Using seamless paper

I just bought the Calumet background support which came with a roll of seamless white. I have a couple questions.

I notice that as I pull the paper down, gravity takes over and the roll unrolls by itself. So, I clamped the roll to the cross bar. Is that the standard way to deal with that problem?

My little home studio is in my basement on a carpeted floor. If I want to take a full length shot with someone standing or sitting on the paper, do I just pull the paper over the carpet? Or should I put down a sheet of plywood or something under the paper?

How do I get even illumination of the background behind and below the subject? I have seen a lot of pictures where behind the subject is pure white but below is less white.

Stefan

Hmm, let me take a stab at some of this...

See here for a very good tutorial that includes tricks for getting white backgrounds and how to roll out seamless: http://www.zarias.com/​?p=71 but you've got roughly the right idea.

I have made a horrible mess of various bits of seamless, just chalk that up to experience, many accidents such as it getting pulled when clamped, fouling the background stands resulting in creases, ... but it gets easier with practice! Plus the stuff is fairly cheap so it can just be thrown out if something goes wrong.

The paper will crumple if used on any kind of thick carpet - and moreover if you put anything pointed with a lot of weight (e.g. light stands or high heels) they will go straight through. You will almost certainly need to have a hard surface underneath if you will be shooting with anything standing on it.

Save yourself some time and pull up the carpet now - they're hazardous in so many ways.

I roll it out a few feet onto the floor and then lay down a 4x8 sheet of white tile board from Home Depot. Runs about $13/sheet.

Stefan A wrote in post #7757525
I just bought the Calumet background support which came with a roll of seamless white. I have a couple questions.

I notice that as I pull the paper down, gravity takes over and the roll unrolls by itself. So, I clamped the roll to the cross bar. Is that the standard way to deal with that problem?

My little home studio is in my basement on a carpeted floor. If I want to take a full length shot with someone standing or sitting on the paper, do I just pull the paper over the carpet? Or should I put down a sheet of plywood or something under the paper?

How do I get even illumination of the background behind and below the subject? I have seen a lot of pictures where behind the subject is pure white but below is less white.

Stefan

you're right, clamping it using those clamps from home depot is the best way for your setup.

Well, the carpet is staying. But I will look into the white tile board. What about lighting the board?

Stefan

as others said, clamp roll, put some sort of hard surface underneath so you dont poke holes in paper on soft surface

to get a nice even light, you want to pull the paper out a good 5-7 feet from the background and then somehow tape it to the board so its pretty straight.

side lights from either side and a down light are going to be the best way to sort of illuminate the subject without much shadow interference but you have to keep the model a good distance from the actual back overlay.

thats how i would do it. of course strip boxes would be used in my case for the sides and an umbrella on top or octabox and or a beauty dish depending on what i have.

back lighting from an angle would be another solution if you do a two light setup, back light with grid from angle and use octabox camera right, but back light would be camera left and about 45 degrees back, kinda hard to explain without showing a diagram