The latest (and maybe greatest) trend for back drops are digital photographs that are panoramic and have been printed on sheets of paper that are then glued to the masonite or whatever kind of material. My question is how does this process work? I get the part about taking several photos in a panoramic fashion and then blending them together. How do you blend them together? Can you do this on a Mac computer? The biggest question is how do you get them printed out in say 6-8 foot x 2 foot sections? Can they be longer than the afore mentioned deminsions? What type of adhesive is used to glue these photos to the back drop surface? What tools would you use in order to make certain that there are no wrinkles or bubbles? Any one with experience doing this? If so, tell me about your experience. Thank you.
Hi Craig,
My Nikon CoolPix 2 digital camera has a “Panorama Mode” that lets you take several shots and then it assists in lining them up into one continuous shot. I don’t know about the processing part but I would imagine that any high end graphics shop could process and print it. It probably will not be cheap though. I hope this helps a little.
John C.
If I was in the market for a backdrop, I’d buy it HERE. Go to the Index and then click on “Backdrops vs. Backgrounds” to see examples.
Wayne
take them to the local printing store.
standard rolls of paper are either 2ft, 3ft, or 4ft by 150ft long, but I assume they could come in longer rolls. The largest preset size mine (HP 755 printer) has is 36"x108".
I use spray on contact cement.
No tools (hands) just extra people and lots of patience. I would never try to do it alone.
I print my own and glue my own. The best world is to have four people. Two people hold the glued paper over the masonite and let it bow in the center. Make certain it is all lined up and then let the very center touch. The ends are lowered very slowly as one person works from the center to one end and another person works from the center to the opposite. I have never had one that I have not gotten at least one bubble. Most of the time the bubble can be taken out by peeling the paper back very carefully. I did rip one that way though. One of the most recent ones after I was all done and thought it looked perfect, came back about an hour later and there were bubbles everywhere!!!. Also when peeling back to correct a fold or bubble the paper can stretch. That is really yuck because then it won’t lay flat regardless what one does. Obviously the longer the paper the more difficult to get it right. I tried the glue and roll out method once. It came out ok but the glue was not as even as I would have liked, Plus one must almost crawl on top of the newly put down b
Why not use photoprinted wallpapers? A custom mural doesn´t cost so much these days.
There is one thing to be said about photographic backgrounds - they tend to distract the view from the foreground and do not create the depth we want to achieve. In reality, our vision tends to get a little blurred or fogged, the farther away the object we look at is.
Those backdrops made by Busch show that impressively.
Back in the old days when we made our own laminate counter tops. We laid clean wood strips on top of the glue then laid the laminate on top of the strips to adjust alignment. After it was positioned we pulled the strips a little at a time to allow the laminate to settle onto the glue. I’m assuming your using contact cement.
I don’t know if this would help on photos are not.
Lee
If you’re using contact cement, waxed paper between the wall and the backdrop material will allow positioning. Personally, I think that wallpaper paste would be a much better choice (depending on the quality of the paper, of course). You can “book” it to make it easier to handle and it’s easy to lift and re-apply in order to smooth out wrinkles or trapped air bubbles.
Wayne
Use a process similar to laying laminate onto a countertop base; contact cement, sticks on the masonite, lay the print down onto the sticks, make it even to your liking, pull the centre stick out and progress from there. One thing I would like to comment on is the aspect of cutting out the object(s) and, after painting the sky medium or whatever, simply cement them into place. I have a Domino Sugar plant pasted onto a backdrop so that it gives the impression of a harbour beyond a bascule bridge. It takes a lot of experimentation but it works and works well.
RIch
I might make a suggestion from my world of art and graphics design…high-end graphics companies still exist and are expensive, but I’ll tell you what, I don’t know what town you live in, but many artists and people serving artists are now buying their own wide-format printers and re-cooping their money by printing exactly what you are looking for. And they do this at a fraction of the cost of the big boys. I like the idea of taking my own pictures so I get what I want, but if you need something that isn’t in your neck of the woods, you may have to get a little creative.
Me, I have a HP 5500PS 40" wide printer. Cost me three grand, which used to be fifteen grand two or three years ago. I supposedly bought it to sell prints in my gallery and maybe offer services to artists, but, whom am I kidding??? I bought it for backdrops for my railroad. I’m going up to the mountains this weekend to get some pictures I’ll fool around with in photoshop or something.
You could find these artists and printers usually at the Craiglist under artists’ community. If they aren’t there, just put a post in asking for affordable people using wide-format printers and “giclees” as they’re called in the art world, and I bet you get a lot of responses.
Hope this helps.
p.s…don’t try to mount the photos yourself, take 'em to your local framer and have them mounted for you on foam board, it should be pretty cheap to do that unless you don’t find a reasonable framer.
I bought four 24’-26;’ sequential SceniKing 7" x 11" sectional panoramic ’ photos, with fairly uniform blue sky at the top, and painted the Luan backdrop from 7 inches above the layout top to ceiling with the same electronically matched blue, from the paint store. I used a giant glue stick to attach each trimmed section, in sequence, all the way around my layout. The photo below shows how I achieved forced perspective, by using a rough 2"x2" support for the N scale track, that is directly behind the HO scale track. one can get photo sequences of cities, farms, desert, mountains or (as in this case),low distant hills. I drew a top line to guide p;acement of the photo sections… Bob Hahn 