I have a very small studio room (15 feet by 35 feet) and I am looking to do infinite white backgrounds and need some help. I had lights that came with my green screen and I tried to use that to light up the white photographers paper that I have hanging up and it doesn’t work. Everything in camera turns out gray. I saw online where a guy I follow (Izzy) did his with a light that looked like a painters light. He had it below the screen and turned it on and it completely over exposed the sheet and looked great. I was going to go to Lowe's to see if I can get 1 or two to see if they would work. Anyone have any experience in this?

Also, I guess I should consider spill over. My room isnt that big so my subject isnt gonna be able to see 10 feet away from the screen, they will be fairly close to it. Any suggestion on keeping this light from bouncing back on my subject?

<<This from another thread in this dept:>>

Ah, the infinite white void look. So simple that it must be simple to set up and shoot, right? NOT.
Well, not if full body.

Pretty much everything matters. A camera that can shoot clean in low light can help on the amount of lighting needed, but if you don't have a C300, F5, Red Dragon or Alexa, then to get perfect results (no post production hassles) you need enough gear and space.

#1) The screen. I use a roll of 140" wide x 50' white Seemless paper. (Most often I wish it were 280" wide.)
I put that roll up on a couple of big rolling stands that have big pipe couplers on each to grab and hold a 14' piece of black iron pipe that is the axle for the 12' roll of paper.

The 140" paper can be hard to find and needs to be delivered by truck freight = mo money.
The narrower 107"W is almost worthless for anything other than a direct frontal shot of one skinny actor who doesn't move. Using clear packing tape and a flat - super clean floor of enough size, I have put two pieces of 107" together - but this is a pain. The paper gets dirty easy and tears even easier. Not easy to hang either - i.e. tears very easy.

#2) You will need enough soft light to evenly light the white paper screen bright enough for whatever camera you are using (this is where a good camera with fast lens comes into play) - usually right about 100 IRE. We use a couple of Lowel Rifa 88s with 1000W in each. Hard lights, unless far enough away to flood the paper, hot spot.

For side lights,
we use a couple of 2K Desisti fresnels on rolling stands and hit both the screen and the talent with them - this means they need to be far enough away to hit both. (Not enough space means you will need to replace these instruments with big soft boxes.

For front light, we use two more Rifa 88s for the talent and sometimes a back-light (1K fresnel) behind and just above the screen as a back light.

IMO, this is barely enough to get it to work - and we shoot on Sony EX3s.
If they need more stage than the 140" paper can provide, we shoot green screen and record the hdsdi out of the EX3 in ProRes HQ or uncompressed, pull the key and turn the back ground white in post.

As always, your mileage may vary.

Further to the good advice Jacques has provided, in order for the Infinite White look to work, you MUST light subject and background separately. It's a balancing act - too much light on the background and you need to POUND your subject with light.

The ideal way is to establish what exposure you want on your subject (shutter, gain/ISO and iris), set the camera there and then add or subtract SOFT LIGHT (as Jacques describes) until your camera reads the background as white (or 100+ IRE on scopes and/or histogram) and then light your foreground subject accordingly.

Ideally you would have a larger area so the subject is farther away from the BG as possible, and thus using the inverse square law to your advantage.
One thing I use in photographic work is a set of bifold closet doors, painted black, just out-of-frame to help absorb some of the light reflecting from the BG.
The doors can be found at local big-box hardware store for about $30.

I have an idea of what the answer is going to be with this question, but I am going to ask it anyway.

Would a halogen work light work...like this....

Shop Utilitech 1-Light 500-Watt Halogen Portable Work Light at Lowes.com (http://www.lowes.com/pd_320778-337-PQS45UT_0__?productId=3182629)

You need something which throws a wide FLAT light for the background. Probably two of them.
I don't believe that light you show will do the job...or allow you to then properly light someone standing in front of the white background you've used that light to illuminate.

Brock,

Since you are dealing with a small space those work lights are less than ideal.

You should be able to build something that will work a lot better though.

1. Take 2 sets of those bi-fold doors a couple of posts above. Cover the side that will face the white background with aluminum foil - shiny side out (use contact adhesive such as 3M 77 in the spray can to attach foil).

2. Mount 6 or so Edison sockets along one side near the center hing of each set of doors. Wire them up and install the highest wattage bulb you can still get.

3. Position them facing the background and adjust to get an evenly lit background.

You should be able to put that stuff together including the doors for under $100. It will be a much more even light than the construction lights.

I had lights that came with my green screen and I tried to use that to light up the white photographers paper that I have hanging up and it doesn’t work. Everything in camera turns out gray.

So.... why do you think this is? What will cause a huge expanse of white to look gray in camera?

Typically, it's not the lights, or the background. It's the camera, doing autoexposure. It sees all that white, and closes down to bring that white down to a nice middle gray. That's what averaging meters are supposed to do. Unfortunately for you, that's not what you want.

In order to get a white background to be white in camera, you have to set the exposure correctly. Auto exposure almost certainly won't work. So go manual, and open up. How much? That's what a waveform monitor is for. Many cameras include a waveform monitor and a vectorscope these days. Else, many production monitors do. If you don't have either, you can do it with zebras in camera if you can set them to 100%. If you don't have that, you can use a histogram. If you don't have even that... you'll have iterate. Open up a couple of stops, shoot some footage, import that into your NLE and have a look. Your NLE should absolutely have a waveform monitor, so bring it up and see how close you got your white background to 100 IRE. Adjust your exposure accordingly, rinse and repeat until done.

Now think about what you just did. You got the exposure right for your background. And it's now set manually. You still have to light your talent. And you don't have the luxury of changing exposure to do it. All you can do is change the lighting on the talent to do it. As before, a waveform monitor on set makes this relatively easy. Without that, setting your zebras correctly will work too. Without either of these, life becomes more difficult, but if you really want to get it right, you just have to work at it.

Bottom line: if you are going to make a habit out of using either black or white backgrounds (or greenscreen, for that matter), get a waveform monitor on set and use it.

The first question I would ask is, what camera are you using? A consumer camera might not be the ideal instrument to achieve this look.

I have done white background shoots with full body shots and two regular size set paper rolls hanging, one slightly overlapping with the other. The paper color was "Super White". We used Lowell Fluoro-Tech fluorescent lights for the background and for the subject. Matte magic adhesive tape was used to prevent shadows from the paper overlap. The camera we used had a white clip adjustment so we set it to clip the background at 100% and made sure the subject was never overexposed. Worked well.

Taggin onto what John said:
You need something which throws a wide FLAT light for the background. Probably two of them.

What this video showed, "Lighting for Composit Portraits" at Lighting for Composite Portraits - Green Screen Your Subject in Any Environment! on Vimeo, was exactly the same thing. Illuminate the background with two umbrella lights because they spill the light all over the place. Aim them at about 30º and 1/3rd in on each side for an even exposure.

For the talent or subject, use softboxes but don't let the light spill onto the background. Flag if necessary.

As an aside, although the video is about green screen:
One can use any color for the "green", even white. The problem with using white for green screen, though, is if there is any white in the subject/talent it will be a problem. If the white is just for picture taking then obviously this is a non issue.

It was an interesting tutorial on green screen lighting, ~ 1:15 long!

Call me crazy, but couldn't you use a green screen and then key it out to whatever shade of white you want? Just thinkin.....

In theory that looks like it would work but in practice it doesn't. Its really hard to pull a key perfect enough to drop in a solid color such as white and have it look good.

Though...it has been done successfully. ;)

I've done it several times with my Sony EX3...however there are many who will disagree feeling it is too risky.

I prefer the green screen method only because it saves me time and lets me make client changes easily if they want variations on a white background...say with a white vignette instead of solid, flat white.

It does still come down to lighting it correctly or it will not work.

You are also using a camera well suited for greenscreen. That doesn't hurt. :)

Using a camera better suited for the task does make it easier to get a nice edge. There is much less aliasing and other negative artifacts with the 3 chip cameras versus the dSLRs or other single chip cameras. Also DOF is deep which again goes in favor of getting good edges. Those things I've found have made more impact in getting a good key than the compression/subsampling does. I do record to an external recorder to get 4:2:2 with the EX1 if at all possible.

Masks are your friend too. I used to struggle with lighting my green screen evenly, especially on the edges, even though my talent was always positioned in the middle of the set.

Then I discovered that I could begin my editing by drawing a mask around the talent. This cut my work in half. Of course it works best with nearly stationary talent, such as a talking head.

I did a project last year with 200 videos about 3-5min a piece that were shot on white. I did extensive testing before day one as we shot 25 videos per day and had no time to waste. Also I wanted it to be easy in post. I used my green screen lighting setup on a 10' wide super-white paper. Lighting was 4-220watt CFL kinoflo style fixtures with kinflo daylight bulbs for the screen. On the talent I used a 1600 watt CFL fixture in a 36" soft box. Of note is the adjustable output. First thing I did was double check the even-ness of the screen lighting with no talent or talent lights on. Exposure-wise on the camera (XF300) set the BG to almost 100% to purposely blow out later in post. Then placed the talent. Brought up the talent light to where they were acceptable and was off and running. It felt like I was underexposing the talent but I wasn't. In post I adjusted the contrast a bit to further to get rid of the very soft shadow on the white from the talent I was done.

http://yipdog.smugmug.com/Other/Misc-Stuff/i-2dQ7wgV/0/L/326803_10151143770297800_563330546_o-L.jpg (http://yipdog.smugmug.com/Other/Misc-Stuff/i-2dQ7wgV/A)

http://yipdog.smugmug.com/Other/Misc-Stuff/i-pPbprHw/0/L/57402_10151143770132800_239131444_o-L.jpg (http://yipdog.smugmug.com/Other/Misc-Stuff/i-pPbprHw/A)

Hey everyone! Thanks for the advice. I just finished up my video. I think it turned out pretty decent! What do you think?

Pastor Reads Your Tweets on Vimeo

Looks pretty good...I'd push the contrast just a touch. Also, they are both pretty shiny which a makeup artist or simple towel off before a take would help with the bright spots on their faces. The reflection in the glasses is a touch distracting. It's freekin hard to get rid of that sometimes. :)
All in all I say well done!

This shows the advantage of two things: a large space and controllable lights. :)

With controllable (maskable, flaggable) lights, you can illuminate the background without hitting your subject. The reflection from the right side of the face (left, from the viewer perspective) is pretty strong. And even if you can direct the background lights, if your space is small, background and foreground lighting tend to interact.

Regarding the reflection from the glasses, raising the foreground lights is the general solution.

But I'm being picky. Your result is clean and more than good enough for the context. It's not like you were lighting a top celebrity for a national spot - yet! :)

BTW, it's good that you didn't add a strong hair or backlight - unless you wanted the subject outline to be diffuse. Blurring the outline of the subject can be good for a dreamy feel. You want a solid outline for a realistic feel, which seems right for this piece.

There is an interesting style of lighting where you light the subject from the left and the background from the right. This makes one side of the face light over dark and the other side dark over light. It's very dramatic and reads well from a distance with excellent edge contrast. In the current example, the goal is a fully dark(ish) edge over the bright background. From that standpoint, the man's dark jacket is the better choice than the woman's light blouse. His jacket really pops off the background.

Anyway, nice job in getting the background well exposed. From here, it's just a matter of fine tuning.

I know I'm late to the discussion, but I just finished about a dozen interview shoots for the Hannibal Season 2 Blu-ray and we shot against white to match the show's title sequence.

One thing we used (which was new to me) was the Lastolite Hilite background. If you're not familiar with it, it's essentially a giant freestanding softbox that illuminates from the inside out (it has zippers on all sides that you can open and stick whatever lights you want through) and you place it behind the subject. This has a few advantages for this kind of look. It's very easy to get uniformity without a lot of light inside because the light blows out pretty easily with the light bouncing around the inside (again, it's just like a giant diffuser). Secondly, you can actually use this in a fairly confined space. Because you're lighting from the inside out, you don't have keep your subject very far away from the Hilite. For the interview with actor Hugh Dancy, he was sitting in a recording booth that was probably 12' deep. Because the lighting is internal, you don't have to worry about the subject casting shadows against the backdrop and, depending on how close they're sitting, you get a nice soft wrap around. He was probably only 2-3 feet in front of the Hilite. It also made set up and breakdown simple because it collapses into a nice flat profile and doesn't require any additional stands (it's self supporting). I just threw an extra sandbag inside to anchor it just cause. We then just lit him normally (I was using a pair of Kino Celeb 200s and a Litepanels Sola Eng for hair).

I've heard that these Hilites can start to yellow over time, but it you do enough of these shoots, the look and the time saved probably makes it worth replacing every few years. And... another benefit- you want to change the color of the background, you just gel your lights inside.

The backlit background looks pretty handy.

I just wanted to throw out that I've shot a LOT of interviews in front of a green screen specifically to key in front of white...it is far from impossible and it doesn't require anything special in the way of a recording format (I've used an EX1 with 35 Mbit/s 4:2:0 source and it keys just fine).

The benefit to this versus even a relatively even white background is that using a white background created in a computer means all that area is single value hue/saturation/luma which means it compresses VERY economically and ends up using the data to preserve details in the foreground.

For austerity purposes, thought I'd mention my usual approach to this type (mid shot talking head on white) that fits in one backpack (except the background) and sets up quickly on location.

The lighting kit I use is fairly simple: 2 Lowel V-lights for the background, and one Lowel RIFA 55 and a Pro-Light or V-light plus umbrella for the subject. I have a collapsible 5x7' background, but I've used this on bare white to light beige walls and large whiteboards as well.

I light the background by placing one V-light on either side of the background, just out of frame, with about 2-3' separation from the background. I mount them vertically at approximately subject level. Mounted in this way, they have a very broad beam throw and minimal spill towards subject and camera.

Subject is then placed 1-2' forward of the V-lights. I expose so the background is just above ~105IRE, then see where the subject is in comparison. White background shoots generally don't benefit from high-contrast lighting, IMO, and favor a flatter, even-lit look. To that end, I place one soft light on either side of the talent (RIFA or V-light/Pro-light with umbrella) at about 45 degrees and adjust distance and angle for exposure and to mitigate shadows.

Last tip: I use a CPOL filter. It generally helps keep subject highlights from blowing out too quickly or horribly - very beneficial when you're generally raising subject exposure overall.

Frame, focus, and roll. My personal land speed record was 17 minutes for a setup. Smallest location for this was a 12x8' office (yes, it did get warm).

While this is neither of those extremes, it's a reasonable representation - see "My Videos" halfway down the page. Earlier but not perfect, if shot again I would slightly increase exposure on the subject:
Janet Benedetti Ameriprise financial advisor in Richmond, VA (http://www.ameripriseadvisors.com/janet.b.benedetti/)

TIP:
Blast the background with brighter light then your subject. Also, if you use a shiny paper it will reflect more light and be brighter. Use lower wattage lights for your subject so that in your camera the background over exposes to full brightness.