Grey background

[Cutter]

Hi , I am having probs with getting a decent bacground , so have decided to paint a wall.
I think it should be 18% grey so I can flip from black to white. Has anyone tried this ? if so what is 18% grey when it comes to paint? any thoughts would be welcomed

[cosmicma]

18% black in a can of white paint ?

[Cutter]

Originally Posted by cosmicma

18% black in a can of white paint ?

ever the comedian, I Like it

[pburness]

I don't know, but if you take a grey card to B&Q they will sample it and mix the paint
Of course it will probably dry differently depending upon the base colour of the wall, but you can probably get close enough and colour WB it later.

Phil

[AndyStevens]

Battleship grey?

Or probably 'Burnished Platinum' on the tin

Good luck!!

Cheers
Andy

[GeoffWessex]

Not sure i see the point of being so accurate with the "18%"...... if you're taking a picture of the wall the camera will, presumably, meter it and give you the right tone. But surely you're taking pictures of a subject in front of the wall, so you meter for the subject - the wall will come out lighter or darker, depending on what exposure the camera gives for the subject.

There again, I suppose you could be thinking of metering for the grey wall, setting it on the camera (obviously in Manual) and taking your shots. You'd get the wall right but the subject is not going to give the same light reading, either incident or reflected, because your main lights will be pointing to a subject that's perhaps a couple of meters from the wall and lit differently. If your subject were standing right up against the wall (you wouldn't want that) then your grey reading is fine, but.....

[Matthew Gore]

For those of us who have to work in a color neutral environment, there are ISO standardized color neutral paints specifically made for this. They're not cheap, but you probably wouldn't need a ton of it, especially if you use a neutral primer.

Here's an example...

http://www.rpimaging.com/store/PID123

- Matthew

[Cutter]

Have taken all on board thanks for the info: The idea behind it is, I was told it is easy to get it to look white or black acording to your lighting setup.