Anyone have experience shooting against a blue/green screen?

[waldograce]

I’ve been asked to do a shoot in May and then insert different backgrounds behind the shoot.
It sounds like a standard blue/green screen setup, but since I’ve never done it I was wondering if anyone has and if they have any advice.
I don’t think I’m going to make enough off the shoot to buy something like the Ultimatte Advantage plug-in for Photoshop, and I don’t know how much more of this I’ll do.
If I though I was going to do more of this type of work I’d spend the money.
Any advice or tips for pulling this off?
Thanks.

[dandan]

you had better have PS, make sure the bg has NO wrinkles, and stop the model from wearing anything the same color as the BG.

ive done greenscreen before, but for video not photos.

[seXeh]

Make sure you light your subject seperately from the blue screen.
If possible, try and move them as far forward from the screen as you can.

The reason: you usually don't want the green/blue spilling onto your subject, and you don't want to be casting too many shadows onto the screen.

And of course, try and keep the blue/green a consistant shade.

Get the lighting right and you should have no problem using the magic wand tool to get rid of the blue (will prolly have to tweak a bit of course).

Oh yeh, make sure your model isn't wearing anything too shiny (eg. sunglasses) as it can be a pain to fix!

Just my thoughts from experience.

Good luck.

[Jon, The Elder]

Go to www.seanet.com for a start. Or just google "Chroma Key".

As stated you will have to play a bit with lighting and subject-to-background distances.

Green seems to give better masking qualities. I believe you can buy Blue/green paper backdrop from Roscor.

Check with a local TV station - sometimes the Prop manager will give tips.

[waldograce]

I've got CS2 so that shouldn't be a problem.
No wrinkles.
Light the background separately and consistently.
Leave a good distance between the subject and the background.
Green works better than blue.
Don’t let the subject wear green or anything shiny (or had to fix) for the shoot and watch for spill.
Check out www.seanet.com for more info and check with the local TV station for more tips.
Think I’ve got it.

Going to try and set up some test shoots before I do the real thing.
If things work I'll let you know.
Thanks for the pointers.

[triangle]

Tried it and hated the results.

1. It took way too much time to do the work in PS.

2. My lighting was poor. (which resulted in different shades of green - nightmare)

3. Had way to much bleedover. My subjects were too close to the screen which caused this. Their hair had green cast onto it everywhere.

4. On the hair issue, the green was between every strand of hair as well. That was difficult and near impossible to replace.

I was going to try this and offer several types of backgrounds. I have a disc with multiple backgounds, mostly muslin types. And a large 15' green roll of paper sitting in my office. Send me an email if you want to purchase, you pay shipping.

I have decided to shoot what I want behind the subject. I will purchase several more backdrops and use different outdoor scenes before ever doing that again. But that was my decision. I wish you the best of luck but my time is not worth the results. I spend enough time cropping and getting my other adjustments down for the final product.

[waldograce]

Tried it and hated the results.

1. It took way too much time to do the work in PS.

2. My lighting was poor. (which resulted in different shades of green - nightmare)

3. Had way to much bleedover. My subjects were too close to the screen which caused this. Their hair had green cast onto it everywhere.

4. On the hair issue, the green was between every strand of hair as well. That was difficult and near impossible to replace.

I was going to try this and offer several types of backgrounds. I have a disc with multiple backgounds, mostly muslin types. And a large 15' green roll of paper sitting in my office. Send me an email if you want to purchase, you pay shipping.

I have decided to shoot what I want behind the subject. I will purchase several more backdrops and use different outdoor scenes before ever doing that again. But that was my decision. I wish you the best of luck but my time is not worth the results. I spend enough time cropping and getting my other adjustments down for the final product.


Well they want some locations behind the models that their budget won't support (not just a few different muslins to choose from.) They are going to provide the images for the backdrops.
That why I was wondering if anyone had experience with any of the software packages out there. Something to make it less painful (like digitalanarchy or Ultimatte Advantage.)
I did find a pretty good thread on it here:
http://www.photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=88913&highlight=green+screen