Printable View
Does anyone know of a source for muslin backdrops that is reasonable? I have a LF project of portraits made over several days. Rental is $18 US per day. If I' m going to spend close to $100 I might as well buy one. Thanks in advance for a ny and all advice. F. William Baker
In New England, a place called "The Fabric Place" carries raw muslin with widths up to 102"... I have made 4 using these and 6-10 boxes of your favorite color Rit Dye. Get some really large rubber bands and loosely wrap sections in the upper middle and then Dye them. If you wrap to tight, your going to get a "tye-dye" look but when doing it loosely, you get nice textures. My first one I used 6 boxes of black Rit dye and it came out a great almost neutral grey. I bought the 102"x 25' and have a great full length muslin. The next one I bought, same size, and left it the way it came for a great high key back ground. Another one is dyed brown (use 10-15 boxes to get a rich brown) and the other is splattered randomly with different colors of paint. As I recall, I paid around $65.00/ muslin that size.
I bought one of the self supporting muslins from Calumet. Tote- around or some such thing. These aren't cheap but they also don't need any support, you just lean them up against a wall.
One thing that I would suggest - whether you make you own or not. Make sure that the background is just shades of grey. If it's grey then it can be any colour if you want, simply by lighting it with a coloured gel. The gels will prove to be a lot cheaper than extra backdrops.
http://www.lightingmagic.com/bkgndqa.htm
Can you use paints on the muslim to create textures? What kind of paint?
www.backdropoutlet.com has handpainted muslins from $99.00
.
Don't depend on Backdrop outlet. Poor service and poor attitude.
I found plenty of inexpensive muslin backgrounds from dozens of manufacturers - scroll through 12 pages at B&H just to get an idea.
Good inexpensive CANVAS - now that's much rarer...
I kind of think muslin looks tacky unless it is blurry as hell.
You can also try here to browse their collections of muslin backdrops @ Photographicbackdrop.com. They have lesser price too! I have tried purchasing there a lot of times already.
Try a bed sheet on a DIY stretcher (2x4"). White wall-paint plus colour additives. The sheet stretches as it dries. That's as cheap as you can get. If you want to roll it up, you need flexible Rosco canvas and Rosco paint. That's not cheap.
I use bed-sheets for big things and art-supply canvas for little things.
See here.
For years, I have used of Velux blankets as backdrops, one dark green, one cream, and one pale blue. They live in a cabinet, folded, when they are not working, and before hanging they get a few minutes in the dryer set on "medium" to take out the wrinkles.
The blue one is really only useful for high-key where it is essentially blown out, since I can't seem to properly gauge the difference in B/W density between a light blue and skin tone--a medium brown blanket would be better, but Costco didn't carry those :)
Regarding muslin, my local Wal-Mart has it in 120" width (for quilt-making, I understand) and it is quite reasonably priced.