I'm going to take a few moments and walk through the construction of the DIY backdrop project (It's really a lot more simple than you would think). I believe total cost for me was around $22.00, but that included two backdrop stands that I already had.
It all started with this video:
In it there is a section where it mentions the IKEA Tupplur blind.
Originally I wanted to go with a grey one instead, but since there was an open box deal on the large black, I got it instead. I'll probably go back in the near future and pick up the grey one.
After I got it home I removed the spring driven auto-winder (I guess that's the best way to describe the part) and found that there was a 3/4" tube running down the center. That tube just so happened to be the same diameter as my backdrop stand, so I had to run down to home depot and grab some 1/2" electrical conduit (about $2.30 for a 10' section).
They cut it down to size for me, and helped me find some screw on ends that formed an L shape (about another $1.50 each) that I used to mount on top of my backdrop stand.
Short of using a little black spray paint to dull down the silver, the final product looks like this. The diagram approximately (and totally not to scale) looked very similar to the one below.
Using an LED Panel that I borrowed from a friend of mine (and totally need to return, sorry Vivi) to provide a back light to the background, and my studio strobes (modeling light on, with a closed umbrella since the camera I am working with has a different flash mount than I am used to) as my main light. I was able to get some pretty interesting lighting situations. I probably need to look into some various gels to take some of the blue LED tint out, but other than that I am pretty happy.
Justin stepped up to help me out with some more testing of the background, and using what I learned from shooting Stan yesterday, this is what we were able to achieve.
