My understanding of a background light has many answers dependant on what you want to do. It can be something used to make the background brighter than the foreground, the a stop lower, a stop higher, whatever you want. the idea being it's there to add some dimension to the image that lighting from the front only will do.
It can be in front, behind, beside, above. Sometimes I think that's the problem when you're trying to learn how to do it all, there is no formula and there are thousands of options.
hope that confuses you as much as I am I just keep trying. I just picked up an AB400 for a hairlight, of course I'm in London and it's in North Carolina waiting for me to come back
jitubats wrote:
After looking at these shots I am even ashamed of showing my studio.
It looks hopeless.
...
I have a question though ?
Where can i get a seamless background which is not paper, i tried muslin but it gets all those crevices, and my paper somehow gets torn all the time.
Also what is background light, is it behind the muslin or i just put two umbrellas in front of the paper and overexpose it by two stops just to get a differentiation. I asked couple of people, but no one seemed to give me a consistent answer.
Thanks,
Jitesh
Hi Jitesh.
Your studio looks better than mine! :-)
Almost any material can be used for a background. Go to a fabric store and purchase bulk material and any length and color. Goto to Home Depot or Menards or some place like that and purchase wall panels, etc.
As for your seamless paper tearing,,, many of us use a sheet of clear plexiglas on top of the seamless paper to prevent it from being torn. There are some nice examples in this (lengthy) thread on different ways people have come up with to deal with flooring issues.
For background lights, I typically use one or two Alien Bee 800's. If I'm trying to get a solid color (i.e., white) background, I use white umbrellas on the AB's which floods the background evenly with light. Sometime's I add a 20, 30 or 40 degree grid to the 7" AB reflector which gives me a nice spotlight on the background.
Use a clothing steamer to remove wrinkles from background materials. (Their typically less than $50.)
If you want to use a material on the background and don't want the wrinkles (or the wrinkles won't come out with a steamer), then make sure you move the model 6, 8 or 10 feet way from the background and shoot at f4 or so, which will help to ensure a blurred background.
You can also blur the background in Photoshop afterwords. (There's a thread here that I submitted that provides step-bystep instructions with some visuals aids on how to do this.)
Here's the blurred background tutorial...
Blurring the background tutorial
Maybe this will help...
Here's the image without retouching...
This image shows the marching ants after I've drawn a line around the model with the Lasso Tool.
Once the line is drawn around the model, choose "Select" from the menu and then "Inverse". Then choose "Layer" for the menu, then "New" and finally "Layer via Copy". You should end up with this...
Make sure you are on the blur layer!
Now choose "Filter" from the menu, then "Blur" then "Gausian Blur" and set the radius at somewhere between 70 and 90 and hit the OK button. This is what you should see...
Now notice the blur overlaps the models edges in the following shot...
Select the eraser tool and set the Opacity to 100% and the flow to 100% and choose the desired brush size. Make sure that you choose a brush with blurred edges (not a sharp edge!).
Use the eraser to remove (erase) the blur that overlaps the model, like this...
When done, the image should look something like this...
I have found that I can help avoid holes in seamless paper if the paper is on a solid surface in opposed to carpet. For a while I put a plastic office chair mat under the paper and it really helped. Now I have a laminate floor in the main shooting area and so far no holes.
The suggestion about using plexi is good because it will keep the paper cleaner. However, I don't know difficult it is to keep the plexi scratch free.
krieves wrote:
I have found that I can help avoid holes in seamless paper if the paper is on a solid surface in opposed to carpet. For a while I put a plastic office chair mat under the paper and it really helped. Now I have a laminate floor in the main shooting area and so far no holes.
The suggestion about using plexi is good because it will keep the paper cleaner. However, I don't know difficult it is to keep the plexi scratch free.
I found a remedy to the problem of heels punching holes into the paper on capet with a sheet of "door skin" from Home Depot placed underneath. About $9 for a 4x8 sheet. I still wanna go with the plexiglass for those shots where the "reflection" would look nice.
I will convert and fairly small single garage into a studio and storage area with a false wall.
I have the week off next week and will be doing the work, I am going to try to document the process step by step, including electrics, dry walling, building the false wall and laying a white laminate floating floor. At the moment the cost is about 380 GBP for everyhting, I will post a list of the goods and costs.
Also just recieved the new Elinchrom Dlite2 Kit as its size is suited to the studio really well.
Keep an eye here for the results at the end of the week.
I will try to keep it up to date every day with all the good and bad things that happen,
and hopefully anyone else out there in internet land, can see the process, learn
form the mistakes and improve the design for their own studio.
Well, here is my ghetto'd up set, done in my breakfast area in my home. As you can see, it is not ideal with the windows right there, but I plan on putting up a curtain to block the stray light from the side.
And the results: (she was suprisingly cooperative.)
Almost any material can be used for a background. Go to a fabric store and purchase bulk material and any length and color. Goto to Home Depot or Menards or some place like that and purchase wall panels, etc.
As for your seamless paper tearing,,, many of us use a sheet of clear plexiglas on top of the seamless paper to prevent it from being torn. There are some nice examples in this (lengthy) thread on different ways people have come up with to deal with flooring issues.
For background lights, I typically use one or two Alien Bee 800's. If I'm trying to get a solid color (i.e., white) background, I use white umbrellas on the AB's which floods the background evenly with light. Sometime's I add a 20, 30 or 40 degree grid to the 7" AB reflector which gives me a nice spotlight on the background.
Use a clothing steamer to remove wrinkles from background materials. (Their typically less than $50.)
If you want to use a material on the background and don't want the wrinkles (or the wrinkles won't come out with a steamer), then make sure you move the model 6, 8 or 10 feet way from the background and shoot at f4 or so, which will help to ensure a blurred background.
You can also blur the background in Photoshop afterwords. (There's a thread here that I submitted that provides step-bystep instructions with some visuals aids on how to do this.)
Thanks John,
This is very well written. My god I have to do some much stff to get the work done at home. I bought a 9 by 20 feet Muslin, could not get a way to clear the wrinkles, and it was cheap like 30 dollars for the entire thing. Now I have to go back and get it .. with the steamer to make it work. I went to Homedepot to look for plexiglass, could not find anything bigger than 5 feet.
I am not sure where you guys get bigger sheets. If i have something like 5-10 feet wode, i would like my plexiglass to be that wide, else it is going to go waste ..
Well I even put up all my pictures which I recently took from my studio shoot for sale. even if i can sell a few of them, that would give me enogh to take care of those costs .. Darn photgraphy is expensve
FLORIDAG8R wrote:
Well, here is my ghetto'd up set, done in my breakfast area in my home. As you can see, it is not ideal with the windows right there, but I plan on putting up a curtain to block the stray light from the side.
And the results: (she was suprisingly cooperative.)
The studio looks nice, but i would tend to underexpose the background a little bit. It seems to be way to over ode or it might be my monitor ?
Most of the work I've been doing is macro-related, so it only takes up a very small part of my studio, but there is what my workspace looks like:
.
.
I have two large tables for matcutting and framing that are on wheels, they push over to the wall so I can set up my backdrop when I need to use it.
I have my printers and computers sectioned off with a giant curtain that closes and ties so I can section it off if I need to.
.
Currently I only have to Alien Bee's with a large softbox and two umbrellas. I've always been a fan of side lighting.
I usually have a very small "mini backdrop" set up for my ongoing series of toy portraits:
I just keep trying. I just picked up an AB400 for a hairlight, of course I'm in London and it's in North Carolina waiting for me to come back 
