Favorite backdrop material?

[DaveAndHolly219]

I currently have two vinyl backdrops but I really dislike how reflective they are when using flash.

What material do you guys prefer for your backdrops?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Designer]

What material do you guys prefer for your backdrops?

I tried cloth once, and even with ironing, there are still waves in it. I bought a roll of backdrop paper and I can't really say that it's my preference, since that's all I have now, but paper doesn't have those wrinkles and waves that you see in cloth.

I bought this: https://savageuniversal.com in "Thunder Gray" as I recall, or some medium gray anyway.

I bought it through Amazon because we have Amazon Prime so there was no extra shipping charges.

The paper comes in lots of colors and several widths, and you'll need either a backstop stand or some method of holding the roll up. The roll goes up out of the way, and you just pull down what you need, and when the bottom gets dirty/torn/wrinkled you just cut some off the bottom and pull down more.

Speaking of color, I chose gray because with the right light on it, it can go to black, white, or any color you want with gels. Such as pink, if you get my drift.

 

[KmH]

Seamless paper.
Fashion Gray, Thunder Gray, Focus Gray, Storm Gray, Soft Gray, Charcoal Gray, Slate Gray, Smoke Gray, because as Designer points out a gray background is easily made any variety of colors using gels on background lights.

 

[Derrel]

I like white or gray or black seamless paper from Savage.That is my preferred background for studio setups. I like Thunder Gray, or as Canadians call it,Thunder Grey. Thunder Gray is very versatile, and can be "lifted up" to pure white with a lot of light shot onto it, and a lot less light on the foreground subject that is exposed for! Thunder Gray can also be "driven down to black" by keeping light off the backdrop, and putting more light on the foreground subject, and then exposing properly for a relatively bright foreground subject.

In the past five years, I have begun using more fabrics, and even some shower curtains! Seriously: there are now a lot of cool new shower curtain patterns that when stretched, make specialty backdrops. Blanket-wise, things like microfiber or plush blankets from Target.

I also do not mind curtain materials... this is curtain fabric and one 100 Watt-second Brown Line M90 flash and a 28x28 softbox coming in from the left, f/8 at 1/100 second with a 105mm lens.

 

[DaveAndHolly219]

Seamless paper it is! Thanks all!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[tirediron]

Huh... I'm guess I'm the odd man out (what a surprise! ). I much prefer fabric. I have a number of muslins (I also have more than my fair share of paper), and while wrinkles can be a problem, pulling the fabric tight on the stand gets rid of 90% of them, a hand-held fabric steam (part of my kit) like this gets rid of the rest in no time. A big part of the reason I prefer fabric is that it stores in a small space; paper requires 9' of space...

 

[Designer]

A big part of the reason I prefer fabric is that it stores in a small space; paper requires 9' of space...

My roll of paper is currently being stored in my garage because the ceiling is 9'.

I still have my grAy bedsheet that I bought for a backdrop, and I might use it again someday. I think it would work better as a REALLY WRINKLED backdrop with some random colors streaked in. (maybe ?) Unfortunately, it is a "no-iron" fabric, so I don't even know if I can get it to wrinkle beaudaciously.

As you begin to shop for seamless paper, keep in mind the size the roll. Yes, you can get narrower rolls, but remember; you can't add paper to the edges and still have seamless.

BTW: my 9-foot-wide roll was not actually wide enough for our family group portrait. 13 of us, crammed in like sardines, with some in front of others, you can still see the edges of the paper in the shots.

 

[tirediron]

...BTW: my 9-foot-wide roll was not actually wide enough for our family group portrait. 13 of us, crammed in like sardines, with some in front of others, you can still see the edges of the paper in the shots.

Three wide and two deep is about all you can reasonably do on a 9' wide background without running into problems.

 

[Derrel]

What I like the most about darker seamless paper is that it can be lighted a litle bit, and that creates a gradient from light gray, to darker gray, to darkest grays or even to solid black. Because a darker seamless papper does not reflect a lot of the light that hits it, it makes it farless easy to work with and not get a lot of reflected light coming back toward the subject.

Black seamless paper has low reflectivity, and gives a rich, saturated color when a gel is fired onto it at low flash power. This B&W photo of Jenni was made with a purple gel fired onto black seamless papper (the purple-looking gel color turns from purple to BLUEwhen photographed, weird!). The very low-powered flash that hit the background paper gave a nice range of tones when converted to B&W.

The thing about paper is that is shows little to no texture when the DOF is enough to keep the backdrop within the overall depth of field; actually having too much DOF is a big issue with APS-C sensors and flash f/stops like f/8,f/9,f10,f/11,f/13.


f/7.1 at ISO 400, 130mm zoom shot