photos and lighting
i am having a total dilemma in regards to lighting and photographing my glass. some stuff photographs easily. Other pieces, not so much. It seems that no matter what I try, I cannot get the lighting right.
Natural light is the best, and of course, the hardest to manuever. And it changes with the time of the year. Late spring is perfect on my side porch and front window. The light is strong enough to illuminate, but not so harsh as to wash out the finer details. Other than late spring, it is a crap shoot. Sometimes direct lighting is good, though there are times I have to filter it with paper. The best stuff I have found is tissue paper, but it is so fragile, and I have het to find it in rolls, so it has folds in it when I use it. I also have a roll of thin butcher paper, white, that is very good. But still, it is a problem.
Amazon has these cool lighting set ups with a light tent and lights, for photography, which are great, but too small. I imagine i will try to rig something up in the garage in the warmer weather. the garage is now at 40 degree for the duration of winter. ok, they don’t have them anymore, but they directed me to this website, which is awesome!
speaking of winter, we had snow a couple days ago!! the last time it snowed was Feb 2011. it was lovely.
this was right as it got going. It ended up snowing for a couple hours, and sticking for most of the day. which was super great. cold as hell though, lol.
Back to lighting. I can take cool, wacky, non-authentic-representational photos. Like this:
or this:
both of which I think are super cool photos. But they don’t look remotely like the actual pieces. sigh.
love affair with stained glass 
I have a tent kit and I would not suggest it. Those kits are so cheaply made it’s better to just go get some lights and material yourself. And like you said, they’re most often way too small.
I have always just hung a piece of cloth up on the wall (or taped it up) then hung the glass a foot or so in front it with lights pointed at the cloth… perhaps one at the glass too if you can disperse the light so it’s not too direct.
Here’s one of mine: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmoola/4699013046/in/photostream
Granted, I did photoshop some of the background in some if the cloth wasn’t perfect or you could see dust.
If you have a large light box you could also just lay cloth on top of that as well with the glass in front. I have a large light table I may have to try that with and see how it turns out.
I read somewhere that they used a laundry/closet thing from Dollar Tree as a light box. Not sure if you figured out your lighting problem yet but there are some inexpensive ways you maybe could make a light tent.