Black background what to use?

kiteninja

kiteninja

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Morgan Lee
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In a tight space.

I have a little studio and need something that'll absort some light or atleast work better then my piece of fabric from fabric land :).

I'm using a white vinyl at the moment but want something as equaily tough as that or soemthing i can put over the top as it is a pain to get down.

Thank you in advance :)
 
Black velvet has the best light eating properties.
 
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That would be hideously expensive.
 
I'm also after a black background, can anyone recommend a good place to get a decent sized bit of black velvet? Or are there any alternatives cheaper than the blackout material?
 
If you can exercise some control over spill from your lighting then you don't need the fabric to be "black hole" black. Here are a couple of self portraits shot today for a bit of practice, and to see whether I can really accomplish much at all in my tiny dining room. There is only one light being used, no reflector, and the background material is grey. The only difference between the shots is that I fitted a grid to the light in the second example, in order to control (prevent) spill onto the background.

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Here's the room layout for those shots. Other than swivelling the ugly dish to one side this is the setup as shot above....

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I'm sure you can apprecite that you would get a head start on "black" with any sort of dark cloth, without the need to go all the way to velvet. If you have enough space to control the lighting fully then you could turn a white background into black if you needed to.

The problems emerge if your subject is very close to the background and you can't separate the lighting for the subject from the lighting for the background. Then you will need the cloth to be pretty dark to begin with. Even so, velvet is probably overkill.

This was shot with (not very) black paper and has no edits. Lighting was a large softbox and a huge reflector for fill. No special effort was made to ensure the blackness of the background, and the light was not gridded...

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markseventphotos said:
60in wide 3.20 per meter,not sure if this is best as its Shiny Variety LOL
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/BLACK-CRUSHED-STRETCH-VELVET-FABRIC-MATERIAL-/270639627796?pt=UK_Crafts_Fabric_Textiles_SM&hash=item3f0360fe14#ht_2523wt_905
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AAAh seems to be dress material
Have You Got A "Dunhelm Mill" :shrug:around you,they do blackout out material,web site does not show velvet,but they always have "end of line " stock in their shops,worth a visit Maybe,next best option Black Bed Sheet,may not absorb as much light as velvet
 
All the explanations above are right.
Genuine black velvet is perfect but very expensive. 'Velveteen' is almost useless as it's too reflective. Black paper and black vinyl is too reflective, leaving you with a choice of black cotton (muslin) and careful control of lighting.

I appreciate that space is an issue, but sometimes it can all be done with light - this shot, with no PP work, had a white wall as a background but ended up close to black (I didn't want it totally black) simply because no light was hitting the wall.
blackisbeautiful.jpg
 
kiteninja said:
So rather then grabbing a black BG grab some grids for my sofboxes?
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It's an option which might work, but it really depends on your whole environment and lighting intent. A grid might help. Black cloth might help. Increasing distance between lighting and background will help. Closing distance between lighting and subject will help. Basically there are two approaches....

- make sure the background does not receive much light;
- make sure the background does not reflect much light.

Combining both approaches will make your life easier. Gridding worked in my example, but it altered the quality of light hitting the subject, increasing contrast and deepening shadows. That may be OK. It may not. A flag is another option. Space constraints make things tougher, which means you may need to take a belt and braces approach to killing the light coming back from the background, if you want deep black. One solution alone may not be enough.
 
tdodd said:
It's an option which might work, but it really depends on your whole environment and lighting intent. A grid might help. Black cloth might help. Increasing distance between lighting and background will help. Closing distance between lighting and subject will help. Basically there are two approaches....

- make sure the background does not receive much light;
- make sure the background does not reflect much light.

Combining both approaches will make your life easier. Gridding worked in my example, but it altered the quality of light hitting the subject, increasing contrast and deepening shadows. That may be OK. It may not. A flag is another option. Space constraints make things tougher, which means you may need to take a belt and braces approach to killing the light coming back from the background, if you want deep black. One solution alone may not be enough.
Click to expand...

:agree: It's also worth bearing in mind that honeycombs cut down the amount of light quite a lot too - not always a problem, but sometimes it is
 
Hmmm, I never had any problems with the eBay stuff and I suspect mine is probably classed as shiny. It was very cheap, and I've been using it for months. Sometimes if I haven't got rid of folds it takes me five seconds to run a black paintbrush over them in PP where they appear but honestly? It works a treat, even with the subject 1-2 feet from the background.

Mind you I use mine for low key work - if you wanted more light on the subject then maybe the reflective issues would come into play.
 
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I guess I need to practice more - I normally have about 6' between subject and wall with a reasonably large softbox about 2' away. I'll have a play with flagging/positioning before forking out on some backgrounds.

Cheers for the tips folks.
 
I took this shot yesterday when trying to light a nice brown background for a shoot, but the flash for the background didn't fire.

Now bearing in mind I was not going for a black background, I don't think this is far away. I have also not done any PP to blacken this at all.
The backdrop is a brown throw, that is a kind of furry fleece material.
I think even a black fleece may work for you as you need something dark to start with as you are working in a limited space. If 60" is wide enough for you it is £5.50 per metre on fleabay.

 
Space is a premium so moving away from the background isn't an option, I'm going to look at a set of grids and a new stripbox and see how i get on :).

I did get a roll of Black velvet from a gabrics company up the road they initally said they didn't have any but :) produced a roll the other day its not that wide but i might be able to stitch it together :) crude but it is really nice black velvet :) and they have quite a bit of it.
 
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