Super Black Paint?

[Zach Matthews]

Hey guys –

Below is a shot from the spread I have running in the Winter Fly Tyer (at least that’s when it’s supposed to run).

As you can see, the black background worked very well.  To get this shot, I used a big piece of black felt that I literally duck taped together on the back side, positioned several feet behind the vise (so I could keep the highlights on the metal) and then I worked with it in photoshop.

I would really like to have a better option.  Ideally, I’d find some kind of flexible plastic that I could spray-paint with a super black, super matte, light absorbing paint.  Regular black Krylon is quite shiny, even the matte stuff, when hit with a camera flash.

Does anyone know of a particular kind of paint that is meant to absorb as much light as possible?  I am looking for a black hole.

Zach

[Neal Osborn]

You don’t need “paint”.

Go to Jo-Anne fabrics and buy a 2-foot piece of black backing felt without sheen.  Place it 2 feet from the fly/subject and flag off the flash spill.  Done, easy.

The trick is to burn the image in Photoshop to get the black less than 10 (i.e. 1-255, less than 10 is essentially “print” black with full ink on paper).  Choose burn tool, set opacity to around 15% and select “shadows”, brush in the dark pixels in the black background and the fly/subject will not be modified; only the shadows get burned.

Example

[Zach Matthews]

That’s a good idea, Neal, but how do you handle things like black hooks and vise parts?

[Neal Osborn]

If you are doing multiple images for an article then I agree the PS technique is a bit overkill (and time consuming, aagghh).  The black felt is indeed the “cheepo” stuff and it works best because it is flat black and sucks up light very well.  In that case you just use the black background and be sure to either 1)snoot the flash so it hits just the fly (preffered), or 2)flag off the spill.  You can also do bracketed exposures but that is again more work in PS.

This is a snooted shot on cheep black felt.

[Zach Matthews]

I’m looking for the ability to drop a very black background a few feet behind the working area, then light the area with a desk light such as my natural light job, not with a flash.  When shooting the sequence pics, you have to have your hands or tools in the frame at times, too.  Not very conducive to a lot of finicky lighting.

The idea is to make a swathe of light in front of me with a very black background behind.  This is what I did for the sequence in the upcoming issue and it worked, but I still had to tinker because the felt showed texture in the background where light spilled over.

[Shannon Drawe]

All you have to do is recall the inverse square principle of light in order to get to black.

[Zach Matthews]

Yeah, of course, why didn’t I think of that?

😮

[steve yates]

Look at some flat black paint used to paint grills and fireplaces.

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