do you need a curve for infinity?

[corbystock]

Hi guys, just a quick question that was running through my head when i should have been sleeping - if you're going to over expose the background .5 of a stop to 2 stops to get the infinity look on a curve, do you still need the curve ? Could you not still get the same effect with a white wall & floor & plenty of light? Probably a silly question, otherwise why do they use a curve in the first place but it's just one of those questions that is bugging me & i'm not able to test the theory.

cheers all.

 

[DiddyDave]

The curve helps to get the light spread evenly over the floor/vertical - but you're right, if you expose for the floor and it's white, the background will be white too (assuming it's not miles away) so the curve as such isn't vital - however, you need less light to light a curve and the floor/wall difference in exposure is less too - so wherever possible I use a curve

Now go get some sleep

HTH

DD

 

[corbystock]

cheers DD

 

[HoppyUK]

A curve helps to get the light even, and it also gives wider coverage in a small space. If it was flat, it would have to be massively wide not to run out before the edge of the frame.

 

[specialman]

We bought one of those infinity tables for work but find we get just as good results using a roller background that has a slight curve in it. Get the light right and you can pretty much blast anything out to white.

 

[Big Dog]

I usually use an infinity curve for all my high key stuff. My decsion to do so was re-inforced at the weekend when I was ina studio that didn't have a curve and had virtually run out of white paper roll. I imporovised and used a white wall and laid about 9' of paper on the floor. I set my light meter to taek incident readinsg when I was settig up the lighing as I usually do but the images were awful. Unfortunately the wall reflected more light than the paper on the floor did - I didn't think about it as I should have at the beginning and perhaps should have taken a few reflected readings off different types of surfaces as well. The result, My High key foregrounds are usually spot on but in this instance, it was quite 'muddy' in some images due to the difference in reflective quaility between the paint on the wall and the paper on the floor. Moral of the story for me is no curve, no high key shooting.