Hi, just wondering if i can use plan cotton clean black or white bed sheets for my back drop or should i buy a professional photographic paper back drop from the camera shop.
thats what I use lol king size flat sheet from wallmart 12 bucks.... put a couple inches distance between it and the wall and a desk labp on the front as a background light and you can't really see through them. My profile pic is in my gallery explaining the setup.
Sheets are usually too thin and let too much light pass through (causing both black & white to be gray). A better option is to buy muslin (white) or felt (black) from your local fabric store. For headshots you won't need more than a yard or two, but for full length you'll want atleast 4 yards.
I go to GoodWill and get sheets from there and fabrics, they are brilliant, you are can all sorts for about 3 dollars, I have all sorts of thicknesses and colours an sizes and a few push pins an voila!
I tried the black felt, but don't like it very much. It holds wrinkles too well, and mine reflects some light instead of eating it up. Now fleece on the other hand, seems to work pretty well. I have pink and white fleece and they work great. I need to buy some baby blue and black fleece to go along with. I have thought about adding rivets or rings to the corners and using the 3M "command" strips with the plastic hooks...stick them up where I need the corners to be, hang the backdrop, and when done just pull to undo the command strips. Haven't gotten around to any of this yet, but I need to as we just had a client (baby) born today and have two more due by the end of June.
Anything will work as BG material IF HANDLED CORRECTLY. Proper distance from sunbject to BG is step one - and that's the hardest part. Distance gives you the ability to light the BG seperately from the subject. You also need to shoot at an aperture that buts the BG OOF. F4 works well - but you need fast lenses to pull that off. F11 is popular in the studio and it's great for some subjects.
A wrinkly muslin is going to show it's wrinkles more at F11 and 2 feet behind the subject and side lit than it will at F4 6 feet back and lit head on.
I am just getting started on using backdrops, etc. But yesterday morning, I took a few pictures of my friends little girl and this one in particular was in my living room...using a piece of white cloth bought at Wal-Mart for about $3.00.
Its not perfect by any means....but it will do when you are like me. (broke as a joke)
