SELECT THE PERFECT BACKDROP FABRIC
ULTRA CLOTH VS FLEECE
WITH GRONDE PHOTOGRAPHY
Let's talk about Background Town fabric options.
So Brandy and I are here at Background Town to select the perfect backdrop fabric. We are here at their print lab where they print their backgrounds. This is where Background Town prints their fleece and their ultra cloth backgrounds. We watch the whole process of them doing an entire role of backgrounds. But I want to talk to you today about the different fabric options for their backgrounds and why I would choose one over the other. We have both in our studio. We have reasons why we have both for one or the other. So let's talk about the different textile options.
So here in their lab, I have access to all the different materials and everything that they have here. So we have some raw materials, some unprinted background, so you can get a real idea of what these fabrics look like. So this is the Ultra Cloth. It's a very kind of stretchy, it's wrinkle free. We have these folded on a shelf in our studio. You hang them up. They're super wrinkle-free. They don't crease or anything like that. It's a great fabric option. It's this great stark white clean fabric.
ULTRA CLOTH
And then you have the fleece, which is obviously a softer, thicker fabric than the Ultra Cloth, but prints really well. And because fleece is just generally absorbent, it's going to absorb any light that you shine at it. So if you're using flash or strobe in your studio, the fleece is actually going to absorb some of that light. So if you ever have a background that's reflecting a lot of your light that you don't want there because it's messing with that image on your background, this is going to absorb that light. So you're not going to get that reflection that you're going to get with a canvas backdrop or even some fabrics in that way.
FLEECE
So here on the printer, we were able to get two backgrounds that are the same design, but are printed on both of the fabrics. So you can really see side to side what these two are going to look like when they're printed on each fabric. So here you have the fleece, and the Ultra Cloth background, and you can really tell the difference in the sheen. The lights in their factory, you can tell the difference of the reflectiveness and the shadows that are appearing on the Ulta Cloth that aren't appearing on the Fleece one. The Fleece has a much more matte finish than the Ultra Cloth does. The advantage to having the Ultra Cloth is that because the fleece has this soft texture to it and is fluffier than the ultra fabric, it can, if you get the fleece going the wrong direction can shine through a little bit and kind of mess with the image and the lines and the details are a little softer than on the Ultra Cloth.
So I like to have anything that has a more textured look, something that's a plain image or something that is just color and things like that is what I like to have my fleece on. Anything that has a lot of detail, a lot of fine detail, I personally prefer the Ultra Cloth for. It's going to give you a much sharper image in those fine details, and it's going to give you a more realistic look. If your backgrounds are far enough back and you're shooting at a low enough aperture that you're kind of blurring it anyway, it doesn't matter. But if you want that sharp image, then you're going to want to go with the Ultra Cloth. It's also a lot lighter. If you don't have a lot of storage space, the Ultra Cloth is actually going to fold up. Because it's thinner, it's going to fold up easier and store better than the fleece does.It takes up way less space than the fleece does in our studio on the shelf.
So one of the other differences is that the Ultra Cloth does come with a pole pocket. So if you have a backdrop stand that you want to put on a pole, the Ultra Cloth does have the pole pocket. The fleece, we just roll it over, clamp it on the pole. It's going to work the same way. But if you really are just in dire need of having a pole pocket, the Ultra Cloth has a pole pocket where the fleece does not.
Thanks so much for coming with us on this tour of Background Town. I hope you learned a little bit about how to select the perfect backdrop fabric. There's hundreds of amazing designs. They're updating them all the time. Thanks again for watching.
