Light Box

[Slim]

Just spent an afternoon and approximately £20 making my own light box. I have never managed to get decent flats as I can't leave my scope outside and every time I have taken the scope back outside the next day they have never come out right even though I leave the camera as it was and don't touch the focus.

I found this tutorial DIY Astrophotography Light Box and I'm very happy with the result just have to wait for a clear sky now and I'll see if it actually works.

[Viv]

Nice bit of DIY work there !!

[libraryman]

Very good, better than my attempt, do post results.

Ray

[obscura]

A year ago I built one in thin mdf (for 80mm WO) as I was not convinced that the white board would stand up to the external world - storage, handling etc. I lined the mdf with white board. Fortunately for me, this light box just fits a 120mm.

Thinking I may make a dedicated light box for the 120, how robust do you find the white board box?

[Spikey]

That looks really good Slim, how have you been getting on with it?

I'm just looking at building a large EL panel myself

[Gina]

I'm thinking of making a light box using a quantity of white LEDs (strips). I remember seeing a thread using this method some time ago but didn't make a note of it. I know it would be best with a large number of LEDs to give a more even light but I'm wondering whether to go for 48 LEDs (2 x 24 strip) or 96 (2 x 48). I'd appreciate any advice on this, please

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=110655739344

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=280470931448

[obscura]

I bought a pack of two strings of white leds off ebay from that thread - they are still there. Used for a flat box for the WO80 - all of them! (Half would have done).

These were held down by double sided sticky. Above them, two 5mm opal perspex panels - also from ebay - spaced an inch or so apart to give an even illumination. I experimented with spacing using a cardboard mockup. The final box was of thin mdf lined with that white foam board to bounce the light around.

Hope this helps.

[libraryman]

I bought a pack of two strings of white leds off ebay from that thread - they are still there. Used for a flat box for the WO80 - all of them! (Half would have done).

These were held down by double sided sticky. Above them, two 5mm opal perspex panels - also from ebay - spaced an inch or so apart to give an even illumination. I experimented with spacing using a cardboard mockup. The final box was of thin mdf lined with that white foam board to bounce the light around.

Hope this helps.

Did the flats turn out good using the 2 diffusers, could it have worked with one?

Ray

[obscura]

Hi Ray.

The flat light box worked very well.

I played with the cardboard mock-up and trialled one or two opal perspex diffusers. No contest in my case. One diffuser was uneven with brighter areas but two, even across the second perspex.

As an aside.

It's been said that when taking flats you put the camera in Av mode and let it worry about the shutter speed. I prefer to run in Tv mode. this is because the aperture is fixed, the scope's f number, and if you controlled the shutter speed you could then control the saturation to that magic 33-50%. I found 1/160 to 1/200 optimum at this time with the WO80's f6.8.