Read all articles about building a nearly free lightbox.

Building a lightbox for macro photography is a simple affair. Most households will already have almost everything needed. All you need is a cardboard box at least 12 inch x 12 inch x 10 inch deep, a knife or pair of strong scissors, some packing tape, an opaque white material to cover the sides, and some lamps holding household bulbs.

There is an excellent article on Strobist that provides all the instructions you should need. About the only difference between my lightbox and the one described in his article is that I left three of the flaps on the box to help block extraneous light.

These photographs are of my setup. The one thing you might have to buy is something for backgrounds. I purchased a pad of posterboard (really more like construction paper) in a variety of colors for $2.50. There are 40 sheets with about 20 different colors. I’ve tried, black, blue, green, and gold so far. They all worked well, except for the gold. It all depends on the colors in the object you are photographing. You can go with complementary colors or contrasting colors depending on what type of final image effect you are seeking.

Almost any small table lamp will work, however drafting lamps or a gooseneck lamp gives you more flexibility (pun intended) for positioning. I use a drafting lamp to light from above. One of the other lamps is an adjustable height floor lamp and the other has a large clamp on it. So far all I've used the clamp for is as a base for the light. You can also buy 150 watt floodlights at the hardware store if you need more light. Of course, if you have an external flash you can also use that. Unfortunately, my camera will only work with a slave flash if the flash on the camera fires. This totally defeats the purpose of building the lightbox in the first place.

I’ve tried a few different light arrangements on the few small figurines I’ve been using for experimentation. I prefer lighting from one side or from one side and from above. I’ve also had some good results using the top lamp alone.

Make sure to take a piece of white paper and set the white balance before you begin to shoot.

I set the camera on Aperture priority and then adjust after seeing how the first couple of shots come out.

A tripod is nice to have, but not absolutely essential. You could place the box further back on the table and set the camera in front of it. The camera can be raised a few inches by placing something like a book under it.

One other thing I do to prevent any camera shake is to use the 2 second delay on my camera. There could be some camera shake even while using a tripod unless you have a remote shutter release.

Here are some shots of my setup: