Kryptonite

 

Here's a quasi-macro shot I took on New Years day of a rock my wife has (she's kind of an amateur geologist) with bits of quartz and some other interesting minerals. This one was done with a light tent. I was kind of excited by the tent when I bought it, but my excitement quickly faded. Yes, they make it easy to produce soft, even, consistent lighting. But that consistency is what ultimately turned me off. It gives you one lighting look with some very minor variations, and that's all. You get what you get, and you better like it. It's really easy, fast, and convenient to use though, which makes it kind of a factory for a certain type of product photography. I can see that it would be very useful if you had a job taking hundreds of pictures of products for catalogs or e-commerce sites. It would save you a bunch of time and give your catalog a very consistent look. But for a photography generalist like me, I only break it out every once in while to do a shot like this.