Background Paper???

Quick question for the group...where do you typically purchase your paper from, what sizes do you typically purchase, what colors do you recommend?

While i am in Australia, so I can't help with location, but...

I usually buy 2.7 x 11m rolls (11' x 37') rolls. There are half width rolls, but i find them a little useless for most things except head & shoulders portraits, so it is worth getting the wider ones.

First place to start with colours is usually a white and a black so you can have a nice contrasty background. Then you can add nice colours like a blue or green, purple, red, grey... well you get the idea.

Hope this helps.

Rob

I would get at least a 9 foot wide roll. it is hard trying to shoot with limited width. I started with white, but a black roll is next. i like to buy local becasue it's only about $50 USD and there's no shipping and waiting.

I agree with bolantej. I think ours is 10 feet wide. All we have used is white in paper and it was $50 locally. That turned out to be the same price as online after shipping...

Thanks for the great advice. I gotta tell you though..I was looking at white paper online and white apparently comes in about 22 different shades. Is there that big of a difference in the color or will a custom white balance take care of it?

Here
http://www.bhphotovide​o.com …x=20&Submit.y=9​&Submit=Go

22 shades of white??

As long as you expose it about 1-2stops above your subject you aren't going to see it anyway. Just go for an Arctic white, or something like that. As long as it doesn't say eggshell or something you should be fine.

You don't want to have to custom white balance you background, as you would compromise your subject. Get the background right so you can focus on your model.

There about 55 colours in the Colorama range alone, so there IS alot of choice out there.
You can usually request swatch books for companies that do alot of paper colours, so that might be worthwhile.

Rob

Of the two different white papers that Savage puts out, their brightest is called Super White and I believe this uses a coating to give it it's bright white. They also have a White paper. For most portrait type work, using a white paper that has brighterns added is not a good choice because of the reflective properties of the paper.

I've been buying Savage seamless paper for years and it's good stuff. The other company that makes paper that I'm aware of is Superior Paper at http://www.superspec.c​om …1/pages/seamles​sindex.htm
They have a lot of different papers that look pretty neat and I would like to try out one of these days. B&H doesn't sale Superior seamless paper though and I've not found it local.

When you order the 107" paper, UPS and Fed-X charge more because they consider it over sized. It us to cost about $18 for 3rd day Fed-X but that was before gas prices doubled, so I don't know what they are charging now. As the others have said, if you can find it local, it might be the same cost or close to it.

Mike

By the way Rob... Where do you buy these things in Australia?

I am going to make some search through the forum and may be to create some new topics to find out where people buy photographic stuff in Australia.

A different opinion here ...

I found paper a waste and expensive. The lighter ones can only be used once and I was spending as much time playing with the dang backgrounds as I was developing posing ideas. Not to mention they absolutly dictate the floor in your camera room.

Have you thought of fabric or painted fabric?
Do you know the track systems hospitals use for their privacy certains? We purchased a lot of that and built a system of hanging fabic which could be moved in and out at will. We could easily choose between 12 different backgrounds. And we could hang any fabric we wanted to make up any combo of the 12 choosable backgrounds. Just to keep things fresh, my assitants could change any 4 of the 12 at any time just to challenge me to work them in. It was fun.

Llaamaboy, I've not heard a lot of people that have had problems with seamless paper. The stuff is pretty tuff and as long as you don't let it get away from you when unrolling, works pretty good. I've shot a lot of dogs on seamless and even with them jumping up and down onto the platform it covered or back and forth when I had it on the floor, it didn't tear very often. When it did, I just tear off the 4 feet or so of paper on the floor and pulled down some more. I've yet to go through a whole 12 yard roll of any one color (although I'm close on my gray and blue rolls). And I know if it can take abuse by dogs, it should be able to stand up to most people without problems.

Seamless paper has some advantages over cloth... for one, it is smooth and wrinkle free, even when you iron them, most muslins are going to show texture. And with a smooth background, you don't have to be so careful about throwing it out of focus as you do with muslin at times. Also, the way it reflects light is different. There are more colors to choose from, including gradiant colors and chrome key colors.

Both paper and cloth have their places, pros and cons. I wouldn't say paper was a waste though. Far from it in a lot of situations.

Mike

Fair enough and nicely stated.

For me..I already have a very large piece of Muslin. It is an off white in color and no matter what I do it tends to show the texture in photographs (room size prevents me from achieving great bokeh). It was one of the reasons that I was looking at paper as an alternative.