First home studio almost sorted, background advice needed.

Morph3ous

Morph3ous

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I've a little money left in the pot after recently upgrading my body/lenses, and I'm thinking of buying some home studio lighting.
The Lencarta smart flash kit with umbrella and soft box seems the obvious choice, but I'm unsure on the background. I've been reading threads on this forum, and whilst I like the sound of the Lastolite Hilite, it's a bit out of my price range. I'm therefore looking at the paper roll option with the Lencarta background frame. I'm not sure which paper to go for though. Can someone point me in the right direction?
 
Paper would be my first choice for most situations (anything except black) but do you have enough shooting space for paper? If you go for paper, be aware that it's very easily damaged and can be quite costly over time.

If you don't have enough shooting space, the Hi-lite is a very good option
 
How come paper is better to use than fabric?
 
jimmy83 said:
How come paper is better to use than fabric?
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It's completely flat, no creases or wrinkles. Fabric (pure cotton anyway) is OK but paper is easier because of this.

Also, if you're just lighting a small area of it, say with a honeycomb or similar (which creates a sense of depth that's lacking in either black or white backgrounds) the flat surface makes it easy to get an attractive result.
 
Thanks Garry, wouldn't you end up using a lot of paper as it would rip and craze eventually wouldn't it?
 
Yes, it rips, creases and dents very easily. And the problem is that it starts life at 11m long, which sounds fine but if you have to cut off say the last 2m every time it becomes unusable you soon run out of usable remaining length. You can get it in 50m rolls, much more economical to buy but initially expensive and very heavy.

A lot of people use vinyl itself, search this forum for recommendations. Bear in mind though that the vinyl designed for photography is both heavy and expensive, and the 'cheap' alternatives may be unsuitable, whatever the sellers may say.
 
Ok very pod advice there thanks. Think once ie got a few iam going to start with some basic fabric or bed sheets then get a paper setup.
 
Thanks. Part of the reason I was asking for paper recommendations was to work out the total cost of a 'paper background' vs the Hilite. If there wasn't much in it, and the paper obviously needs regular replacements, I may hold off for a bit and get the Hilite. But if the paper was reasonably cheap I may go with that for the short term...
 
Vinyl hands down, I personally use paper at the moment but when my rolls have run out I'm going to replace them with vinyl. Paper tears, creases and once it's dirty it's ruined. A few friends use vinyl and have have kids play with paint on them, all they needed to do was to get a bottle of bleach and rub the paint out. Simples :)
 
i used to use paper rolls and still have some rolls, i found them ok at the time, but when i redone my studio i went to a local sign company who printed large trailor banners for lorries, i got a piece of their plain white that they use approx 3mtr x 6mtr and got them to stitch a loop at one end to feed a pole through only cost me £90, although a wee bit darer than the paper its well worth the money as it just wipes with a cloth , i have it 2 years now and its still good as new, hope this helps :)
 
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i use paper, all day everyday.its nice that if dirty or damaged i can just cut it off and pull off another 2mtrs. but like others say, can become expensive if your shooting loads. i use Calumet background rolls of Arctic White and love them, i use them for all hi-key shoots and also for grey background shoots! wouldn't walk away from them anytime soon. i also use an industrial banquet roll of white for my product shots as its smaller and easier to set up. both on stands very similar to the lencarta ones.
 
Thanks for the comments. I'll look into the calumet stuff.
 
Reviving an old thread because I can't make up my mind. I have no studio light experience, and so lots of questions. Please bear with me.

I've got a 430EX2 and am pretty set on buying a 2 head smartflash kit to go with it. It's the background that's troubling me.
I cant decide between a support system with vinyl or the Hilite. Mostly because the Hilite is so expensive.
If I bought a Hilite, could the 430 light it alone, whilst I used the smartflash heads in front of the subject?

Also, I'll mostly be taking pictures of my children (amongst other family members) so I'll have to add the train kit to the Hilite, pushing up the price even more, if I want to take pictures of them sitting/lying down. It may therefore be much cheaper to go with a support setup with a vinyl background. This would be very similar to the Hilite I guess, but I'm concerned about how much room you need. I understand you have to increase the distance between the subject and the background to avoid shadows. Is that right? What's the 'usual' distance between background and subject? I watched a photographer at my daughters nursery once, and I'm sure they were using vinyl and they didn't take up that much room. A couple of metres or so? Sound right?

Advice greatly appreciated. Thanks.
 
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Are you really sure that you want to shoot against a blown white background? It will be simpler and much cheaper if you don't...

The one big advantage of the Hi-Light is space. But the train, IMO is a bit of an afterthought and an expensive 'solution' that doesn't really solve anything, because unlike the Hi-Lite it isn't backlit and therefore requires 2 extra lights - which means that you will need a total of 4 flash heads just for the background.

A viable alternative would be to use 2 SmartFlash heads for the background, fitted with background reflectors. The background reflectors cost £50 each, so the total cost of using that method would be £314 for the lighting, plus 2 low level backlighting stands, plus of course the background itself and its support frame - not cheap but much cheaper than the Hi-Lite route + 4 flash heads. The background reflectors are out of stock but they will be back at the end of the month or slightly before.

Then of course you need lighting for the front subjects, but you need that anyway.
 
Thanks for the reply Garry. So ideally you're saying two light sources should be used to light a background? (Say a vinyl one for example) plus whatever light source for the subject.
Browsing through the home setup thread there are a number of pictures showing speedlites (et al) being used to light a white background, tending to agree with this. Take the first few images by GR3Z for example. Great images and the sort of work I'm looking to be able to achieve (amongst other things)

I always assumed i'd be looking at a two head Smartflash kit for the subject lighting, and then speedlights for the background. I just didn't know if one speedlight would be enough. After hearing your advice, i'm thinking an additional speedlight (something cheap like a Yongnuo) would go with my 430EXII for the background lighting, with wireless triggers firing all 4 light sources.

It still leaves me wondering about the background type, but i'm leaning towards the support stands and vinyl option at the moment, based on price and the reasons you mentioned above regarding the hilite and train.

What dimensions are required to shoot with this type of setup? Again, the pictures in the thread above seem to suggest not that much. People are going it in their lounges!
 
Thanks for the comments, only issues with using speedlites i had to do a lot more pp work on the bg to get it all white as the speedlites dont spread the light as well. but since I started that thread, I've upgrade to two smartflashes for lighting the my bg, which is now artic white paper, I use the std reflectors which work fine imo, Ive just bought a 120cm Octobox for the key light, I just need to get an additional flash head now to complete my three light setup,

http://www.talkphotography.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=383468


Note: all done in my lounge, bit of a ball ache putting up and tho, be nice to be able to leave it setup,
 
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Speedlites are usable but not ideal. As Graeme says, they don't spread the light as well (or as evenly) as studio heads. Also, they don't have a lot of power, which means that they will be running at pretty much full blast, you'll have studio flash that has recycled in a fraction of a second but you'll be waiting for ever for the speedlites to recycle, which is frustrating and which will lose shots. And they don't have modelling lamps, which means that there will be a lot of trial and error.

As for space requirements, there isn't a straightforward answer to this. If you're working with limited space you need to be very careful not to put too much light on the background, the more space there is the less critical this becomes. Because of this, you will either ruin shots by overlighting the background or leave yourself with time-consuming PP work because the background was under-lit,or lit unevenly.

For me, life is too short to faff around doing avoidable PP work - but if you enjoy it then your priorities may be different to mine.
 
Thanks again.

Hmmm - not sure my budget can stretch to a 3 head smartflash kit. I've only got about £500 to play with.

Whilst its not ideal, surely I can at least get started with a 2 head kit, my 430EXII (and perhaps another cheap speedlite) along with vinyl backgrounds? I'm quite handy with LR3 and CS5...
 
Just going back to a previous comment on this thread about paper backgrounds, I use these at events and put a strip of vinyl across the bottom for guests to pose / walk on. This preserves my paper and means I can be confident about my lighting consistency as my guests only have a 1.1m wide strip to pose on.

Just thought this might help a little with the BG choice....

Dean
 
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