This Quick Shot question is from Nick Stewart who wanted to know what all the fuss is about grey backgrounds and some tips on lighting them.
First off I should say my studio is fitted with a seamless vinyl background which I absolutely love working with. With careful lighting I can make it pure white through to dark grey. I also have a roll of black muslin which I roll out if I need a black or light it with gels for some funky colour effects.
Much as I love my white seamless, if I only had the room/money for one background it would be grey. Why? Well watch the video to find out.
A couple of questions from the video.
What triggers were you using?
They’re the Yongno RF602
I love the gel idea who makes them?
I’m using the Strobist gels from Rosco Here's the link
Great, how do I attach them to the speedlite?
I use two little bits of blu-Tack at the edge of the flash. The gels stick every time.
Where have I seen that softbox before?
It's a Lastolite Ezybox and you might have seen it here
Where did you get the grey background?
You can pick them up from many places but mine came from my good friends at smick.co.uk. Here’s the link
Why didn’t you iron the background?
Good point. The reason was to show that creases can vanish when lighting the grey background to white.
So are you saying DON’T iron a muslin background.
No, always iron it before using it.
4 comments:
Thanks so much for the tips... Always useful. My question is about which grey tone to pick because I went to B&H and they have tons of different tones, take a look.
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/search?Ntt=grey+musline+seamless&N=0&InitialSearch=yes
I don't know why so many of them and which one sould be the one to use?
Thanks a lot
Wow that's a lot of choice.
First go for the widest width you can. Size really does count. I'd also avoid the warm/blue tone greys.
Other then that I'd get one that's not to dark and not to light.
What power would you have the speedlight in the softbox firing at?
Love the tutorials, keep up the awesome work. You should plug your blog and websites more often in your videos. I discovered you on youtube and wouldn't have found your blog and websites unless I had googled you, which I did.
I loved this tutorial in particular. I own a Canon T1i, 580EX II, continuous light softbox, and I recently bought a backdrop stand kit but decided to hold off on getting a muslin because I couldn't decide on what kind to get. This video answers that question. I just ordered a gray muslin, some gels, a PC cord, and a cowboy studio wireless transmitter so I can play around with getting my flash off camera.
The miscellaneous accessory reviews are nice too. I added the RS-7 strap and the Alpine Innovations cloth to my Amazon wishlist.
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