DIY Seamless White background

August 26th, 2009 · No Comments

Everybody wants to do this at least once right? We’ll after a few false starts I finally got a result which is pretty usable.

DIY White Seamless background test

Ok so the white shorts were a mistake but still the result pleased me given that it was just a white sheet and some boards painted white to stand on. Two SB-600 at half power are about level with the model (me) pointing one a bit up and one a bit down to cover the area behind me until it is almost blow — RGB around ~250, and under foot is a large (8×4′) board painted with flat white paint.

Key light is from an SB-600 in a 2′ softbox at camera right 45 degrees in TTL EV+ something or other. Giving me RGB of around 245 under foot. So it needed some levels to totally wash out the floor (which also contributes to loosing the right side of the shorts). Also a white brush to clean up bits of light stands (one bamboo, one

5001B Nano in the edge of the frame. But importantly no need to trace around the model or do masks, paths or any other kind of clipping!

Shot this all tethered of course as I really needed to see details with the eye dropper to see where I was up to.

Would never have got anywhere with this without reading Zack Arias’ guide , so many thanks to him.

Also by getting the lighting on the background sheet right I basically wash out all the wrinkles in the fabric so that was good, saved me some ironing.

Now I need to do this again with a better model and non-white clothing! Next time I’ll take some setup shots as well.

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