I’ve been eyeing the SHOTBOX for a while, but I only recently bit the bullet and bought one.  (They just ran a Kickstarter for a new add-on to it and I’m pretty excited about that.)  The image above is from the company, and shows the SHOTBOX itself fully set up.  (Remaining images in this post are mine.)

I should have taken a picture of it collapsed, but I don’t think I did.  You can see, though, in this first picture, the boxes it fit into.

The box in the back is the actual SHOTBOX itself, folded up and in its box.  In the front you have the tote it fits into (so that should give you a bit of an idea, too), a box containing the Sideshot (an attachment for a cell phone), and a box with four backdrops rolled up inside.

When folded up, the SHOTBOX is around 2 inches or so thick.  It’s pretty easy to set up: you lift the top from the top, the back drops down mostly of its own accord (you might have to guide it into place) and then you lift those bars on the sides to keep it propped.  (Imagine the bar that holds up the hood of your car — kind of the same idea.)  And then there’s a sort of “sheet” that lies in the bottom to give a solid white surface — or solid black if you flip it over.

If you choose to use them, there are also four backdrops that hook over a couple little hooks in the back and line both the back and the bottom.

(Note that it isn’t in use here; it’s still being unpacked at this point.)

The one final piece that’s part of the main SHOTBOX is the power cord.  Plug it into the back and turn the SHOTBOX on and it lights itself up from inside with LEDs.  There’s even a little switch that lets you choose whether to use the lights on the left, the right, or both.

The top of the SHOTBOX has five different “windows” through which you can shoot.  You just put your item in the box, adjust the light the way you want it (it uses a dimmer switch) and then take your pictures either from the front of the box or through any of the upper windows.

Here’s an item inside the SHOTBOX (without any backdrops), from the front.  (This is a very small set of clear stamps.)

Here’s what it looks like from the top:

And this is the photo that resulted from taking a picture through those upper holes:

Now there’s one last feature that’s kind of neat.  Depending on what you’re taking a picture of, the lights can sometimes have a tendency to create a glare on your subject.  So they’ve created a couple of glare protector strips you can magnetically attach over the light strips to shield them so they aren’t so direct.  Lights:

Glare strip:

Now here are a couple examples of the “same” photo — identical setup, except one is with and one is without the glare shields.

Pretty big difference, right?  Now, there is one downside.  When the glare strips are used, the way they redirect the light makes for these weird criss-crossy “shadows”:

See how there’s a bit of a yellow cast to them?  On certain objects, those yellowish bits show up on your items.  So use the glare strips when you need them; when you don’t, take them off.  (On dark objects, it usually isn’t an issue, but if your item is white/almost white, it can be noticeable.)

If you’re using a cell phone, there’s an attachment you can get (it’s part of the package I bought) called the Sideshot.  I haven’t used it yet because I mostly shoot with a DSLR.  But it attaches to the front of the SHOTBOX and provides a little “ledge” to set your smartphone on, so you can easily use your cell phone from the front.

This has been really handy for anything small enough to fit in it, because we don’t have very good lighting in our house.  Popping this up is so much easier than finagling lights into position and trying to prop reflectors!