The junkbox cyclorama
Adafruit had a post a few weeks ago about building a cyclorama to take nice pictures of your work. I built one up for the office (we always have horrible pictures of things in our documentation), but for home I can't justify even the $50-75 one would cost me. So, I did what any good maker will do- hit the junk piles! First, a word on sourcing: the local IKEA has a section right before the checkout called "As-is". (My wife and I frequent IKEA for some reason- we eat breakfast there about once every couple of weeks, and dinner there almost as often.) As-is is where IKEA goods too good for the trash but too bad to sell as new go- returns, scratch and dent, display models, etc. Every so often, they'll bundle up a bunch of crap and put it on a "mystery cart" or a "handyman's cart". The shelves just visible to the right above were a handyman's cart item; the lights all came from a mystery cart. I've actually bought far too many ...