I’ve used a black velour background for a long time, but it has become so well worn, full of scratches and cat hair that is has become unusable for product type photography, so I decided to buy some black paper. It is the Savage SABGP5320 Widetone Seamless Background Paper. My problem is that this stuff reflects light horribly. It is unusable for what I wanted it for. I always thought black soaked up light, not reflect it. Did I make a bad decision not to buy more velour?
Below are two photos directly from the camera. No processing, just resizing. I don’t like spending a lot of time post processing, and don’t want to mess with layers just to get the background to come out like it should. Am I doing something wrong, or just make a bad purchase?
Seamless paper is typically used as as Background lit or unlit. When used like this you can't easily keep light off it. In your examples all you did was light the paper along with your subject. There is nothing "black" enough that wouldn't turn dark gray in the case, not even velvet or felt, etc..
The best way to deal with this is to control the light spill using grids, flags, barn doors, etc. You can also elevate the subject off of the surface and then clone out what you set in on. You would still however, have to do some work in post. For example with NIK or Nikon NX you could set a black control point and dial down the black to 0 and or the exposure as well.
In these examples the plate was elevated off the black parer about 2" and the glasses were sitting on the paper. It just depends on how much work you want to do. Both backgrounds were a dark gray.
Nope, that's what you're going to get from that kind of surface. The solutions are to either go back to the felt you are happy with (though even that will reflect pretty good in many cases), or do some work with lighting control / go to some kind of shadowless lighting setup (hold piece off surface, sheet of plexi, etc). I tend to use plexi a lot because there's lots less cloning work, etc.
Best to think of black paper as gray. For that reason, I use a black fabric resembling fleece for backdrop, and black velvet for tabletop for an effective light sink. With delinting, I can avoid any spotting in post. Image from last night did not even require a changed black point, and subject had plenty of light:
Black velour soaks up much more light than this paper does. I’ve never used black paper before, so I was not expecting this. As for the vase, too much light reflected off the vertical part of the paper, and I could not seem to move the light anywhere that reduced that, so trying to fix that with minimal work wasn’t possible. I don’t use Nic or Nikon NX. I did take the image of the clip into Photoshop and was able to do what you see below without too much work, but many things I photograph would be very difficult to accomplish that. I’ve already tried it, and did not like the results. I guess this paper isn’t going to work very well for me. I’m more of a “get it right in the camera” guy rather than a post process guy. The image below is crude, but I suppose it works for those non photo critical people.
rkgatteleport wrote:
Nope, that's what you're going to get from that kind of surface. The solutions are to either go back to the felt you are happy with (though even that will reflect pretty good in many cases), or do some work with lighting control / go to some kind of shadowless lighting setup (hold piece off surface, sheet of plexi, etc). I tend to use plexi a lot because there's lots less cloning work, etc.
It’s been a while since I’ve used the velour cause it has deteriorated so much, but I went back and looked at some of the images I photographed with the velour, and most were not real black out of the camera, but easy to process. It depended on if I had the object laying directly on the material, or the material was in the back ground.
I’ve used plexiglass a bit, but it usually takes a lot of work to get the back edge of the plexi cloned out. I suppose I could set the plexi off the surface, but would end up with reflections when I don’t want reflections, and I would still have that edge of the plexi to clone out. My space is very small, and I don’t have room for more than one light, and I have no barn doors or any other attachments
Here is what I’m talking about with the plexi. Image below is straight from the camera back in 2007
rico wrote:
Best to think of black paper as gray. For that reason, I use a black fabric resembling fleece for backdrop, and black velvet for tabletop for an effective light sink. With delinting, I can avoid any spotting in post. Image from last night did not even require a changed black point, and subject had plenty of light:
I wish I had a fraction of the room you have. My space is so tight it’s difficult to work in. I would think black fleece like material would be horrible for reflections. What is “an effective light sink”?
+1 all above. Best to think of black seamless as really dark gray paper. You can make it 'go black' by using standard techniques but it's not the 'light suck' that are velvet or commando cloth (search B&H). Paper works, just requires more effort and/or room.
For that reason, I use a black fabric resembling fleece for backdrop, and black velvet for tabletop for an effective light sink. With delinting, I can avoid any spotting in post. Image from last night did not even require a changed black point, and subject had plenty of light:
