Got a small photo tent for christmas as a number of people on here have said they use one.
The first picture is outside the tent without flash and the second in the tent without flash

Now outside the tent with flash  and in the tent with flash

There is definitely an improvement in the photo quality. I am sure a bit more practice with camera settings and the four background colours it came with will help.
I think it will be worth the £15 spent

I have wondered about these photo tents and I'm glad you posted this.

AYHD - to really get the benefit of the photo tent you need to light the tent from outside, preferably with 2/3 daylight bulbs, to eliminate/ reposition shadows and then take your picture without flash.

MB

I wanted to give you all a more detailed explanation around my comment in my last post. Hopefully the information and examples may help someone to improve their photography. I have been focusing a lot on taking better photos of balloons recently as the quality of pictures on my website (http://www.balloonimals.co.uk) are my main area for improvement for early 2014... along with some new marketing materials (but that is another post... photos for now).

Here are 4 examples photos of a simple doll. It's based on Thelma's doll, which would probably be one of my favourite balloons on that thread simply because I have made thousands of them over the last few years.

All of these photos are straight out of the camera. No post processing at all.

Photo 1 - the model photographed on my phone, in a tent, no flash, lit only by the room lighting

[attachment=2:swjpog53][/attachment]doll1.jpg[/attachment:swjpog53]

I think you will all agree this is a dreadful picture. The phone just cannot handle the lighting challenges and I only post it as a reference point.


Photo 2 - The model photographed on my DSLR, in a tent, no flash, lit only by the room lighting. DSLR on auto.
[attachment=1:swjpog53][/attachment]doll_3.JPG[/attachment:swjpog53]

A big improvement on Photo 1 but still not great. There are many dark areas and shadows. The improvement here comes from the camera, the tent is not adding a lot of value.


Photo 3 - The model photographed on my DSLR, in a tent, using flash, lit also by the room lighting. DSLR on auto.
[attachment=0:swjpog53][/attachment]doll_4.JPG[/attachment:swjpog53]

A reasonably good result. But the problem here is that the flash is casting shadows on some parts of the model and it also causes the model to look quite flat in some areas. A passable result though.

See next post... for Photo 4

Photo 4 - The model photographed on my DSLR, in a tent, using 3 x daylight photo lights (no room lighting). DSLR on manual.

[attachment=0:17zkvbze][/attachment]doll_2.JPG[/attachment:17zkvbze]

Hopefully you will agree this is a far better image. The shadowing has been eliminated, it is much sharper at the edges and the only artefact from the lights are the reflections (which I actually like and so I do not try to eliminate).

The camera settings help here also but the tent is now working with the lighting to produce a quality image.