Lightbox Troubles

[Current Angler 0]

After shooting with a jerry-rigged lighting setup for quite some time now, I was elated to receive a lightbox for Christmas. The box has 112 light beads, each with a brightness of 24-26 lm and an overall temperature of 5,500 K.

 

My camera is a Canon EOS 80D with a macro lens. The settings I was using are shown in this picture:

Aperture priority mode

F-stop 6.3

Auto ISO

Daylight White Balance

 

As you can see in the picture, I set up the lightbox with nearly the highest light level, put a parachute adams with a classic light gray body in the box, and began shooting away. In the viewfinder, the pictures looked clear and bright. When I actually took the pictures, however, the fly and the background were much darker than in real life, or even in the view finder. 

Does anyone know why this might have happened, and how I can fix it? I tried adjusting the F-stop, ISO, white balance, setting the camera to automatic mode, shining a light on the fly from the front, turning out all the lights except the lightbox, adjusting the light level in the box, adding and removing the light diffuser, and raising the fly up by hooking it in a foam cup. 

 

Happy holidays to all!

[mikechell 0]

Try putting your tying vice in there and having the fly suspended.  It appears you're missing the reflective qualities of the bottom of the box and too far away from the light source.

That's my guess, anyway.

[chugbug27 0]

Your white background is showing up as a blue gray. Try custom setting your camera's white balance to the white of the light box when lit as you want it for your fly. 

[Poopdeck 0]

Your iso is shooting to high. Use complete manual mode. Lower your iso to brighten your picture. 

[Current Angler 0]

Ended up figuring it out - forgot to adjust the exposure 🤦‍♂️ After I did the image came out pretty decent, although I'm sure there are still a bunch of settings I could mess around with. Admittedly the white background probably wasn't the best idea either.

[flytire 0]

white is a lousy background for white parachute posts as shown above

i once had a light box and ended up throwing it away

i just use a colored background and a couple of daylight spectrum lights

i get pretty good results

[chugbug27 0]

4 hours ago, Poopdeck said:

Your iso is shooting to high

This too

Background is now pink in pic 2... It should appear bright white since that is the color of your background.

Try changing from evaluative metering to spot metering mode or partial metering mode, and take the pic with the fly dead center in your viewfinder. That will meter the pic to your fly and ignore the background. Also try changing white balance to awb if you don't want to do a custom white balance.

[chugbug27 0]

Or use flytire's system. His pics always look great.