OK, so I have my super white seamless paper up on the backdrop stand and have 2 questions. Does it mater what is behind it, other than a bright window of course? If there is a dark brown wall 1 foot behind it will the brown bleed through when the flash goes off? 2nd, do you usually have a separate flash for the background like I would with muslin? Thanks for any help.
The reason i ask is I just took a couple of test shots and the paper is coming out a bit dirty color, the subject is 4 or 5 feet in front of it and properly exposed. Because I had brown behind it and could see how the color I'm seeing could have been from brown through white, it was a thought. If not it could just be white balance or I will need to light it separately to get proper exposure. I'll get the test shots into Aperture with a gray card and see about the white balance.....
It's not going to look super white SOOC unless you light it separately.....your subject isn't super white, I assume so your bg is going to be underexposed. Stick Frosty in front of it, properly expose him, and it wouldn't be so dirty looking
If I'm looking to do highkey I put a light on the backdrop, without it I can get varying degree's of grey depending on my aperture.
Final question on this, I read that you should store the paper vertically when not in use, true? What a pain if so as i was just going to keep it ready to go all of the time.
I used to keep it hung.....now I keep it standing on end. I can't not even imagine why you SHOULD keep it vertical?
I think it has to do with the weight of the paper against the bar causing flat spots that might show up?? Or so they say!
It's got a super thick cardboard tube inside don't worry about it....people put too much damn thought into EVERY little thing.
I think I'll be a rebel and leave this roll on all the time and see what happens. I could be out $90 but the time savings is great.
let me know how ya like it! i know muslin is a pain in the ass wrinkles SUCK LMAO cant wait to see some shots
I am a wild one. Now where are my lenses, I ordered them a whole 18 hours ago shouldn't they be here from NY by now!
hahah god damn it ya think it'd be here by now stupid couriers LMAO have fun with your new toys... im sooo Jealous
If you're going for a white background, light the background two stops over your main light. You can't use your main to light the subject and get a perfect white backdrop. The light falls off and the background becomes underexposed (grey).
Is the +2 stops some kind of rule or do you just know from experience? Just wondering because if I understand the reasoning I remember better.
Think of the distance from the background to the camera compared to the distance from the subject to the camera. The light has to travel from the background, past the subject, then to the camera. Light falls off with distance, so you have to have more light energy coming from the furthest point away in order to get the effect you want. 1.5 to 2 stops over main does the trick. If you're using the main light only, it goes from the source, reflects off the subject to the camera. Then it has to go to the background and reflect off it back to the camera. There's your fall off, and underexposed background.
As I mentioned before, you will not find a better tutorial on high-key using white seamless than what Zack Arias posted on his blog. Seriously. Take time to read it and I think you will be off and shooting in no time. With 67.5% fewer curse words. http://www.zarias.com/?p=71 The flickr group is here: http://www.flickr.com/groups/seamlessandcyc/
I think everyone has covered off the thickness of the paper thing and the need to blast the seamless to be 1.5 to 2 stops over your exposure to make sure the whites are white, but there is one more thing to be careful of, and I do not think Zack covers this in his blog. I found this out the painful way when shooting an ad series where I didn't have the option to go back and re-shoot. WATCH OUT FOR BACKGROUND WRAP By this I mean if your strobes are blasting away at your seamless, AND their light is also hitting your brown wall, then the light bouncing off the wall may wrap around your seamless and / or your model. The higher the strobe intensity, the higher the probability of wrap. Remember that when you over expose something (i.e., a grey or brown background), you are blasting its tonality up into the white territory, but you are not changing the color. So when that light's intensity drops as it moves away from the background, it's tonality will drop back down into a level where you can start to see its color. Here is an example, and is what happened to me. I needed to shoot a bunch of paramedics in uniform for an ad series we were running. All the medics where wearing a white shirt and the art director wanted a white background so he could add the text for the advertisement. Having forgotten the white seamless, I nuked a yellow wall to get a white exposure (must have been 3 or 4 stops above my model exposure level), then put the medics in front of the wall / background strobe. When we were doing PP, we noticed that all the shots had a yellow tone to the skin and to the white shirts. It took me a while to figure out where the yellow was coming from, because in the shots the background wall is pure white. We were able to salvage the shots with color adjustment, but they still looked a little off. So if you are not careful, the same could happen to you if your strobes are hitting the wall at high power. You should be able to see if this is so from a set up shot. If there is white on the normally brown wall, then you need to adjust your strobes (or gobo them). Another tell tale would be a brownish colour on the edges of your seamless. You still might get brown tones on your model, depending upon power levels and distances involved. Not sure if this is what happened to you or not, but is something to keep in mind.
