Homemade background colour experiment.

[RoonSmits]

Hi,

Last week I was a bit bored and decided to try to create a background cloth to experiment for portraiture. I intend to use this background for portrait shots to complement the black, grey and white backgrounds I already have in case a more cloudy/structured background (in earth colours) is desired. Next I thought to try some gels to see if it would be possible to change the colour of the background.

Don't think my McGyver approach of creating a background would give me something that would last me a life time, but that was fun. First I went to a local household shop and got me a cheap (since it's only for testing) white cotton bed sheet, next off to the local DIY shop for a few cans of spray paint. When I got home I hung up the sheet along a wall in my garage and started to spray random patterns in 4 or 5 colours. After 1 hr of drying time I took the "new" background cloth to my small studio and I started shooting my favorite model mr penguin (just don't pinch it's right hand or it will start to dance sing "Ice, ice baby . . . .") , first results were rewarding enough to continue testing.

Since I wanted to visualize what a gel can do to this background I decided to document this a bit. Mind you this is nothing scientific, just for my own reference. All settings are written down so the results can be reproduced at a later time. The more I played with the gels the more I realised that most of the results aren't really usable due to the hard/extreme tones. If the french flag/gobo would be removed then the results would be a lot more flat due to light spill of the softbox on the background.

This is the gallery of the final results.
The first 7 pictures are done a Falcon Eyes 110W flash head without a gel, power was set from 1/8 to full power in 7 steps, this was also used for all other exposures, only with gels, so slightly less light hit teh background actually, but I ignored that for simplicity sake.

The first image below is a schematic view of how the test was done (incl. parameters), the second image is what the experiment actually looked like.





Like I say this is not intended to write down a scientifically correct procedure, it is just for my own use, but some might find it useful.

cheers,
Ronald

[coalcliff]

you have been busy!

Thanks for the report.

[RoonSmits]

I think most of the work got into coming up with a repeatable work flow.
Taking those 77 pictures of mr Penguin wasn't too bad he was pretty easygoing

[RoonSmits]

My ISP messed up and provided me with a different IP address. Strange though if like they say I should have a fixed IP address.

Sorry for the inconvenience, but the gallery and images will not show until this is fixed (hope by the end of today).

Cheers,
Ronald

[camerasam]

Yes, just goes to show how much the colour of lighting, can effect the final result.

Nice penguin !

[RoonSmits]

Originally Posted by camerasam

Yes, just goes to show how much the colour of lighting, can effect the final result.

Nice penguin !

Thanks for the reply, yeah mr Penguin is my favorite victim ehhhrr model I mean

I'll have to dig a bit (forgot where I saved those files), but when I made my 2nd background I used a video cam to create some sort of "How to". As soon as I have more time (need to finish a wedding reportage first) I'll see if I can post the "How to" on this page.

Cheers,
Ronald