I am taking pics with a Mavica for a magazine - they want white backgrounds so they can "float" the pictures. What is the best lighting technique for this? Also, are there any tricks to doing this so that lighter subjects don't blend into the white background?

-- Sandy Raburn (sandy@craftingtoday.com), June 28, 2000

Answers

What kind of lighting are you using? The best is a strong background 2 strobe setup with gobos to keep the light off of the subject. Make a few test to see that the light doesn't overflow. Your main light on the subject should be at least one full stop under the background lights. If the background light is too strong, it can cause a halo or corona effect around the main subject. A single background light with a reflector will also work but not as well.

What is your subject? Beware of shadows falling on the background. No shadows will separate the subject, even if it is quite light.

What model Mavica are you using? When the light intensity and direction is satisfactory, use the camera spot meter or better yet a hand held flash/spot meter. Meter on the subject only. If you meter the whole image, the background will look darker because the meter averages the entire scene, even with center weighted systems.

If you are not using strobes, floods will work if you carefully meter. If you are using the on camera flash (poor at best) use reflective cards to unflatten the lighting.

Good Luck, white backgrounds are one of the most difficult problems in photography. (just for fun, in college we had to photograph a white egg on a white card, with no shadows and print it).

-- Gene Casti (RNOGENO@softcom.net), June 29, 2000.

For a truly shadowless white background you need to use a translucent material that you can backlight, opal Perspex (Plexiglass) for instance. This is fine for small pack shots, but a bit of a non-starter for anything much bigger than a TV set. The quick (but expensive) option is to buy a purpose made product table, or you can save a bit of money by assembling the frame yourself from square section metal tube, and clamp some eighth-inch thick white translucent Acrylic sheet to it. That was the easy bit. The trick to separating a light subject from a light background is; years of experience and expertise with lighting.

-- Pete Andrews (p.l.andrews@bham.ac.uk), June 29, 2000.