# Why not work with green screen?



## GrahamPhisher (Jan 23, 2013)

http://s20.postimage.org/oyl7r6uz1/mehstudio2.jpg

I been doing digital art for 7 years, and only been doing photography  for a couple years, and I'm starting to notice, I'm one of the few  people I know that shoot on green screen, and in photoshop its only like a couple clicks to remove the background than you can do any color/pattern/setting you want, and you really don't need any exp to do so.

http://s20.postimage.org/l3htombt9/image.jpg

(This isn't the best example, I know, I could of adjusted the fuzziness a bit higher for a cleaner background, this is just something I did from a shoot yesterday)

* so just wondering is there some reason more photographers don't work with green screen?*


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## Judobreaker (Jan 23, 2013)

I can see two reasons why to shoot on a green screen.

One is to place the subject onto a computer generated background and the other is to place the subject onto another photo.
I think there's quite a lot of photographers that aren't too fond of CG backgrounds. There are people who use those, just not a lot as far as I know.

As for placing an image onto another photo... Yeah it could be possible. However I'd personally prefer actually going to the location and doing a shoot.
I know it's not always ideal as you're possibly heavily weather-dependent and various other factors but it's just what I like to do.
Then again, I simply don't have a green screen so it's not a matter of choice for me. 

Another explanation could be that people are 'scared' by Photoshop.
It's not hard, I know. It's actually really easy... However, they do not always know that.
A lot of photographers have very little experience with Photoshop and the likes which makes them feel everything in it is hard to do so they stay away from it.


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## flow (Jan 23, 2013)

I think it's one of those 'easy to do, hard to do well' things. The perspective isn't quite right, or the lighting, or the color ... some little thing that tells the brain "this isn't real". Like when you watch a movie that didn't give enough of their budget to the effects team, and you can tell right away which scenes were not filmed on location.


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## rexbobcat (Jan 23, 2013)

Because the workflow is extraneous and unnecessary when it's just as easy to just throw up a black or white background?

Unless I'm trying to do a composite (like a generic action movie promo) I don't see the point of using a green screen and then changing its color.


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## amolitor (Jan 23, 2013)

As indicated above, to be sure.

Also, though, photographers have a long culture of doing it in-camera. Get it right in the camera. No fakery. The camera doesn't lie. And so on and so forth. The argument goes back and forth, and has for 150+ years, and presumably always will, but regardless there's a school of thought that says you should try pretty hard to get as close to the final result as possible in the camera. Not everyone believes it, heck, lots of people believe the opposite, but the idea has been around so long and with such force that it's hard to shake it entirely.

There are cases where it's actually easier to do the work up front, and then shoot it, and there are cases where the other way around is true. More often than not, a photographer will err in the direction of the first one, and away from the second one.


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## Designer (Jan 23, 2013)

Here's another reason:  I don't own PS, and don't plan to purchase it anytime soon.  Because of the cost, mostly.


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## Derrel (Jan 23, 2013)

A solid-tone background like gray works remarkably well. It "selects" well, and is easy to "knock out"...almost as if it were green screen.


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## sekhar (Jan 23, 2013)

Green (or blue for film) screens make sense for videos, where you have 24/30/60/whatever frames every second. Removing a background for a still is trivial in comparison (in say Photoshop), even if you haven't planned for it with a green/white/whatever background. Not only is having a green screen overkill for stills, but it also complicates things with green screen issues like the pesky green spill from the background, flying hair that is hard to retain well, etc. Basically you end up spending more time/effort setting up the screen and then keying it out cleanly. This is not to mention dealing with your subjects wearing some variation of green clothing or green objects in the scene. All this trouble is worth taking only for movies.

I shot a short film once entirely with green screen and match moving, replacing the background with a LightWave 3D "room" I created. We had to take a lot of precautions while filming, and keying out the green (in After Effects) was pretty tricky. But we had to do it because that was the only way to get it done. For stills, it's an entirely different story.


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## pixmedic (Jan 23, 2013)

we have a green screen, and have actually used it for a few clients. its not terribly popular, but cheap enough to make it worth getting one to keep around just in case. its a novelty, and should be treated as such.


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## GrahamPhisher (Jan 23, 2013)

sekhar, yea ill admit i run into some trouble with rendering hair sometimes. 

I think i'm gonna go out and buy a new roll of white n black paper (Grey too, thnx derrel) .


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## KmH (Jan 23, 2013)

Using appropriate exposure and lighting techniques a gray seamless background can be made white, black, or any pastel shade of color in between.

Savage Thunder Gray seamless paper is pretty popular - Savage Seamless Background Paper, 107" wide x 12 yards, Thunder Gray, #27
Savage Seamless Background Paper, 107 Inch wide x 12 yards, Fashion Gray, Number 56


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## Mosen (Jan 23, 2013)

Designer said:


> Here's another reason:  I don't own PS, and don't plan to purchase it anytime soon.  Because of the cost, mostly.



I'm pretty sure less than half of Photoshop users paid for it


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## lonewolfsx (Jan 27, 2013)

pixmedic said:


> we have a green screen, and have actually used it for a few clients. its not terribly popular, but cheap enough to make it worth getting one to keep around just in case. its a novelty, and should be treated as such.



I don't think I'd ever call it a novelty. The way I see it, if I can emulate natural looking lighting conditions in the studio with gels and such, I can fake a shot on a green screen and use any number of my own landscape shots, blurred in a seperate layer in photoshop to exactly the type of bokeh I want, and no one would EVER know. It eliminates lots of issues like glare, depth of field balance, white balance issues, flash power being drowned out by the sun, cloud and tree shadows on faces, etc. and also adds a lot more control (can add wind in any direction with fan, or no wind at all), as well as being able to put the shot on any background. Photoshop makes it easy to work with (though I wish Lightroom did it for workflow's sake), and there are cheap alternatives to Photoshop that can do the same stuff. I've also been cruising Flickr quite a bit and there seems to be no correlation in popularity between shots with natural lighting and backgrounds and those with obvious artificial lighting and natural backgrounds. Some obvious composites are circulating about, but you could definitely do it where no one would notice. I think if I was limited on space and time and already had a usable background shot, any serious client who wanted a portrait of that type I'd composite instead of going on-location 9 times out of 10. You just have to spend a little extra time in the setup to get the studio lighting to match up with your natural looking background, so it's probably prudent to choose the exact background before you start shooting.

It also means I can come up with my settings prior to the shoot. While I have tons of practice by now shooting manual on the fly and adapting to changing light conditions, there is still some variation and while easy to process, a studio set will have pretty much exactly spot on exposure every time because after a few test shots, I know exactly what sets of settings (basically, a shallow dof arrangement and a deep dof arrangement) to use for the entire length of the session.

There is one pretty big negative though, it takes a little bit of the personal touch out of the shoot itself I think. Most people (i.e. *not* professional models) are much more natural and easier to pose in a real-world place than standing or on a chair in a relatively small studio. Working with people "in the field" is part of the fun for me, and part of why I like to do weddings to some degree (the money helps...haha).

Then again, I don't currently own a green screen as much as I want one, so my opinions on composites are simply theories for now.


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## lonewolfsx (Jan 27, 2013)

One additional note: Perspective plays and important role and performing this incorrectly makes a composite easy to spot. I frequently see green-screen shots where the subject is standing with their legs cut off around the thigh, but the background skews upwards as it goes further away, making it quite obvious that the subject is not actually standing there. To do it right, I think you need to do a little bit of homework on the background shots themselves, pretend to shoot a picture as if someone were standing there. I have a good collection going, I'm actually getting a little motivation to go try this out very soon. Thanks for spurring my creativity GrahamPhisher.


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## Robin_Usagani (Jan 27, 2013)

KmH said:


> Using appropriate exposure and lighting techniques a gray seamless background can be made white, black, or any pastel shade of color in between.
> 
> Savage Thunder Gray seamless paper is pretty popular - Savage Seamless Background Paper, 107" wide x 12 yards, Thunder Gray, #27
> Savage Seamless Background Paper, 107 Inch wide x 12 yards, Fashion Gray, Number 56



What he said.. Thats what I use.


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## lloyd.turner (Jan 29, 2013)

Some photographers are comfortable with using it. I understand the rest who don't even try it, because the beginning isn't the easiest, nor photoshop or greenscreen. I used a beige background to photograph my wife and daughter, but that's about it of my experience with screens for photoshoots.


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## pixmedic (Jan 29, 2013)

lonewolfsx said:


> pixmedic said:
> 
> 
> > we have a green screen, and have actually used it for a few clients. its not terribly popular, but cheap enough to make it worth getting one to keep around just in case. its a novelty, and should be treated as such.
> ...



the green screen is just another tool we use. I mainly consider it a novelty because it is not often asked for, and we do not really "upsell" it very much. most people that are looking for portraits done either want a specific location, or are happy with a simple black or white background. when we got the green screen, we also purchased a CD with 2500+ backgrounds, and we've probably only used  a handful of them in the last year. 

if you really want a green screen, they are fairly inexpensive. 
Westcott Digital Green Screen Photo Kit 417 B&H Photo Video

ours is larger than this one, but if you already have the stands for other backdrops, the chroma key screen itself isnt very expensive.


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