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 any and all advice. F. William Baker

-- F. William Baker (atelfwb@aol.com), April 01, 2002

Answers

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.

-- Scott Walton (walton@ll.mit.edu), April 01, 2002.

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.

-- David Grandy (dgrandy@grandyphoto.com), April 01, 2002.

http://www.lightingmagic.com/bkgndqa.htm

-- MILES FEIGENBAUM (MFA1@IX.NETCOM.COM), April 01, 2002.

Can you use paints on the muslim to create textures? What kind of paint?

-- bill youmans (bill@greatgrips.com), April 02, 2002.

www.backdropoutlet.com has handpainted muslins from $99.00

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-- Terry (tcdvorak@aol.com), April 02, 2002.