaches with velcro, so its easy to remove. Then I draped some fabric over the frame. This particular fabric is a sort of nylon-y stuff. It feels a bit like a cross between paper and thin plastic. It does a great job of diffusing the light while letting plenty through. I found it at WalMart for $1.50 per yard. Its extra wide so 1 yard was far more than enough. My favorite part about the tent is that you can slip the fabric back on the frame and have a basket that stores your whole setup in a nice little package that doesn't take a lot of space! (see first photo for the packed setup) Total cost for tent = $11.50.

The full setup!

Bette's setup came with 2 acrylic risers, one black and one white. For white, I have found that a piece of glossy photo paper for my printer works quite well. I haven't found a replacement for the black yet but I'm keeping an eye out. I also had sitting around a scrap of black velvet. I can drape it over the top rear of the frame and down across the bottom (see photo below). This makes a nice backdrop for clear glass. This is the setup I used for the goblet photos taken in the post 2 posts back. There are lots of other things you probably have just sitting around that would make great backdrops, and plenty of places online to print out free ones. You can also see from the following photo that at one point I just used some extra tissue paper to drape the outside of the tent. It didn't diffuse the light quite as well, but it was pretty good and it was free. Total cost of other "bits" = $0.


Cost for my whole setup: $50.50

I am not including the cost of the camera or camera tripod as Bette's setup did not include those. However, the camera I am using is a Minolta Dimage G600. You can find it on Amazon for more info. It is not an SLR, not a super high resolution, and not top of the line. I did not want to buy a new special camera just for glass photos! This is the same thing I've had for several years that I take on vacations. It turns out that getting the lighting really good makes it much easier for the camera to do its thing. This is just a nice little camera with a good macro setting and the ability to adjust the exposure a little. The only thing it won't do that I sometimes wish for is manual focus. The little camera sits on a mini tripod with legs that extend to almost a foot tall, and a nice swivel head. I already had one for the camera anyway, but you can get them new at most any Wal-Mart/Target/whatever for about $5.

I hope this helps those of you who want to build your own inexpensive photo setup for glass! I'd love to hear your thoughts.

ps. A big thank you goes to Bette for letting me use her fancy setup until I could get my own built, and to Lisa and all the others for their help and advice!