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One. Two. Three. White Background
How do you take a lovely portrait like this, on a perfect white background? Of course you'll need a beautiful model. But how would you handle the lighting? Just throw about 10000 Watts/Seconds on your seamless white and you're good.
Or use a single strobe and 5$ worth of white Coroplast. Read on for the full details.
Going with the theme of doing more with less, Tony Puerzer (Flickr) did it using just one Canon 580EX. (Well, actually there was also an SB26 involved, but the great background was all the 580). And no special backdrop involved, just the walls of his living room.
The two main challenges with creating a perfect white background are to shed a ton of light on the backdrop and to spread the light evenly.
I'll discuss power in a bit. As for power, speedlites can only go so far, so the flash would have to be set to full power.
As for even lighting, this is where the genius part comes in. Diffusion is achieved by reflection of the light, while flagging the light source from the camera.
To get that white evenly spread, Tony reflected the strobe off a board of Coroplast. The light then bounces to the wall to create an even area of light. Note that even on full power, the background is not overblown.
As for power - speedlites can only go so far, so both lights were on full power. The nice thing is that the onmibounce and bounced light from the Coroplast get pretty nice fill coming from all the walls in the room.
Speaking of backgrounds, Studio @ Home first assignment, which is all about backgrounds, is up and running.
More Reading:
- Full Scale Backdrops & Backgrounds
- Metering A White Background
- Getting A White Background with Speedlights
- White Seamless Tutorial :: Part 1 :: Gear & Space
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Comments
Nice!
I good result from a simple idea. It's much easier to get it right in camera and avoid the background removal in post processing.
Well Done!
Great Idea, but ...
... but to get a white wall I would have to paint over the children-induced stains. Or get a really, really strong flash.
BTW: Does anyone here in Germany know where to get the Coroplast? Wie heißt das bei uns?
re: Coroplast
For Coroplast, I would try http://www.modulor.de, they are one of the best material shops in Germany.
If all else fails, you can use foamboard which is much easier to find.
As for wall stains - HA!! this is what shooting at home is all about :) - use a sheet to cover the wall if it is too stained. Boosting the flash power will burn your background and may induce flare.
Hi Magnus, this coroplast
Hi Magnus,
this coroplast stuff is called "Stegplatte" in Deutsch, and is made of polypropylen. Unfortunately, it is not so widely available in Europe. But I saw it quite often used as a material for "Wahlplakate", so maybe some print or copy shops have it... And Udi is right with modulor.de, they got it, too!
Interesting article. Just to
Interesting article.
Just to let you know, a watt is a power unit, which is already "per second".
1 W = 1J / 1s
re: WS
This is correct, however, flashes are often measured in the WS power that they can produce. I am not sure on the exact mechanics of it, or why it is used that way.
I guess WS is a mesure of
I guess WS is a mesure of work (equivalent to an energy), just like you measure your domestic electric consumption in kilowatt.hour .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joule
however, whatever ;)
Light source on the subject
I am not fully getting this concept, as it looks like the main light source is light diffusion from down on a chair. So, how come the model above looks like her light source is from the upper-left? Was she actually sitting next to wall (rather than standing)? Please explain. Thanks for this post! Great technique; I just wish to understand it better.
re: Light source on the subject
Jackie, The main light is coming from a second flash (an SB26) of the far left of the setup image. this is the one making the shadows and creating the directionality of light.
The "first" flash is mostly taking care of the backdrop, it only acts as a secondary fill to the subject (first fill is the light coming from the omnibounce)
Did some experiments with
Did some experiments with this on Friday evening. Looks very promising.
For any readers in Colombia Coroplast is known as "cartonplas". Panamerican no longer stock it, in keeping with their long tradition of maintaining a "no hay" stock policy. However they did reveal that the wholesaler for it is TexComercial and you might find them in the Yellow Pages. If you're in Bogotá however, by happy accident I found it at Comercial Papelera (Cl 122 No 15A-43, other branches exist) for about USD 3 a sheet
As I said it looks promising. Cartonplas seems to be rather translucent so either doubling up on the thickness or painting the backside white might help kick more precious light back. (Hmmm. I wonder if there's any merit at all in just painting the top half?)
I need to do some more experiments with angling to get the illumination even, as well as figure out at exactly what point the flashing hilights kick in on the LCD.
Thanks for this.
i
The main light is coming
The main light is coming from a second flash (an SB26) of the far left of the setup image. this is the one making the shadows and creating the directionality of light.
Thanks for sharing that's a
Thanks for sharing that's a great idea
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