Shading a white seamles

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Name
Kardo Ayoub
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Hi All,

I am doing a shoot soon, the client needs it to be on a plain background

I was thinking of using a white seamless but instead of lighting it to be pure white, I need it to be a shade of greay at the top and pure white down the bottom and where the subject stands.

a bit like the background in this shot

light.jpg


to light the backgroun,I have 2x SB900 and I also have 2X lastolite ezyboxes and an umbrella, I have other lights to light the subject.

How would i set this up to get about 1.5-2 stop difference between the white bottom and the Grey top on the seamless.


Many thanks for your help.

Kardo
 
I'd go for either "a bit" or "none" on the background but I'd do it from the key light rather than trying to light a white background. White will go grey (or even black if you want) when there's a lower amount of light falling on it

Also on your shot, that looks like rear curtain sync to me, so exposure time may be relevent to the amount of ambient you're going to add in
 
I'm not sure that hotshoe flashes will do this, but the approach is to have a strip softbox fixed to a boom and angled to put light on the 'floor' and graduate the background.

The softbox needs to have a deep lip on it, as in the link, or if it hasn't got a deep lip you can fix a strip of blackwrap to the edge. Without that, you won't get a controlled graduation on the background.

The background isn't what I would call graduated in your example shot, but if you do want a graduated background then that's how it's done
 
You could try just letting the inverse square law do the gradation for you.

You need a deeper working area, and light the subject as normal (maybe stack one softbox above the other, with full length reflector on the other side) and move the background back so the natural fall-off creates the grey.

ISL says double the distance equals one quarter the light, which is your two stops, and while it strictly speaking doesn't work exactly like that with softboxes, that will give you a ballpark starting point. That is, if your subject is say 2m from the lights, then put the background at 4m.
 
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