I get asked this question a lot lately especially by people following my Flickr stream where this term comes regularly. Basically Translights are large rear illuminated translucent prints that are used as background for shots and have been used for many years in the movie industry for shots with static backgrounds.
The idea is that where you have a static background, instead of using a green or blue screen, you use the image you are going to drop in so that you don’t have to deep etch and have minimal touch-up work and we all know what a pain trying to deep etch hair is don’t we.
A question that often pops up about now is, why not just use a normal print? With a normal paper print you have to light it from the front which is not always easy on every set but with a Translight you simply light it from behind and you get the added advantage that it projects colour onto your set much in the same way gels and a real life scene would which doesn’t work that well with front lit images.
Another question that comes up is where do you get Translights? Well you can either get a good print shop to print high res image onto a translucent backlit material for you or if you have your own large format inkjet just print it yourself.
I regularly print mine on my HP Designjet z3200, which produces mind blowing results, but I can only print 36”wide (max width of HP’s backlit material) so I have to join multiple prints together. This means I get a seam where the join is but it’s easy enough to remove later in Photoshop. From a commercial aspect, I find that the cost of the Translights is easily set off against the cost of the retouching time it saves, especially if there are multiple images that require deep etching.
These are some examples of my latest work shot with Translights.
I will post (in the next few days) a behind the scenes and how I did it for the above images from my Street Race series.
Great post – very interestng stuff..