You may wish to have a look at sail cloth from a sail making suppliers. Tough and washable and very diffusable. Depending on the size of the item one can't beat the styrine sheets as mentioned. If painted black on the other side serves as a shade maker ( forgotten the term).
Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure... Life is either daring adventure or nothing: Helen Keller.
I understand that you do not want to build anything, but you may be forced into improvisation. If so, there are two points which I encountered in the process of attempting something similar, and which I don't think any of the other replies have addressed.
One is that large expanses of combustible material (and everthing that I found which would transmit light also burned) suspended vertically constitute a serious fire hazard. This is especially important if you are considering the use of hot lights.
The other is that jury-rigged structures tend to be unstable, and one false move can lead to quite a mess. A lot can be done with clothespins, cup hooks in the ceiling joists, twine, and electrical conduit, but have some respect for the mechanical engineering aspects, particularly if hot lights (or expensive strobes...) are involved.
There is an elegant solution based on PVC pipe and hose clamps, but it takes a modest amount of fabrication and is therefore officially off-topic...
You need a complete tent for reflective items, with a hole for the lens, but you could get away with a simpler system: You can get very large diffusers/soft boxes for studio flash units - some of them several feet accross, and one of these either side might be adequate, or you could have three - including one for a background.
I did mess about trying to use a projection screen as a reflector - but it did not work very well.
You could simply use a small room or large cupboard with matt white walls and ceiling and use all indirect lighting, by lighting not the subject but the walls/ceiling.
What sort of buget were you thinking of?
If you insist on using Large format you will need thousands of watt-seconds to get enough depth of field with a single pop with flash.
I expect that correct colour is important, and flash is most consistent.
my boyfriend is a contractor and he has read your replies and said he can make one for me. what is the best way to make one? what type of lights should i use? how many watts? should i put a light on each side of the tent including back?I would like to spend around$1000 if possible. i can get pvc pipe for free and white fabric including silk for pretty cheap. can you instruct me in how to make a pvc tent? thanks
(I apologize for the length of this, but it is in direct response to Stephanie's question!)
Regarding PVC pipe construction: a light tent is, in many respects, comparable to a greenhouse for plants. You need minimal obscuration, reasonable sturdiness, and , usually, some amount of transportability. Any competent framing carpenter could easily build one out of 1x2 or 2x2 lumber, and the use of screws with metal framing clips (as in Simpson Strong-Tie) would even make it demountable. The PVC pipe approach is even simpler, and its general outline is this:
One-inch or larger schedule 40 PVC pipe is joined with regular plastic couplings, making generally rectangular frames. For disassembly, use a hacksaw to split the sockets of those fittings which will not be glued, and use a band-type hose clamp around the split fitting to assemble things. This will, among other things, make it easy to eliminate twist in the assembled frames. With a little planning, the parts can be "bundled" and secured with bungee cords for storage or transportation.
Diagonal bracing can be accomplished using tees and 45 degree couplings; wire and turnbuckles can also be used. For stiffness, don't use smaller than one-inch pipe; the half and three-quarter inch sizes are really too flexible for anything larger than a few feet across.
Up to about six or eight feet wide, the "roof" can be flat; if you are going for a room-sized enclosure, more structure in the way of a tied arch or truss may be necessary. Stability can be enhanced by the use of "outriggers" extending horizontally at floor level, and weighted with anything from sandbags to cardboard boxes full of books. It may also be possible to provide some support from ceiling joists.
The easiest way to attach fabric is the use of plastic clips; greenhouse suppliers sell these, as do some photographic houses (but they are a bit overpriced). My pet solution is to buy regular couplings and cut them in half crosswise. Cutting out a section lengthwise (about 1-1/8" wide; feel free to experiment) lets the resulting C-shaped clip snap onto a piece of pipe. Sharp edges need to be filed, sanded, or carved off, but when finished the clip can be used to attach up to several layers of fabric, from the inside or outside of the frame as appropriate. There are also plastic "hinge" clips available commercially (a sort of bowtie shape, with openings on each end to snap the pipe into).
The best compromise for fabric seems to be white, coated, nylon tent cloth from an outdoor recreation store. Some materials (cheesecloth, Reemay agricultural fabric, and probably silk) will let through enough direct light to permit specular highlights on ceramics, and even faces; this may or may not be an issue. Heavier materials like bedsheets absorb a great deal of light, which is likely to be in short supply anyway.
As far as the light tent itself is concerned, $1000 seems very generous to me. If this is to include lighting, then anything other than construction-site quartz lights is liable to stretch the budget (but mind the heat and fire hazard...). Also, bear in mind the power requirements, which translate directly into heat. Six 500-watt lamps will warm up a residential garage in what seems like no time, assuming that they don't trip the breakers or set the place on fire first. (3000 watts in cheap reflectors is not as much light as you might expect.)
The chief difficulty is likely to be lighting the top surface of the tent, especially if the subject approximates a full-length human figure. From personal experience: an eight-foot room ceiling is a crippling limitation, and (safely) suspending lights above the tent "roof" is a problem in any case.
Half-round cross-section tents work best, giving a more even light, (making it easier to light the top) and can be constructed with flexible tent poles or e.g. loops of half inch diameter blue or alcathene (black) pipe.
Tie the open ends at the bottom together to tension the loops, as with modern tents.
Use a straight pole to hang the "infinity" background.
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