Build Your Own ‘Still Life’ Folding Table for around $30

Anthony Thurston

I love still life photography, it’s one of my favorite things to do when I’m bored and don’t have a person to shoot. I was recently searching for a good table for shooting my still life work, but as you can imagine the commercially available tables are rather expensive. Since my budget is rather low I decided to look into DIY alternatives, and that was when I came across this great DIY build over on DIY Photography.

still-life-folding-table-19

Here are the materials that you need:

  • 1 100cm x 50cmx2mm white/translucent Plexiglas sheet (table base)
  • 1 100cm x 5mm Aluminum “U” profile
  • folding shelves supports
  • 4 “long” 80cm x 20cm x 10mm wooded bars
  • 3 “short” 60cm x 20cm x 10mm wooden bars
  • few self-threading screw for wood and related washers (for wider area grip)
  • vinavil glue (or other vinilic wood glue)
  • screw driver
  • hacksaw
  • drill (to create guide holes to avoid wood to break)
  • pencil and ruler
  • 2 wooden sawhorses (optional)
  • 50cm White paper roll or 50×100 paper sheet (optional)
  • 1 100cm x 50cm x 2mm corrugated white plastic sheet (table cover to protect from dust when unused and kept unfolded)

You can get the full instructions over on the DIY Photography post, but if you follow those correctly you will end up with a table that looks like this.

still-life-folding-table-11

still-life-folding-table-17

I am really looking into building this table. The biggest thing for me is finding a place that I could keep the table after storing it, even folded it takes up more space than I would like. What do you think? IS this something you might build for yourself? Let us know in a comment below.

[via DIY Photography]

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