samples of my gelled backgrounds

First off...I'm new at this and need tons of help. Secondly, I'm limited in my work space as well as my equipment to a degree.

That being said, tonight I decided to take a prolonged stab at gelling my cloth backgrounds, one black and the other white.

Below are several pics.

The first three pics contain no background light and are only there to show the effects of any spill from my key/fill onto my background. Since the background is black the effect isn't "as" noticeable.

The next 15 photos correspond to each gel in the the Rosco Color Filter pack, all taken with the same power. Even though I shot at f/6.3 the background is not in very good focus. Is this a focusing issue with my 5DM2?

Following that are two photos with the my WHITE background. The first of the pair contain no key/fill light, whereas the second has both. The spill is so bad it is pointless for me to use that background. I've tried feathering the light but no matter where I point my lights (literally), my off-white walls reflect back on to the background completely nullifying the gel effect.

That lead me to post photos of my entire work space to see if anyone can recommend any type of mods to my lights, their positioning, or anything else that could help.

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Nice BG colors, well done.

Sevan

Nice! I haven't played much with gels, I guess this is a good way to turn plain white cloth into various colored cloth! Nice setup, I wish I had the space for that!

Ummm...my point was that I wasn't satisfied with my results.

First there was the focusing issue, then there was the light spill issue making the use of my white background pointless.

I don't think there is a focussing issue with your camera per se. You appear to have focussed on the stool and if your background is not in focus to the degree you wish then it's a depth of field issue - close the aperture down for greater depth of field. This brings with it a power cost for ALL of your flashes; they would need to be turned up in power to compensate. An alternative would be to increase your ISO setting, permitting aperture change without power change on each flash unit.

Similarly, I see no issue with a "light spill issue" What you are getting isn't light spill bouncing from the walls/ceiling it's nothing more than the light from your main and fill lights passing the subject and hitting the background. The only ways to counter that are:

• Move main/fill lights closer to the subject. See below for explanation.
  
• Increase subject/background seperation, also moving the lights to maintain previous light/subject distance. Again, use the illustration and interpolate.
  

I think you're being too hard on yourself. I can't get in to all the specifics like whortleberry did, but I believe you will be pleased with your results when you do an actual shoot.

Nice studio setup! Width I had a place like that.

Whortleberry wrote in post #15504001
I don't think there is a focussing issue with your camera per se. You appear to have focussed on the stool and if your background is not in focus to the degree you wish then it's a depth of field issue - close the aperture down for greater depth of field.

I was already at f/6.3, shouldn't that be stopped down enough to get my background in focus? It was only 3-4 feet away.

Whortleberry wrote in post #15504001
Similarly, I see no issue with a "light spill issue" What you are getting isn't light spill bouncing from the walls/ceiling it's nothing more than the light from your main and fill lights passing the subject and hitting the background.

I'm confused. Using the WHITE background I definitely have a spill issue, unless I'm misunderstand what spill actually is. At one point I turned my fill light off and fired my key light 180 degrees away from the background. Basically right back at me. In the end it didn't matter where I pointed the key light. It still resulted in a variation of an awful shot because the light bounced off my basement walls still washed out my red background. So even if I moved the subject closer to the lights and at the same time away from the background, I would get the same yucky background effect. I think its a no-win situation. I'd just like to know if it is at all possible to modify my working environment to prevent this from happening.

Oh, and by the way, my work area is not as large as it seems although my wide angle shots seem otherwise.

I think I'm going to pick up a 9 foot roll of seamless grey paper today (yes, even though my floor is carpeted). At least with seamless paper, my background focus problem would be a non-issue.

Just don't know which shade of grey yet. Modeling Grey, Light Grey, Dark Grey?

I never realized that gelling could be so challenging!

coeng wrote in post #15504268
I was already at f/6.3, shouldn't that be stopped down enough to get my background in focus? It was only 3-4 feet away.

... the light bounced off my basement walls still washed out my red background.

Depth of field is a function of

• aperture used,
• focal length used and
• relative distances camera/subject and camera/background.

coeng wrote in post #15504271
I think I'm going to pick up a 9 foot roll of seamless grey paper today (yes, even though my floor is carpeted). At least with seamless paper, my background focus problem would be a non-issue.

Just don't know which shade of grey yet. Modeling Grey, Light Grey, Dark Grey?

I never realized that gelling could be so challenging!

Depending on the brand you buy, but savage makes a thunder gray that is nice. I think one of the other makers calls the same tone storm gray....

Unfortunately a shoot through umbrella and a brolly box with a domed front are going to cause uncontrolled spill, especially in a room with white walls. You might get different results using softboxes with grids to control the spill, but with the white drops its hard to get intense color from the gel because of the increase reflectivity of the white.

There are several things I'd take note of related to your setup and what you appear to be attempting.
First, the shoot through umbrellas are, by definition, diffused, uncontrolled light sources. The intent with using a shoot through umbrella is to get light everywhere. If you want to keep the light off the background you need to be using softboxes with grids. A large, gridded soft box can be aimed to minimize or eliminate spill onto the background. If spill is still a problem because of space limitations, then using a large V flat or similar gobo device can block the light from the background.

As for keeping the background in focus. You are running into the limitations of optics. Using a 5DII with a 70mm lens 10 feet from the subject according to DoF calculators such as the one I have on my iPHONE, F11 offers 4 feet depth of focus. At F6.3 the depth of focus is 2ft 3in.

The 70mm focal length is kind of short if you are planning only head and shoulders portraits. Unfortunately longer focal length means shallower depth of focus as same camera to subject distance. For example a 100mm lens at F6.3 at 10 feet has a DoF of 1ft, 1in. Which is just enough to keep the face in focus. Also, remember that the DoF is both in front and behind the point of focus. For the 100mm example its 6in in front and 7in behind. For the 70mm example its 12in in front and 15in behind. In both cases that rear distance is well less than the distance between the posing stool and the background.

Generally, when shooting portraits, its intended for the background to be out of focus. I don't remember seeing a post explaining why you've decided you want it in focus.