Cyc (cyclorama) wall. What size and how to lighting?

[stevenbob0]

I need to create a cyc wall at the company I work for so we can take product pictures with infinity backgrounds. Unfortunately I have had very little experience shooting pictures inside a studio. We cant hire a professional studio do to the fact that once on of our product are finished it literally has to be crated up in 3 hours. So I need all of your help to guide me through the murky waters and point me to the proverbial light. So i guess I have three main quesitons:

1. How to properly Light the cyc wall?
2. $$$ of lighting the cyc wall?
3. What size to build the cyc as well as what angle to curve the corners?

Construction will not be a problem as I will have a contractor build the wall. I have attached pictures to give you an idea of what I am working with.


1. This is the overall floor plan of the place I work. Note that the photo Studio is (33' x 25') Also the black dots with number indict the position of the next two photos. I am thinking of building the cyc in one of tow places the 33' wall or wrap it from the 25' wall to the 33' wall. I am a little concerned with second option because I have very little skill in lighting and it seams that lighting would be a nightmare.

2. This picture is just to give you an overall perspective of the general area i have to work in.

3.This better shows the scale of the area i have to work with. The stainless steel drum tipper in the center of the picture is 6' 7" tall. This should give some perspective.

4. This shows what the average product photo will be of. Please not the size.

Please remember that I have little to know experience with shooting in a studio or using proper lighting so any help you could give me would be extremely helpful. I am shooting with a Rebel T2i I will keep you guys updated as this project unfolds.

Thanks!
-Steve

 

[DiskoJoe]

Hire a pro and tell them to be there at the specific time the product is ready.

 

[stevenbob0]

We have tried that but have run into scheduling problems as each product has a 1 week lead time. Most photographers cant drop everything every time we need a picture. Photography is something we are going to learn to have to do by our self. I will freely admit that I do not have enough experience to pull this off by my self but I was hoping that with your guys experience and enough money I could just maybe pull this off.

 

[Noxire]

If you can't find a pro to do it there is lots of talented amateurs who are in college or unemployed they probably aren't as bound by tight schedule's and might be more viable. I'd suggest you try too find one with a good understanding of photography and lightning, getting good results out of no knowledge can be very hard regardless of how much money you spend.

Lighting 101 Here is a great resource for learning how to use off camera flash.

Product photography Great blog with all the tips and how-tos from a superb product photographer, even thought he deals with smaller products the techniques applies to bigger stuff as well.

And simply googeling "product photography tutorial" and "product photography lighting" will give you a multitude of useful information.

Gl with the project!

 

[yipDog]

Small disclaimer...I am a pro videographer and know lighting cycloramas very well. The same techniques should apply for photography but there may be other methods out there. All my lighting knowledge is continuous lighting. (I plan to learn flash usage soon)

After renting studios for years I recently built my own 12'x9'x9' cyclorama wall. Quite a chore! Your space will be quite a bit bigger (unless you decide to shrink it to save money on lighting!)

There's many ways to build the curves. I chose to make ribs like an aircraft wing which support 1/8" plywood to "skin" the curves. My curve starts 3' up from the floor and runs out 3' onto the floor.

Use drywall compound to cover your entire surface area as its easy to sand. Transitioning from wood to drywall isn't bad...wood to my concrete floor was tricky and I used Bondo as it's super strong once dry. Sanding and smoothing is the hardest part. With the size you will need to build it's gonna take a while.

Lighting won't come cheap depending on your choice of fixtures. I actually built my own Kinoflo style 4- bulb (220watt total) heads. They are fluorescent daylight balanced bulbs. They are the equivalent of 880 tungsten watts and I needed 4 to light my space. 2 for the wall and 2 for the floor. Nice thing is they don't generate much heat and are cheap to run. If I had gone with Kino or Arri or other companies those 4 lights would have been close to $6k. I spent $1600.
My lights hang from a grid I made from 2" steel tubing. All fixtures are hung with pro grip gear and safety wired. Rule of thumb is point the lights at a 45deg angle down and put them half the distance away from the wall as the wall is high. (in my case they are 4.5 ft back and 9 feet in the air (the height of my wall)

Here's where it gets tricky...based on the dimensions of your space, you need to calculate the throw of your fixtures and beam spread to know how far apart and how many fixtures you need to cover the area. Fluorescent doesnt have nearly the throw of tungsten and the fixtures are more expensive so for a large area may not be economical. If you went with a tungsten fixture, you could hang it higher which would increase the coverage area but require more wattage thus generating more heat. They are less money upfront but remember the bulbs have a short life compared to fluoros.

The largest room I've shot in was 40'x40' walls with a 25' ceiling. The lighting for the walls was all 2000watt Mole Richardson tungsten heads placed every 10'. They were on a grid 25' up and about 10' from the walls. There were 8 fixtures. For the floor they used four 6' China ball fixtures. That only covered the area of the floor we were using. I'd imagine to light the whole place up would have needed double that. Not sure but they had to be at least 1000watt each.

When I shoot stills on my wall, the only thing i change is the subject lighting. My wall and floor are constant which makes life easy. (also note that most of my work is green screen video. I do put up a white or blue background every once in a while for stills and the same lighting works perfectly.)

The best thing I can recommend is visit your local video studio that has a permanent cyclorama wall and take note of how they light it. TV stations sometimes have studios too. All my ideas were "borrowed" from time spent in other people's studios.

You can check out my website for pics of my space and if I can figure it out, I'll post construction pics of my wall and some of the ones I used as models.

www.yipdogstudios.com

 

[Bitter Jeweler]

Good for you for taking on the challenge. Another good book on lighting is "Light, Science, Magic" geared toward product photography, but not necessarily as large scale. But the principles will still apply.

I hope you don't get 10 more posts telling you to hire a pro. Learning how to do ths yourself will enable you to get your product shots in YOUR time, rather than counting on someone else. Heck, you'd still need the studio space your building.

I completely understand the need. I am all to often pressing deadlines on jobs that I want photographed and only have an hour to do so.

Good luck! It will be fun watching your progress.

 

[SNBniko]

OOO I'll be following this one! I've been looking to build one of these in my photo club's studio, but I'm having size constraints, and trying to convince the owners of the building that a woman can indeed handle a power tool without destroying the place is proving to be difficult.

GOOD LUCK!

 

[yipDog]

Facebook Facebook Facebook build a cyclorama wall - Google Search Here's some pics of my construction and one I found that shows a corner cove. The coves require a bit of creative construction but if you have a contractor, they can figure it out. Hope this helps!

 

[yipDog]

Facebook Facebook Facebook build a cyclorama wall - Google Search Here's some pics of my construction and one I found that shows a corner cove. The coves require a bit of creative construction but if you have a contractor, they can figure it out. Hope this helps!

Just remembered that theres some other steps between the ribs pic and the skinned pic.

Between the ribs at various spots, you need to put horizontal supports which will give you more area to nail and glue the skin to. I used liquid nails and framing nails. Also, near where the skin will touch the floor I filled with the expanding foam which turns rock hard. This ensures that if it is accidentally stepped on, the wood will not crack. Bondo was used to fill the transition from wood to concrete. Once again, super strong!
Here's some more:

http://www.thephotoforum.com/photos/showphoto.php?photo=20685&title=studio-pics&cat=500

 

[stevenbob0]

http://www.thephotoforum.com/forum/members/41382.htmlBitter Jeweler: Thanks for the understanding vote of confidence. I ordered the book you suggested.

yipDog: thanks for the helpful info and links.

After googling and reading a lot I feel as if I have only more questions and less answers.

1. Is there a rule of thumb for how much light i will need? I am quite confused with all the difrent types of lighting out there. I know that I will need several lights shooting from the ceiling to the background and then probably one soft box to light my the subject. But how powerful do these need to be. Should they be flash or continuous? My instinct tells me that being new to lighting and all, continuous would be much easier. (I could then also use the lights for shooting product videos)
2. I dont understand the concept of floor lights. Are they always needed for cyc walls? It appears to me that the main idea is to shoot enough light at your background that it will eliminate any shadows thus producing a completely white background. But if one would put floor lights down wouldn't the light cast a shadow on the background as it bassed by the subject in the foreground ?
3. After thinking about it for a while what do you guys think about starting things smaller. I was thinking i may stealing almost this exact setup just so i can learn before i start building 30' cyc walls http://www.zarias.com/white-seamless-tutorial-part-1-gear-space/. The smallest background I could go with would be 20' . Do you think the same lighting system would work for this?

Thanks for all your help!
-Steven

 

[Big Mike]

1. Is there a rule of thumb for how much light i will need? I am quite confused with all the difrent types of lighting out there. I know that I will need several lights shooting from the ceiling to the background and then probably one soft box to light my the subject. But how powerful do these need to be. Should they be flash or continuous? My instinct tells me that being new to lighting and all, continuous would be much easier. (I could then also use the lights for shooting product videos)

You will be shooting a still subject, so if you put the camera onto a tripod (so it is also still) then you will be able to use any shutter speed without getting blurry photos. That means that you can use continuous lighting easily. Strobes are better for shooting people though.
Also, you shouldn't need a whole lot of lighting power, but a more important factor will be the area you have to cover, so you may need many lights and/or the appropriate fixtures/modifiers to go with them.

3. After thinking about it for a while what do you guys think about starting things smaller. I was thinking i may stealing almost this exact setup just so i can learn before i start building 30' cyc walls I've moved the blog –> zackarias.com/blog » White Seamless Tutorial :: Part 1 :: Gear & Space. The smallest background I could go with would be 20' . Do you think the same lighting system would work for this?

That might be a good idea. You could hang a couple rolls of 10' seamless paper and it would give you the smooth background that you're looking for. The key part for making it larger than what Zach was doing...is making sure that you can evenly light the background. So rather than just one light on either side, you could maybe add another light or two above.

Most of the time, I tell people that it's best to do it right and get your shots correct 'in-camera'. But if all you're looking for is a clean white background for your product shots...you can probably save a lot of money & effort if you can get it 'close' in camera and then clean it up in the post processing stage (Photoshop). I mean, you could spend all that time & money to build your wall...or you could just paint the walls/floor white, put a bunch of light on it...and then clean it up in post. Even better, shoot on seamless paper and clean up the line between the rolls (if you need to use more than one). Heck, I'd done a few group shots in tight spaces where I couldn't fill the frame with my background...but as long as I can get the background behind the subject, it's fairly easy to just 'Photoshop' the background out to fill the photo....especially when the background is just solid white or black etc.

 

[yipDog]

On the video side, the concerns with lighting are a bit different. I use a waveform monitor to balance the background with subject. The background should be around the 50-60% line and the subject should be peaking around 95%.

I know this may not help except to give you some ratios. I think that if you choose a light to do the background with, you can then balance the subject based on the output you see.

Ill put together a list of lights I've used or seen used and post soon. Hopefully that will help.

Btw, smaller screen will be cheaper in every aspect so if you can get away with the 20'...go for it!

 

[yipDog]

Here's a list of tungsten and CFL lighting heads that would be appropriate for lighting your space. Obviously the tungsten are much cheaper and throw more light but will generate a lot of heat and cost more to run. The fluorescents I built are almost identical to the DeSisti but cost 1/3 to build and that's including top shelf Kinoflo bulbs.
Note that some of the product specs give you a beam spread and output at a fixed distance. These are the numbers you want to pay attention to so you know how many fixtures you will need. Some of the 2k tungstens might have enough coverage to get away with 4 fixtures (two on the walls and two for the floor) where the CFL's might need more.


Altman Soft-Lite Tungsten Light - 2000 Watts SOFT-LITE B&H Photo


Arri Arrisoft 2000 Watt Tungsten Softlight (120-240V AC) 536201


DeSisti Botticelli 2K Tungsten Softlight - Hanging, 3111.220 B&H


Mole-Richardson 1500 Watt Molequartz Super-Broad Tungsten 3401


Mole-Richardson Baby-Zip 2000 Watt Tungsten Softlite 3051 B&H


Kino Flo Parabeam 400 DMX Fixture With Yoke PAR-400Y-120 B&H


DeSisti De-Lux 4 Tube Non-Dimmable Fluorescent Fixture 4610.240


Mole-Richardson Biax-8 Fluorescent Fixture with Dimmer 7421A B&H

 

[stevenbob0]

Thanks for the info.

How many footcandles do i need to have? I noticed that the farther you pull the lights away the less footcandles the lights have but the larger area they will light.

I am a little worried with using tungsten lights. My only experience with tungsten bulbs are in shop lights and those give off an very yellow light that would be horrible to shoot in.

Also Florescent Lights seam like they would give off a very harsh whit light.

Am I wrong in thinking this way? It just seems that it would be a white balance nightmare.

 

[yipDog]

I don't know how many foot-candles. This is something you will have to do some math to figure out based on your space. Sorry!As for the lighting color, you only have two choices with continuous, tungsten and daylight. Whichever you choose, you will have to white balance for and you're fine. There is no other way that I know of and it's not a nightmare at all, just a necessary step. Make sure that your subject lights are the same type as the wall lights so you're not mixing the two color types. I've gone all daylight balanced bulbs which are around 5500k. For shooting people many prefer the warmer tungsten bulbs which are around 3200k.but either will work fine as long as you white balance.