If you need to take good pictures for items you sell on eBay or say, review for a website, you need a well-lighted, clutter-free spot for taking pictures. There are folding studios for just this sort of work, but many of them need a large flat space to set them up, and most of them don’t come with any lighting. The Foldio, a current Kickstarter project, is designed for photographing small items when you are cramped for “studio” space. It’s designed to be perfect for use with a smartphone. The Foldio is made of laminated, water-resistant paper that folds down to fit in your desk drawer or gear bag. It opens up and assembles with neodymium magnets into a small, 10.2″ X 10.2″ X 10.2″ cube with a battery-powered LED lighting strip inside, so you always have good, consistent lighting for photography. A pledge of $34 gets you a Foldio studio; $43 gets you the Foldio and seven colorful, washable background sheets. Funding continues through Thursday, Jan 2, 2014 at 11:05am EST. Pledges have already far exceeded the funding goal. Shipping is planned for February 2014.
Foldio is a tiny, portable photography studio
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@Janet Larry and I were talking about this one last week. I am going to try to make one (when I get a little time). It looks pretty easy to do using some white poster board. The hard part is finding an LED strip…
If you wanted to go bigger than 10.2″ on a side, you could use the Komplement LED light strip from Ikea. A 17″ strip is $20, and you can even order it online. You need to be sure that the strip doesn’t require a separate power cord or AC adapter. Buying things piecemeal is how Ikea keeps the prices low sometimes. http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/40163844/#/90163846
you can get such photo boxes on aliexpress for about 10-15 dollars (without lighting, but with backgrounds).
for lighting it is very important to get right color temperature.
Check StandScan Snap which is also a foldable lightbox with its own lighting. No need to wait for months till Kickstarter delivers a beta product.