diy background support/ holder

An important disclaimer: what I have described below is how to use your equipment for purposes it wasn’t designed to fulfill. Doing what is described below is entirely at your own risk and you’re responsible for any damage it may cause to your equipment, people it might hurt, etc., etc. You don’t have to do what I’ve done unless you decide so.

If you’re like me and often have to shoot within limited space and you don’t want to give up your seamless background, I have good news for you. By accident I happened to put together what is now becoming my favorite background support tool. As with the makeshift reflector holder I only used items which were already in my legal possession. Yet, if you don’t have everything, here’s a list with the ingredients…

What you’ll need

• A decent light stand (can also be small and cheap, like mine, if you only use light backgrounds).
• A clamp which can attach to the top of it.
• [optional] A Manfrotto Lite-Tite adapter and a spigot (Manfrotto 013, which I already had from the backlite stand)
• Two [metal] strips which are long enough to sandwich your background in width; mine are aluminum (check the hardware store nearby). You can use other material, but I found these to be most durable, stable and easiest to store… And I already had them.
• Two simple workshop clamps which can be had at any hardware store.

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thinkpad w701 – basic review

I’ve been using the ThinkPad W701 laptop desktop replacement and figured I’ve gathered enough information and experience with it to write a basic review for any photographers out there looking for a powerful mobile workstation.

My W701 (the one pictured) is the model with a single LED screen and no digitizer (the built-in Wacom tablet). I have an external Wacom Intuos4 M and a second flat screen, so these options were not of interest for me. My configuration came with 4GB of memory, Intel’s i7 Q720 @ 1.6GHz processor, NVIDIA’s 1GB FX2800M video controller, and two hard drives. Immediately after purchase, I upgraded the RAM to 16GB – this was the cheapest way to go.

As I alluded to in the beginning – this is not a laptop. I wouldn’t even quite call it a “mobile” computer… Unless you go by the weight standards of some years ago. It’s also massive in size. Coming from a 15″ ThinkPad R60 the size did surprise me at first, but I never bought this to be a “carry around” machine. It’s the ideal desktop replacement, especially for people like me who travel seasonally and need to bring the work along.

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