Lightbox, Camera, Action?

I am happy to admit I am not a very skilled photographer and, with the volume of model photos I take, I need a quick solution for decentish shots. I'm not looking to win any prizes, just be able to take a lot of passable photos in a short time for use at the site and as a record of my collection. With that in mind is a cheap lightbox a good solution?

A very typical photo of the sort I've been taking for years.

Up until now I've used the same white and blue background for years. It has been ok and I liked the juxtaposition of the blue background and lighter foreground, however it also has had its drawbacks. The white can clash with the models, which are often mainly white. It can also look off-white if I modify the image colours at all, plus of course the blue and white junction point produces an obvious join line. Lastly it requires decent sunlight and shadows are always a problem.

My rather old but trusty superzoom camera

My camera equipment is not model photography specific. It doubles as my day to day camera and is a stalwart Sony Cybershot DSC-HX350, that is getting a little long in the tooth and probably needs replacing. It has a macro mode but is increasingly struggling to focus properly. No doubt a DSLR and some photography lessons would help but I'm not a photography buff so at the moment that's a step too far for me.

I've recently been looking at whether I can do better so I've just acquired a cheapish lightbox (this one: Duclus Lightbox) and wanted to see if I can take more professional shots without a lot more effort, especially given the limitations of my camera.

The benefits of the lightbox are:

• a new seamless background with some choice of colours
• less dependency on lighting conditions for when I shoot
• hopefully better lighting to help the camera focus

Results so far have been promising as I hope this collection of shots illustrates. I'm not 100% sold as the lightbox takes up more space and I'm still finding myself needing to use the camera flash to get passable light (for some reason my camera focuses darker in the strong light). Every photo also requires cropping but that's no different to before.

These images are of three random models awaiting their turn at the photopoint. The A380 is something of a tight fit inside the lightbox. I would like to be able to add the watermark logo to all my photos but even though it is easy to do it takes a minute or so for every photo so is too slow a process to be done on all the thousands of shots I take.

Of course the other problem this new method creates, if I keep with it, is that I have  thousands of models whose pictures are taken using the old method. Retaking all those photos is a gargantuan task, but it will no doubt annoy me having a mixed collection. Oh well, that's a problem for another time. In the meantime do you think these shots are an improvement over what I've been doing until now?