Dave's Favorites: Shoot Tabletop Objects With LiteRoom

Every few months, I sell odds and ends on EBay. But for a surprising number of people, the site isn't just an occasional garage sale--it's a home business. And since nothing contributes to sales like good pictures, there are a number of gadgets springing up to help folks photograph small items on a tabletop.

Photoflex sells a small lighting tent called the LiteRoom for just this sort of application. The LiteRoom is big enough to photograph all sorts of objects--coins and stamps, to be sure, but I could easily use it to shoot subjects as large as books, camera equipment, and plastic models. The tent comes in two sizes. The smaller one, which I've been using, measures 32 by 26 inches at the base and stands 17 inches high. It's small enough to fit on a table, but far larger than other lighting boxes I've used. (The larger model is about 30 percent bigger.) The LiteRoom is made of a white, fabric-like, translucent material and is held together with a handful of flexible metal rods. In other words, it's just like a real tent.

You can use the LiteRoom on its own, without any additional lighting. Ambient room light is diffused through the walls of the tent to create even, soft, and shadow-free lighting. Or you can poke flash units or studio lights through a variety of Velcro-sealed openings to add more light as needed.

Photoflex sells the LiteRoom for $175 or $250, depending upon size, which makes the smaller unit a bit less expensive than the molded plastic Cloud Dome, another tabletop lighting box that I recommended about a year ago. Both are good products. The LiteRoom has the advantage of working with additional lights, and it can collapse down to a fistful of fabric and a few metal rods. The Cloud Dome, however, hogs space even when you're not using it. If you do a lot of small object photography, you should definitely give the LiteRoom a look.