I'm certainly not the first person to come up with Lightbox photos, and I will admit a few people on my flickr have been trying the ghetto lightbox approach, so I thought I'd give it a try myself. The principle is simple, you take the sides out of a cardboard box, and fill them in with a diffuse material (I'm using tissue paper, although I have heard shower curtains, and I'm considering linen for a more permanent design). Then you light as evenly as possible within the limitations of your ghetto studio lighting. I'm using a pair of halogen desklamps. These are not too great, because tungstens emit quite yellow lighting. It can be corrected for in white balance, but its not perfect. Also, lighting from both sides is preferable to a single light source because of shadows and more even lighting. Then you simply place your object in the lightbox and start photographing. At this point I would really recommend a tripod. In addition, for Canons, use custom function to enable mirror lock up, dump it on a tripod, and enable timer shooting. This means it flicks the mirror up, then waits for two seconds and then takes the photograph. Because the movement and vibration of the mirror movement action has subsided, noise is reduced. And this is important, because you want sharper pictures, which generally means smaller aperture and longer exposure. I'm shooting at F/8 mainly on a 50mm F/1.8 II. F/8 seems to be a sharp spot for this lens, and most lenses are sharper at smaller apertures. And there you have it! I'm having a fair bit of fun with mine, and it gives you something to do when its raining outside or you can't get out about and do stuff. Also, you can do a bottomless lightbox, and take your lightbox outside and place it over a flower. The diffuse effect of the lightbox can give lovely lighting for flowers with nice even exposure.

Lightbox Gallery (Lightbox photographs and photographs of the setup)