New Toy: Foldio Kickstarter by Orangemonkie

The Foldio...all folded up

As those of you who read my blog know by now, I am always looking for ways to improve this blog, either with more posts, more content or better pictures. A few months ago, I invested in a tool that, I hoped, would allow me to increase the quality of pictures I add to the blog. That tool is the Foldio, the product of a kickstarter project by Orangemonkie, and it arrived last night.

The second LED strip...
offered as part of the Kickstart

I will not go into a full unboxing of the Foldio, instead, you can watch their kickstarter video. In essence, the Foldio is a foldable plastic sheet that, with the help of several magnets, can be folded into a portable lightbox. The Foldio also includes two LED light strips that take 9 volt batteries, which themselves attach to the box with magnets. It is very slick.

The Foldio in all its glory

I still have yet to really explore taking photos with the Foldio, but so far, the results have been impressive. The Foldio is large enough to hold several models or even vehicles, the LEDs provide a perfect amount of light and the enclosed backdrops fit in nicely. I am excited to get more photos taken.

Let's take a look at a couple of photos, before and after the Foldio.

Image #1: Before

Image #1 is a standard image I took using an 8 megapixel digital camera. I used my desk lamp as lighting and a simple white plastic sheet as a backdrop.

Image #2: Before

Image #2 is taken with an iphone camera and the same light as image 1.The backdrop is my desk and (sexy) finger.

Image #3: Before

Image #3 was taken using a dark felt backdrop and the same lightsource. 

Image #4: Before

Image #4 was set up the same as the first image, but with the additional of another OttLite for added light.










Each of these set ups involved placing the light in the right place and taking 9 or 10 pictures, loading them onto Picasa and editing them to bring down the brightness, etc. Now, let's take a look at the pics I took with the Foldio.

For these pictures, I set up the Foldio, turned on only one set of LEDs and snapped one each using the iPhone. The whole thing took no more than 2 minutes.

Image #5: After

Image #5: Was taken with the white backdrop that came with the Foldio.

Image #6: After

Image #6: Was taken using felt in addition to Foldio backdrop.










Clearly there is some improvement to be had. However, The last two pictures represent about 2 minutes of set up, whereas those prior represented a far more complex and time consuming set up, including multiple lights and many, many duplicate photos.

Moving forward, I am going to get some practice in with the Foldio and different cameras by retaking several of the pictures that have already appeared on this blog and replacing them a little bit at a time. In the meantime, however.....

More to Come.

-Nick