Ever wonder how those great photos with the pure white backgrounds on websites like Amazon or Apple are taken? It’s almost as if these pictures are taken by heavenly photographers against a backdrop of pure light.
Bet you never thought the answer could be a 5 gallon bucket.
A bucket light makes an easy, durable camping lantern. That’s usually why they’re made. If you want to build a bucket light for camping, scroll down to the bottom of the page.
I use my bucket light for something completely different – photography. Good light for photography is highly dispersed, which means instead of tight and focused it’s wide and scattered. That’s why a cloudy day is better for taking photos than a sunny one.
So here’s my bucket light. It’s very easy to make, it just requires a bucket sized right to your lamp. In my case, my lamp fits best with the 3.5 gallon bucket pictured below.
It’s great that these new smart phones can take such incredible video, audio and pictures. In the past it took tens of thousands of dollars in equipment to produce the video quality that today is available to anyone with pants pockets and a cellular plan.
But I’ve always found taking video frustrating because that incredible camera is trapped within an awkward little wafer that can’t be mounted on any tripod that I’m aware of.
So I’ve taken the ultra-thin design that Steve Jobs spent half his life working toward and made it huge and clunky again!
