The kit includes a photographic background and all the necessary studio accessories, allowing for its installation in home, office, school or studio environments. The simple configuration will work well for beginner photographers.

The Academy™ kit has been prepared for users based on the requirements set out for a home photo studio. It contains all the essential elements to build a photographic studio at home - a background hanging system, basic background and lighting. The green color of the background allows you to take photos and make films using the GreenScreen (color keying) technique, providing excellent conditions for effect photography, portraits, product shots or creating a simple "virtual TV studio". The continuous lighting included allows you to preview your results in the camera (phone) before releasing the shutter. In the case of non-living subjects, the frame is limited only by the width of the background. You can also use this kit for filming (live, stream, remote learning). Higher sensitivities are required then.

The Academy™ photographic studio kit allows you to take photos:

• portraits (makeup, artistic portraits, effect shots, photomanipulation)
• product photography (catalogs, websites, online stores, sales platforms)
• film footage in a "virtual studio"
• special effects (FX)
• photos for documents (IDs, passports, student IDs, biometric photos - after exchanging the background to white. White background is not included in this kit)

Blue box (also known as bluescreen, GreenScreen, chroma key) is an image processing technique that involves replacing the background of a relatively uniform color (originally blue, hence the name) with any other image. It is widely used in television (most often during weather forecasts and news programs) and film (to place actors in computer-generated environments). The background color is usually blue or green because these colors are considered least similar to skin tone and appear rarely in costumes and props.

In digital video recording, color is represented by three numbers indicating the brightness of the color components (RGB). The blue box effect is achieved through a simple comparison of the values of these numbers at individual points in the recording with the background color. If the colors match (exactly or within a certain range), then that point in the recording is replaced by an alternative background.

A person participating in a blue box recording should not wear clothing in a similar color to the background, as it will be replaced by the alternative image. They also cannot hold objects of this color. This can be used to create an effect of an invisible character wearing an invisibility hat, for example.

In some Polish television channels (e.g., TVP, TVN Meteo Active), blue box is used to present weather forecasts. Public television in the years 1990-1992 used a blue box in the News program to generate a uniform blue background and display animations next to the presenter. In the years 1997-2002, it was also used in this program to generate a newsroom image behind the presenter's back. Source: Wikipedia.

The lighting used in this kit is an innovative, continuous studio lighting - single bulb LED lamps on lighting stands with photographic umbrellas serving as light modifiers. The lamps are equipped with DaVinci^™ photographic bulbs with standardized parameters (color temperature 3600-6200K and color rendering index CRI >90). Using continuous light in a home studio provides an excellent real-time view of the results, allows you to work with smartphones, and importantly - enables filming. The use of umbrellas softens the tonal transition between light and shadow.

In Academy™ kits, at least 2 lamps are used due to mutual compensation of shadows - one lamp serves as the main light source, while the other acts as a fill light. The power of the bulbs used is given in the technical specification (below).

The strong point of this kit is the lighting with remote brightness and color temperature control. Here, innovative LED Bi-Color bulbs from the DaVinci™ series are used, controlled remotely using included remotes.

Variable color temperature is achieved in the bulb in a classic way known from on-camera lamps - by mounting a chessboard of luminescent diodes with two different color temperatures. This solution has an additional advantage that shifts in the spectrum of individual diodes increase the effective color rendering for the entire bulb. The range of color temperatures goes from 3600K to 6200K. The high luminous efficiency of the bulb means we achieve very high luminance with low active power consumption, equivalent to a 100-watt bulb.

The LED matrices are covered by a protective diffuser that scatters light over an area of 112cm², ensuring the emitted light has a pleasant, soft distribution regardless of intensity. At short distances, the softening of the light can correspond to a softbox or beauty-dish lamp. The bulb produces very nice, relatively large reflections.

The generated light is continuous without flickering, allowing filming with higher frame rates. The bulb is designed for indoor use, IP20 protection class. It is intended for professional applications in photographic studio conditions. This bulb is not suitable for home use. The bulb housing is not hermetically sealed.

A lightweight, single-layer umbrella with a diameter of 110 cm and a silver reflector. The reflective silver layer does not change the color temperature of the reflected light. The outer layer does not reflect light.
Umbrellas are used by professionals and amateurs alike. The function of an umbrella is to change the direction of incident light rays. The spherical shape of the reflector acts like a lens, changing the omnidirectional nature of the light into more parallel beams. This also increases the overall amount of light falling on the photographed object. In practice, this means that sharp shadows become softer, shapes are more plastic and "three-dimensional", textures are emphasized but not harsh. They allow us to eliminate unwanted shadows, making tonal transitions much gentler. In portraits, skin looks better, wrinkles are reduced, and the iris is large and bright. In product photography, details in the shadows are highlighted while reducing overexposure (glare) on shiny surfaces. This is also an ideal solution for people creating videos for their online channels.

A lightweight and stable stand designed for use with small and medium lamps as well as lighting kits in studio and outdoor environments. It works perfectly in a configuration with flash lights and continuous light, softboxes, RedHead halogen lamps whose easy assembly is facilitated by the 16mm studio head with universal thread 1/4". When folded, the stand takes up little space, and its assembly is extremely simple - it has convenient, profiled section clamps. The umbrella was attached to the stands using butterfly nuts, which prevents it from lifting when raising the background upwards. Unrolling the background from the roll is blocked by plugging in two grips (frogs) included with the kit.

The width and length of the fabric on the roll is sufficient to create a continuous background without folds (cyclorama) for photographing a silhouette. The cardboard roll protects against creases during transport or storage. Potential creases can be easily removed by steaming or wetting the background. The perforated texture of the background minimizes reflections from strong light sources. The cardboard roll, on which the background is wound, serves as a base for easy storage and transportation of the background, also allowing it to be hung on a studio beam.

Creative use of the background requires the photographer or camera operator to plan the frame and the desired final effect after applying keying. Of course, you will need a computer with appropriate software. The good news is that there are free versions of such software available on the market, which allow for image keying in both photography and film. For those starting their work with green background as greenscreen, we highly recommend materials published on YouTube.

A note about the texture of the material - people who come into contact with photographic polypropylene backgrounds for the first time fear that the background texture will be visible in photos. In real conditions, the object remains at a distance of approximately 50 cm from the background, which together with shallow depth of field causes the background texture to become blurred.

Choosing the lighting power

When selecting lighting for a photographic studio, you should ensure an appropriate amount of light necessary to achieve your goal. The Home Photographic Studio kits may contain (depending on the version) from 2 to 16 bulbs.

• Non-living subjects do not require strong light.
  If you are photographing a non-living object, you can freely use single bulb lamps. In product photography, exposure time is arbitrary and can always be adjusted for proper exposure. A tripod will come in handy.
• Beware of people (and animals).
  During the photography of people and animals, exposure time is limited. Especially when photographing children or lively animals, a significantly larger amount of light is required. Single bulb lamps will pass the test at short distances (approx. 0.5 m).
• The wider the frame - the more bulbs.
  You can assume that for portraits you can use two single bulb lamps. When photographing with a large close-up, the distance of the softbox from the face is small and provides proper exposure. Increasing the frame very quickly forces an increase in light quantity.
• Fashion on live models.
  If you plan to do fashion photography with a model (male or female), choose kits with two or more four-bulb softboxes.