Wrinkles in Vinyl Backdrop Dilemma

Hi all,

I'm photographing dogs in front of a blue vinyl backdrop and having a hard time separating the background enough to hide the ripples in my backdrop.

Here's a picture of my setup:

SEPARATION is the key to making wrinkles less obvious...as well as longer FL and larger aperture.

But shooting with 17-40mm FL inherently adds to your problem!


Look at the amount of blur at 17mm vs. at 40mm, when the background is only 1m behind subject.
But look at how the blur intensity increases if you simply go to 80mm FL at f/2, with background 2 m behind subject.

I gave up on cheap background material for photbooths.
These guys: http://backdropoutlet.​com/ Will do anything you need. I order the Titanium cloth which is a fleece like material with grommets. It's expensive but no wrinkles and the grommets let me tie it to my stands.

This is a pretty crappy picture but you can see backdrop. The bottom is not tied off.

This one is 8'x8' and was about $180. It will probably outlast the rest of the gear.

Heya,

Distance between subject and background, so that the background is well outside of your depth of field, is one immediate way.

Very best,

In addition to doing what is suggested above, I'd guess that a good hair dryer could help soften the material so the wrinkles would be pulled out be the weight on the bottom. Add weight to the bottom bar if need be.

Cross lighting enhances the wrinkles. Lighting that is directly on the background and in line with the camera's centerline hides a lot of wrinkles in my muslin backgrounds. I usually do that with a light right behind my human portrait subjects. This could be tricky with animals, of course.

bigger background, more distance. if you want to use the wide angle, then a 10ft bg (wide) isn't out of the question, and you can do 5 foot wide polyester fabric, and get 3 yards of it, use A clamps on the material along the frame, and should be in pretty good shape. If you get slightly stretchy polyester fabric, you can pull the wrinkles out of it with the clamps.

Here is a good example, 57" wide, blue fabric

do you store your backdrops horizontal/flat on the ground? if so, don't, stand them up.

also try rolling it up the other way and letting it sit for a while, it should be enough to get rid of the waviness going the other direction.

Don't forget that a shorter focal length includes MORE background due to the angle of coverage. Move back a bit and you will have less depth of field AND less of the background so a lower likelihood of the wrinkles showing up in your image...not to mention less distortion in the faces of the dogs you photograph. Since that is what you're going for, use a larger background so you can increase the separation between the dog and the background. I use the same lens and wish they made it in a 1.8 version for even lower depth.

http://petapixel.com …roducing-pet-photo-booth/

Congratulations on your sucessful project.....