ANDREW JAMES
Your tricky photography questions answered!
Andrew tackles real-world queries including new uses for a lightbox
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Lucky lightbox
I’ve just been given an old lightbox for looking at slides and negatives. Is there any point in keeping it?
- Lorraine Wiltshire
This is a 100% yes! I’ve got an old lightbox that, 10 years ago, I’d have used mainly for viewing those slides and negatives, but I am glad I didn’t throw it away. I don’t use it very often, but from time to time it comes in really handy. For starters, I use it for general lighting as it gives off quite a soft, subtle and even light that is perfect for certain subjects. But most of all I use it to light semi-transparent subjects from underneath. It’s absolutely brilliant for this, and you can get really arty with the kind of things you shoot.
To shoot an example, I went outside and hunted around in the garden for potential subjects that you could use on the lightbox. My attention was drawn to a dead hosta, hidden in a flowerpot by the side of my shed. The leaves had lost their colour; some had mildew on them, while others had been nibbled by slugs. But they were partially see-through, so I knew that with a bit of effort I could create something really interesting.
To make it easier, I used a tripod that allowed me to shoot directly down onto the subject from above. I used a macro lens as I also wanted to get in much closer for the texture, but this isn’t essential. A good lightbox will be daylight- - balanced, so just use Daylight WB on your camera, make sure the surface of the lightbox is clean, and shoot away, experimenting with your exposures. As a general rule, you’ll need to add +1 or +2 exposure compensation, but this will depend on how translucent your subject is and how much of the actual ‘white’ lightbox you have in your composition. I usually work in Live View so I can see the effect of exposure compensation.
If I can do this with a bit of old plant leaf that I found in the garden, just think what you can do with a bit of imagination and experimentation.