Soap Bubble Wiki
Soap Bubble Wiki

Over the last few weeks, I have become very interested in more carefully studying and documenting how dilution, polymers and pH affect aspects of the soap film such as color profile, "toughness", longevity, etc. It has become clear that I need an easy-to-setup lightbox setup to study soap films using the Longevity Test setup. I have tried quite a few setups over the last few weeks with varying degrees of sucess.

I am using inexpensive lighting and camera equipment and hoping to come up with something that other people can use, too. So, that anyone that wants to study their soap films can be spared the wasted hours that I have had.

I have wanted to make sure that the colors are saturated and that there are not too many confusing reflections and lines in the bubbles. 

This evening it occurred to me that I have been using rectangular structures, but that a pyramid might work better than a box. I think I am on to something. I used 4 pieces of foam core. 3 white pieces for the bottom and sides and a black piece for the back. The lighing is provided by a single 60W equivalent LED floodlight.

I am still working out details. But here are some stills taken from a tonight's test session. I also realized that for testing the setup, I should use a mix optimized for longevity. I used Dawn Direct Foam with a bit of water and quite a bit of glycerine. These bubbles often lasted 3 minutes -- plenty of time to move lights around, etc.

20130924 pyramid lightbox 5882 crop

Pyramid lightbox

20130924 pyramid lightbox 1

This setup used a "deep" pyramid that minimized distracting reflections but was cumbersome to use

20130924 pyramid lightbox 2

This photo used a taller, shallower lightbox that allowed for more light but has some distracting reflections.

20130924 pyramid lightbox 3

Another photo using the tall, shallow setup.