The Phoblographer Daily

The Phoblographer champions authenticity in its product reviews and holistically throughout its conversations with photographers. Getting a pure white background doesn’t require post-production at all. Sure, you’ll shoot photos, but you don’t need to spend a whole day or two editing them just right. You can do it easily in-camera. But trust us when we say it’s a lot easier to do with flash than it is with LEDs. LEDs will mean that you’re more or less just spending more time editing in post-production. You can view this article and much more with minimal ads in our brand new app for iOS, iPadOS, and Android. What You Need A white background with a lot of lighting control. Ideally, you’ll use a box with a white interior A flash with a large diffuser like a softbox, a beauty dish, or something Another flash, possibly How to Do This Getting this done is pretty easy, but it will change depending on what you’re using. Set up: your white box on a hard, stable surface With the white box’s opening towards you, cut the top of it so that you can put a flash over it. Shut all the blinds and curtains in the room to kill ambient lighting Place the light modifier with the flash inside over the top Meter the scene. If you’re using TTL flash, set it to be one stop extra of power. TTL works by looking at the ISO and the aperture. The faster your shutter speed, the more ambient light you’ll kill. The slower it is, the more will come in. If you’re just using a white background, you’ll need a second flash. With your subject in front of the white background, meter them and photograph them with a flash accordingly. Have the second flash firing at the white background and make sure that it is a stop more powerful than the main light. “When you use your light meter to check the output of the lights, your main light should be weaker while your back light should be stronger. For the image above, our main light (which was next to the camera and in front of our model) was metered to f8 at ISO 100. The back light (hitting the background and positioned off to the side) was metered to f11 at ISO 100. Therefore, the light in the back is brighter and therefore gives the effect of a seamless white. It would have also worked if my main light was set to f5.6 and my back light was set to f8. Same with my main being set to f2.8 and my back being set to f4.” Getting a background to go pure white The Idea The idea here is that you’re trying to make the background bright white. This is more complicated to do with LEDs and also doesn’t give you the crisp quality a flash can. To get the background to appear purely white, it needs to be brighter than the subject you’re photographing. That’s how you make it stand out. And it makes sense. If you were photographing a portrait subject with bokeh balls in the background, the bokeh balls will stand out because they’re brighter than your subject. The same idea is being applied here. If you don’t have all these, you should take a look at our tutorial on how to do it with a window, a reflector, and one flash. Of course, you’ll have to do some post-production. And if you’re like me, you want to avoid post-production as much as possible and get it right in-camera.