muslin care and tips

hi guys,

i have bought 2 muslins from lasolite and they came in the nice carrying bag. however, when i took them out, they are full of folding marks and creases. i am wondering what is the best way of making them ready for use and what i can do to avoid this happening again..

any tips will be helpful because i am total noob to studio gear

thanks

Snir

Not sure what they actually are or look like, or how large, but would it be practical to roll them up rather than fold, then cover them with a puul over cover?

Muslins are supposed to be wrinkled. They were designed to be draped and gathered to give a textured 3D look to the background. Big creases from folding are ugly, so most pros who use muslin roll em and stuff em so the wrinkles are as random as possible. For a relatively wrinkle-free background you can hang the muslin and let the wrinkles hang out or steam them out, but for truly wrinkle-free backgrounds you need seamless paper or canvas backgrounds which come on big rolls.

blonde wrote:
hi guys,

i have bought 2 muslins from lasolite and they came in the nice carrying bag. however, when i took them out, they are full of folding marks and creases. i am wondering what is the best way of making them ready for use and what i can do to avoid this happening again..

any tips will be helpful because i am total noob to studio gear

thanks

Snir

First, if your muslins are folded unfold them.

Second, don't try to make the wrinkles go away. Force the wrinkles to be random.

To get the wrinkles to be random, just stuff the backdrop in a bag just big enough to hold it and just leave it there. Ths will net a backdrop full of millions of micro wrinkles going every which way, but are not a photographic problem.

Done.

Enjoy! Lon

To get the creases out (from the folding), hang it in your bathroom next time your going to take a shower. The steam from the shower will help remove creases. Then stuff it in a bag like posted above.

thanks guys i understand that it is not supposed to be nice and ironed, i just don't like the folding marks. i am going to use steam to remove those marks and than just stuff it into the bag and create the small random wrinkles...

Contrary to what some people say, you can get wrinkle free muslins... without ironing.
For raw, bleached and dyed muslins (as long as they are colorfast) you can wash them. Then you tumble dry them on time (not the mosture content setting) until they are still just a bit damp. Then you hang it up on your background stand and let it finish drying. It will dry almost wrinkle free. Or course you can't do this with painted muslins, although you can wet down a painted muslin with a spray bottle or damp sponge.

To get out creases and folds, is lay a new muslin out in my backyard (as long as it's not raining) on the grass during the day and into the evening. I bring it in just before or after it gets dark so critters don't deside to make a bed out of it. What this does is the sun shines on it, heating it up, which causes moisture to seep up from the ground. In the evening, when dew is starting to forum, the moisture will form on the muslin. All of this helps to ease out the creases and folds and even wrinkles. I then hang it up on my back ground stand. Sometimes I'll put weights on it to let it hang straighter. Only a couple of times, with painted muslins, have I had to repeat this a couple of times, mostly to get out the new paint smell as well as a couple of stuborn creases.

Once you get the creases and folds out, if you really want wrinkles, just wod them up and throw in in a corner or stuff them into a stuff sack. I perfer to have minimal wrinkles myself. So I will very losely roll them up or leave them on the background stand and just put my working muslin on top of it. Most of my muslins are in the 10x20' size also.

Mike