BIOS: Technology Means Business

Smaller organisations with limited marketing budget, or even larger ones looking to explore the benefits of creating and publishing their own marketing material, may be interested in the latest product from Flexion Solutions. The Cubelite is a 'studio in a bag' that includes everything you need to achieve soft, subtle lighting with controlled shadows and reflections. In fact, all you need to add is a camera and a tripod and you're ready to take good looking shots. Constructed of lightweight diffusing nylon fabric, the fully collapsible Cubelite is the perfect partner for digital photographers and companies looking to cut costs and time by taking their own photographs.

Pros: Studio in a bag; adds soft and even lighting, and subtle shadows
Cons: Easy to use, but you'll still need to tweak camera settings

Supplied as a kit, the package contains the Cubelite itself (foldable nylon fabric 'tent'), a 500-Watt tungsten light (3200°K) with adjustable stand, a square silver/white reflector, a roll of white background paper and two small carry cases to hold the contents of the kit. You therefore don't have to worry about further purchasing a flash unit, diffusers, reflectors, or any other core features required for a small photo studio. To cater for different subject sizes, there are three versions of the Cubelite available: 2ft, 3ft and 4ft (reviewed here), costing £254, £299 and £339 respectively.

Well balanced and neutral lighting really helps to bring product shots to life, whereas bad lighting can reflect badly on both the product and your company's image. Particularly well suited to companies that sell and advertise products, the Cubelite lets anyone with minimal photography experience capture relatively professional looking shots with good surrounding light, shadows and reflections, quickly and effortlessly - and at the fraction of the cost of a professional photographer if used regularly and with a digital camera.

The Cubelite takes just a few minutes to set up, but it takes a while to become familiar with how to fold the system up and pack it into the supplied carry case. Once setup, you simply place a product(s) inside the specially-designed cube structure, attach the background paper to the inside of the Cubelite using the supplied clips, and then position the light stand at the side of the system until you get the appropriate lighting effect. The great thing about the Cubelite is that most of the lighting control is automatically taken care of, and, with a few additional adjustments to your camera's settings (such as white balance and exposure compensation), the subject should be ready to capture. The most important feature is that the Cubelite works with a constant light source and therefore requires no flash, therefore eliminating the need for separate lighting equipment, such as a flash unit or flash metre.

The light from the 500-Watt tungsten lamp then shines into the Cubelite through the side panel and is diffused as it goes through the nylon fabric. This is the clever part because it results in the light appearing 'softer' as it hits the subject. You'll also notice that shadows appear more subtle and aren't as extreme as those produced from a single light source. The light then bounces off the silver reflector (positioned on the opposite side of the cube to the light source) and automatically pushes light back onto the other side of the subject, helping to create the effect of another light. Thankfully, the silver reflector is not fixed to the Cubelite so you can move it around and twist it to create different effects on the lighting and the positioning of shadows.

A nice touch is the way the Cubelite also comes with a removable front panel. This can be added if the subject matter you are photographing is very reflective, such as glass or chrome. By doing this, the subject is completely isolated from its surroundings with only a small opening in the Cubelite where the lens of your camera is positioned. This enclosed environment helps to ensure that there are no reflections on your products when they are photographed.

The only real issues technical issues we encountered when trying to get the best results with the cameras we used (Canon's Powershot G5 and EOS D60) involved telling the cameras what lighting conditions we were shooting in so that they could capture our subjects in their natural colours. The light supplied with the Cubelite kit is a tungsten light (3200°K), so the quickest way to get good results was to just select 'Tungsten' from the camera's white balance settings. We found shots appeared slightly underexposed using this setting, however, so we delved further and used the camera's 'manual evaluative' settings, which measure actual lighting conditions rather than using a default reference, and therefore produced better results. We also had to adjust the exposure compensation settings to +1EV to avoid making subjects appear too dark against the bright background.

Links:
Cubelite Web site