Ender 5 Plus and the lit Lightbox (#E21F1)

Fiat Lux!

LED panel brackets are installed, and so are three “45W” panels that currently max out at 135W with the supplied AC drivers. I’m likely gonna move them to a dimmable solution (a DC-DC converter with external adjustment pot…), but for testing purposes that’s just fine.

Here’s a small print (30cm x 6cm x 2cm) with single-walled towers on each side, made from matte black PLA (Sunlu), still sticking to the black Ender glass printing bed. Clearly this needs a bit more optimization in that all black parts around it could use a more reflective surface covering to brighten up the scene. Also, photos of freshly printed items likely will be an exception, so there will be a white base cover with centimeter grid again which should also help with light yield.

Photos were taken at 1/80s to 1/30s, ISO 160 and f/6.3, so that’s pretty much what I had before, just without the yellow “warm white” tint and the poor color spectrum of the Wan Hung Lo LED strips used. Even the camera says it doesn’t have any color offsets and estimates color temperature at 4100 to 4300K, with a manufacturer rating of 4500K (that I’ve dialled in with some flashlight cheating, because apparently a custom color profile on the Sony RX100M2 cannot be fully customized…)

Well, maybe time to rebadge this as a project, since there will be more posts like this until my 24/7 daylight-independent photography needs have a new home…on wheels.