I made the photo above with ONE strobe light, a cardboard box and about ten bucks worth of stuff from the craft store. Not too bad, considering my studio was my kitchen table.
What you need:
at least one light. you could even use a household lamp if you balanced the white balance for it. I used a Nikon SB-800 on a light stand. It’s the one and only light I have so the it narrowed the options down some.
A cardboard box
knife or scissors
a bit of tape
a box. I used a 12×12x12 box from the UPS store.
A background and/or base for your product. For the base, I used a shiny cardboard/bristolboard material (sorry, can’t remember the actual name) and some craft foam for the background. About 5 bucks for all, if you get the box for free . I actually paid for the box as I had it lying around from a move so my box cost more.
What you get looks like this:
To make this, what you want to do is take your knife/scissors and cut out the sides and top of the box. I used the bottom of the box as the ‘back wall’ of the studio which then required me to cut out three sides.
Then you tape some tissue paper over the holes in the box to diffuse the light, and voila – instant photo studio!
You can noodle around with lighting placement, but as I only have one light at the moment, I chose to shoot it into the right side of my, umm studio. As you can see arts and crafts is not my calling. there’s a reason I have somebody else wrap my gifts.
Caveats:
I used paper for the bottom. The trouble with this is that it’s hard to get a straight horizon. You’d be better off looking for something else that’s sturdier and with a flat edge. Glass or even a shiny piece of tile from Home Depot can work.
The foam I used marks easily. It’s only a buck a sheet, but if you look closely you can see a mark or two in the background. Nothing photoshop can’t fix, but still. I’d rather not post-process if I don’t have to.
The good news is the foam I found comes in 12×18 sheets, meaning that one sheet can cover both bottom and back giving you a seamless background on the cheap. This stuff comes in lots and lots of different colors too.
Here’s a few more photos out of my cardboard studio. No photoshop or editing at all was applied to these. All these photos are straight out of the camera.
This was stuff I just had lying around that I grabbed quikly and tossed it into the box. I was more concerned with the lighting, than scuffs on the background. If you look close, there’s a few. Next time I’m at the craft store I will worry more about scuffs and dust and other stuff. The only publication these photos will ever see is here, so not too worried. 
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