Now, you can certainly buy a lightbox, but making your own lightbox will yield you similar results and for a whole lot less money! Although the DIY ones are not as foldable or storeable as the commercial lightboxes.

The materials you need to make your own lightbox are foamboard, packaging tape, and a utility knife.

To make a 20 x 30 x 30 inch lightbox, you will need 5 sheets of at least 1/4″ foamboard sized 20 x 30 inches. What you do is tape it together into the shape of a box with one open side. With the utility knife you cut the 2 sides that are sticking up so you get a box with one open side.

For lights, you can get the clamp lights they sell at Home Depot and such. You will be clamping the lights onto the sides of the lightbox and turning the light towards the inside of the box.

You will be able to put whatever kind of background you like inside this box for you to photograph your products on.

For lights, make sure you get the daylight balanced bulbs. If you are somewhat technical, the specification should be between 5500 to 6500K for the temperature of the bulb.

For a more detailed tutorial with pictures, you can go here.

Some believe that you need one of those professional high tech cameras to take any kind of decent product photograph.

Well, let me tell you, that is just not true. You do NOT need a fancy super expensive camera to take decent pictures.

What you DO need is to make sure your camera has these minimum functions and capabilities:

1. Macro mode
2. Optical zoom (sorry, but digital zoom doesn’t count and is a dud when it comes to quality photography)
3. Manual mode
4. Custom white balance
5. Manual focus (not absolutely required, but will help out tremendously!)
6. Image Stabilization

If your camera has the above minimum requirements, then you are in a good position to take your own product photographs.

All the cameras in my store have all the required options.

Click here to see all the cameras in the shop that are great for product photography.