Why not work with green screen?

[lloyd.turner]

Some photographers are comfortable with using it. I understand the rest who don't even try it, because the beginning isn't the easiest, nor photoshop or greenscreen. I used a beige background to photograph my wife and daughter, but that's about it of my experience with screens for photoshoots.

 

[pixmedic]

we have a green screen, and have actually used it for a few clients. its not terribly popular, but cheap enough to make it worth getting one to keep around just in case. its a novelty, and should be treated as such.

I don't think I'd ever call it a novelty. The way I see it, if I can emulate natural looking lighting conditions in the studio with gels and such, I can fake a shot on a green screen and use any number of my own landscape shots, blurred in a seperate layer in photoshop to exactly the type of bokeh I want, and no one would EVER know. It eliminates lots of issues like glare, depth of field balance, white balance issues, flash power being drowned out by the sun, cloud and tree shadows on faces, etc. and also adds a lot more control (can add wind in any direction with fan, or no wind at all), as well as being able to put the shot on any background. Photoshop makes it easy to work with (though I wish Lightroom did it for workflow's sake), and there are cheap alternatives to Photoshop that can do the same stuff. I've also been cruising Flickr quite a bit and there seems to be no correlation in popularity between shots with natural lighting and backgrounds and those with obvious artificial lighting and natural backgrounds. Some obvious composites are circulating about, but you could definitely do it where no one would notice. I think if I was limited on space and time and already had a usable background shot, any serious client who wanted a portrait of that type I'd composite instead of going on-location 9 times out of 10. You just have to spend a little extra time in the setup to get the studio lighting to match up with your natural looking background, so it's probably prudent to choose the exact background before you start shooting.

It also means I can come up with my settings prior to the shoot. While I have tons of practice by now shooting manual on the fly and adapting to changing light conditions, there is still some variation and while easy to process, a studio set will have pretty much exactly spot on exposure every time because after a few test shots, I know exactly what sets of settings (basically, a shallow dof arrangement and a deep dof arrangement) to use for the entire length of the session.

There is one pretty big negative though, it takes a little bit of the personal touch out of the shoot itself I think. Most people (i.e. *not* professional models) are much more natural and easier to pose in a real-world place than standing or on a chair in a relatively small studio. Working with people "in the field" is part of the fun for me, and part of why I like to do weddings to some degree (the money helps...haha).

Then again, I don't currently own a green screen as much as I want one, so my opinions on composites are simply theories for now.

the green screen is just another tool we use. I mainly consider it a novelty because it is not often asked for, and we do not really "upsell" it very much. most people that are looking for portraits done either want a specific location, or are happy with a simple black or white background. when we got the green screen, we also purchased a CD with 2500+ backgrounds, and we've probably only used a handful of them in the last year.

if you really want a green screen, they are fairly inexpensive.
Westcott Digital Green Screen Photo Kit 417 B&H Photo Video

ours is larger than this one, but if you already have the stands for other backdrops, the chroma key screen itself isnt very expensive.