Photo Backdrop Sizes

cpeters · Feb 9, 2006

Good evening all,
I am in the process of making my own studio, primarily for fun and to learn. As I am doing this on the cheap :mrgreen: I am learning as much as I can here and from elsewhere on the web. I have been reading on how to make your own photo backdrops and stands and am about to build one. My question is, just how wide and tall do they have to be? I see portables in the denny catalog that are 4'X6' yet all the diy sites seem to say it has to be 10'X16'. Im making it primarily for portrait shots and posssibly as I get better some head shots. As always any and all help is appreciated! Will have more questions as I go so I guess your now forewarned! :mrgreen::mrgreen:

Corry · Feb 10, 2006

cpeters said:
Good evening all,
I am in the process of making my own studio, primarily for fun and to learn. As I am doing this on the cheap :mrgreen: I am learning as much as I can here and from elsewhere on the web. I have been reading on how to make your own photo backdrops and stands and am about to build one. My question is, just how wide and tall do they have to be? I see portables in the denny catalog that are 4'X6' yet all the diy sites seem to say it has to be 10'X16'. Im making it primarily for portrait shots and posssibly as I get better some head shots. As always any and all help is appreciated! Will have more questions as I go so I guess your now forewarned! :mrgreen::mrgreen:

I made my own studio, too! For the backdrop material, I used a 20' by 10' peice of muslin.

Here is a link to the article I wrote about how I made my backdrop.

Hope that helps a little.

http://www.thephotoforum.com/node/20

cpeters · Feb 10, 2006

Core_17,
Great post! Thank you. My question though is does it have to be 10X12? Can I make it smaller. I have some limited space constraints, so am hoping i can get away with half that. Thanks!

Rob · Feb 10, 2006

Really, the space and size depends on what you need to do. If you're doing a single model, then 6' x 10' should do it, especially if you're mainly doing head, head+shoulders, head to waist shots.

I've managed a shoot hanging cloth over the real curtain rail in my house before!

Rob