The New Hotness

The general idea of a light box is (wait for it) a uniform background in a box full of bright light:

Obviously, this is a low-budget light box, but it makes perfect sense if you already have an essentially unlimited supply of moving boxes, 11×17 inch plotter paper, and a couple of photo / video lights lying around.

A two-layer cardboard ring glued to the top keeps the light from sliding off the box and stiffens the gaping hole letting the light shine through.

You’d normally use a fabric background to get rid of those ugly gaps around the edges and a larger box would be better, so this is along the lines of a proof-of-concept.

From the camera’s viewpoint, it looks better than my crusty desktop cutting mat:

Those gears would not look out of place in Bowman’s bedroom in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

In this day and age, you’d normally use a phone camera:

The lens on my Pixel 6a has a fixed focal length (around 4.4 mm = 27 mm equivalent) and a fixed f/1.8 (-ish) aperture, producing a razor-thin depth of field at the rear of the front gears. Note the fuzzy gears in the background, all of three inches away, and the slightly fuzzy front edge of the front gears. The camera’s digital zoom doesn’t help matters in the least, despite the AI-powered interpolation.

Keeping things close together helps, although the far end of the wipe towers and the rear of the gears lose detail:

Looking from above also helps a little, but a top viewing port would reduce the skewed perspective:

Shallow DOF keeps your attention on the foreground, which is why real photographers use it for portraits:

The camera, an ancient Sony DSC-H5 with a zoom lens going down to f/8, still does nice work through a 2× macro adapter lens:

The DOF is still narrow, but at least the entire front gear is in focus.

Adding a front light picks out the knurling:

The results definitely look better than before, but it’ll take a bit of getting used to traipsing to the Basement Laboratory for every photo …