best projector for projected back grounds

[Bill Davis]

Looking at your example, It’s a great start. To my eye, she needs more edge lighting to bring her form out of the background, but the aesthetics are yours to determine, of course.

That said, since the effect is abstract, I suspect I’d just defocus a bit and that would solve the pixels problem.

But I completely understand if that’s not your vision.

To light your central character without effecting your background, you’ll need a very careful subject lighting plot. (Or you could get crazy if it’s a set piece – and take a still of the model in position – that you could use to invert and knock out a mask overlay on the projected background, letting the projector do BOTH the background AND her key light. I suspect that would be kinda fun to play around with!)

YMMV

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[Craig Alan]

Thanks Bill, interesting idea but I was hoping to not do this in post. The shot i posted, the projector was actually the key light and the b.g. And the photo projected had soft colors. But on other shots, the pixels, at this width, were quite obvious and washed out looking. If I moved closer than yes i was able tighten the pixels and I could with an additional light get an image similar to what you posted. But I was going for a different look. The concept was that the character was part of the environment. And yes I’ve done this before with layers and adjusting opacity and using masking and so forth. But I’d really like to set some one in this environment and shoot stills at different focal width/length I would use for any photo shoot. I loved my kodak projector back in the 35mm days. Beautiful wash of color. I’m going to bring one in with some old slides and see what the reality is using this. If it works I just might get a canon film cam that can use my EF lenses.

Anyway I appreciate your input. Fun stuff.

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