Portable Light Box For Small Photography Needs

August 21, 2012 by Mike Szczys 6 Comments

[Paulo] needed to photograph small objects on the go. Since you can’t always depend on ambient lighting conditions he built a battery operated light box which is easy to take along on his travels.

We’ve featured portable light tents before, but they still tend to be a bit too bulky for his tastes. He chose to go with a white plastic storage container from Ikea. It’s lightweight, and acts as a diffuser for the light sources. Four strips, each hosting three LEDs, were mounted on the exterior of the container. Half of a PVC pipe protects the boards while providing a way to fasten the strips in place using nuts and bolts. The driver board and batteries find a home inside of a travel container for a bar of soap.

He likes the results, especially when a glossy white piece of paper is used as a top reflector.

PCB Light Box In A Scanner Shell

November 10, 2009 by Mike Szczys 18 Comments

scanner-exposure-box

[Kizo] repurposed a flatbed scanner to use as an exposure box for making printed circuit boards. Exposure time is controlled by an AVR ATtiny2313 microcontroller. The device is connected to a separate display board to control four 7-segment displays using one shift register for each. Time is set in ten second increments and once started, switches on the lights with a relay. Once the right exposure time has been reached, the lights are switched off and a piezo speaker is buzzed. There’s no mention of they type of bulbs he’s using but they look like compact fluorescent with tin foil beneath as a reflector.

If these are just CFL bulbs, how will the performance compare to a light box based around a UV light source?

[Thanks Jake]