Crease free background?

bass_junkie83

bass_junkie83

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How do you guys make sure your cotton backgrounds are crease free when you put them up?

I was using a 3x5m backdrop at the weekend and couldn't for the life of me get the creases out. I had it washed and then gave it a light iron, left it stretched out to dry and stored it on a cardboard fabric roll two days prior to using it.
When i came to use it i stretched the backdrop and held it in place with clamps on the cross beam, then again on the legs of the stands at the bottom to keep it taught vertically.

But the backdrop is about a foot narrower than my stand so i cant pull it tight along the sides. I ended up with visible vertical creases from where it was originally folded from delivery. I tried the water spray bottle trick which didn't help either.

Am i missing a trick?
 
if it's white, nuke it with light (but not enough to give you nasty spill)
if it's black, nuke the subject with light (but not enough and gobo'd so as to light the background)

if it's grey, good luck with fabric...
 
Try soaking it in water for 1-2 hours then hang it on the line for about 5 hours on a nice warm day. Or if you live in England hang it up on your stand and use steam to try get the creases out.
 
It's a blue cloudy background, so it shows up quite badly.
I'll try giving it a good soak and hanging it out again, cheers.
 
Don't try and steam iron it with the iron heading downwards whilst it is on the stand - the water falling out of the iron can cause quite a nasty burn on your legs !!!

I never did get either my white or black backgrounds crease free - had to use lighting and pp work to sort them out - paper roll is much more useful.
 
lighting control and camera control :)

If it's black, I light the subject so as little light as possible spills onto the background. Shot with a high enough shutter speed it does not matter what the background is, you won't see it. Like this one. It was shot in our dining room and I didn't use a background at all, just made it disappear.

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Your blue cloudy one sounds to me like you are getting it in focus and flat lit which will show up the creases. Can you post some pics with exif so we can see settings?
 
Yeah it is in focus. Problem being it was more of an event rather than a proper portrait session. Space available was way too small which resulted in having to have the subjects right against the backdrop. Also there were a few large groups, so again had to keep them close to the background in order to fit.

Excuse the watermark, i had to rob it from my own gallery as i don't have the originals to hand.
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Off the top of my head, i was shooting at f8, 1/160th and iso 100.
 
That explains your problem perfectly. It's the distance from subject to background that's causing the problem and at f8 it's all going to be rather too sharp.

I'd have a look at some depth of field scales and see if there is any way you can get just enough space to lose the background a little in the focal range. HTH.
 
bass_junkie83

I always used a length of plastic downpipe from B&Q, it's cheap & about 4" dia. Iron the background very carefully to remove all the creases & then tape the top edge of the background along the length of the pipe.When you are finished just roll it up again, Result No more creases.:D

Regards Toonie
 
Toonie said:
bass_junkie83

I always used a length of plastic downpipe from B&Q, it's cheap & about 4" dia. Iron the background very carefully to remove all the creases & then tape the top edge of the background along the length of the pipe.When you are finished just roll it up again, Result No more creases.:D

Regards Toonie
Click to expand...

I like :)

The other solution may be one of those backdrops that has the four "spokes" going into each corner so it's tensioned. Think Calumet do them?
 
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