Setting up a mini home studio with Whitebox

Fancy having a home studio in the comfort of your home?



For less than $60, you can set up a plug and play, portable LED lightbox with integrated LED in a jiffy from Whitebox.

There are plenty of reasons why a lightbox is useful for you. If you intend to sell stuff on carousell or blogshop, an eye catching photo of your product will bring in buyers. If you have a blog and do reviews of products such as toys (like us) , a lightbox is great to take photos for the reviews. Who knows, you might even be selected for a commercial projects if your portfolio warrants it.

Whitebox
The white box is a portable light box that comes in 2 sizes. The smaller one measures 20cm x 22 cm x 25cm while the bigger whitebox measures 40.5cm x 40 cm x 43cm. The Light box that we  reviewed was the larger version.

Whitebox lightbox

The good news is that the Whitebox can be set up in less than a minute. However for first timer, it might take a little longer  to figure how to unfold the flat square Whitebox into a home studio (happened to me!). Once I got that figured out, setting up was a breeze.  The Whitebox was set up with buttons instead of magnets for a more sturdy structure.

What is in the box?

The Whitebox studio consist of the following in the package

• Whitebox Studio (40.5cm x 40 cm x 43cm)
• 25 pure white LED strip attached to the white box
• 4 custom backdrops in green, red, black and white
• cable
• carrying case

The whole setup cost a mere $57. If you were to get a professional light tent, it could retail for $1000 upwards. For similar portable lightbox in the market, it might cost twice as much. For the price, this is a winner. Furthermore, Whitebox is produced locally, so you save on exorbitant shipping fees should you decide to get a similar unit overseas.

Hey, it is always good to support local , especially when it is mutually beneficial to both retailer and customer.

Build in LED

The best part about the Whitebox  is the build in 25 powerful, pure white LEDs ensures product detail and colour accuracy. The LED also ensure that there are minimum shadows in your final photo, thus making your subject pops.

Connect o powerbank

For true portability, you can connect a powerbank to the supplied micro-USB cable and bring it anywhere to shoot. Compared to competitors which required a powerpoint, this setup is ideal for the mobile photographer. Carrying an extension cord along with the Lightbox for competitors does not make it truly portable.

Bring it to the forest to take photos of scattered leaves or to the beach to take photos of shells. The use of Whitebox is only limited to your creativity.

Sample shots

They say the truth is in the pudding, so the best way to review a lightbox is to see the final output. For best effect, use a tripod to take the photos. You could use a phone or DSLR for this set up and both should provide you with desirable result.

Sample 1 : Without Whitebox

To see the effectiveness of the Whitebox, we did 2 sample shots, one with and one without the Whitebox.

Sample 2 : With Whitebox

As seen from the final output, the result is like day and night. Shadows are eliminated and background is free of clutter from the photo shot in the Whitebox. If you were to post the photo taken from Whitebox, I guarantee you would get more eyeballs in comparison to the one without.

Here are more test shots to show how products pops in a Whitebox setting.  With the provided backdrops , you could experiment with the different background to suit your product. Do note that even with Whitebox, you might still need to adjust the white balance and exposure in the final photo to get the effect you desire. With Whitebox, such adjustments are easier to make and you do not need to resort to photoshop to remove blemishes.

The only limitation to the Whitebox would be the size.  For bigger products such as shoes and large bags, you might be creatively limited to what you can produce.

It probably can still be done, but you might need to crop the photo to get the desired results.

Verdict

The Whitebox is useful for home photographers to create quality photos at the comforts of their home. Given its portability, you could take it anywhere and set up a studio in less than a minute. The Whitebox comes in 2 sizes, small and large. I would recommend the larger version for more versatilty.

Get your unit here.


Pros

• Quick setup in a nifty package
• Attached LED lights ensure your photos are well exposed.
• True portability with a micro-USB connection
• Affordable compared to alternatives in the market.

Cons

• Would be great if there is a bigger unit for larger items.

Disclaimer
TWD was provided a unit for review only.