Backdrops - where do I find them?

[Anonymous]

Backdrops - where do I find them?
I am in no way a artist when it comes to drawing mountains or rivers on walls (or paper) - hell I can't even make a decent paint by number.
I would like to have them in my back grounds. I have no idea where to look for these back drops. I don't know if I can afford them, but I would like to see what is out there.
I hope you guys can help,
Thanks, ennout [:)]

[oleirish]

A while back my LHS had some,good ones!You can problry find them on line under model railroad ACC.

OLE'IRISH

[soumodeler]

Walthers sells Instant Horizions backdrops for $8 for a 2x3' piece. There are many different ones from cities to country to mountains. Most of them are fairly good, especially the city scenes. There are others out there as well, but these are the only ones I am familiar with.

soumodeler
-----------------
The Southern Serves the South!

[dwRavenstar]

ennout,

Maybe a bit pricey but you could take a look at:
allscalebackdrops.com
cdnphotomural.com

Except to look I've had no experience nor dealings with either site.

Dave (dwRavenstar)

[simon1966]

I am experimenting with my own photos and an application I got cheap of e-bay called Big Picture. I printed about 12 feet of backdrop last night and plan to install it today. I will try and post my results to let you know how it worked out.

[pcarrell]

This is the place to go for some excellent backdrops. One catch (you knew there was a catch didn't you?), they are EXPENSIVE!!! They do a page on the website that offers seconds though, and you can save a bunch that way.

Check it out at;

http://backdropwarehouse.com/indexbdwh.htm

[ndbprr]

Go to EBay. One of the companies that makes them offers them all the time and they go pretty reasonably.

[Anonymous]

Thanks guys, Now I have at least a starting point.
simon1966 - please do post your results, I would be very interested on how they turned out.
ennout[:D]

[Seamonster]

Here's an unlikely source. I was in a large pet supplies store a while ago and while going through the fish section, I saw large rolls of backdrops, apparently intended to go behind aquariums. They came in rolls 12", 18" and 24" wide and one obviously bought them by the foot. They had quite a variety of scenes, none of which were underwater scenes. I can't imagine why one would want a desert scene or a mountain scene behind an aquarium, but they sure reminded me of the Instant Horizons products.

[simon1966]

OK, so I have been experimenting with this "Big Picture" Program. It lets you take a digital photo and blow it up. It then automatically breaks the large picture into 8 1/2" x 11" sheets so that you can print the poster out on a regular color printer. You can set the overlap so that you can piece the picture together. You have to do some triming, but nothing that a lever paper cutter can't handle.



In this example, I have not even bothered to attatch it to the backdrop, just held it in place by a paint bottle. The blue is my painted backdrop as I cut the sky out of the picture. I had taken a series of panorama shots with my digital camera and have about 15' of useable cornfield scene. Total cost for this, $10 for the software and the cost of printing a few dozen color sheet on my color laser. I think this is going to work out very well.

[Anonymous]

simon1966, That looks great! What is the name of the "Big Picture" Program? or is that the name of the porgram? Any idea where I might be able to find it?[:P]

Seamonster , Now that's a place I would never have thought to look. I am going to now though.

Thanks again you guys, ennout

[simon1966]

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=21198&item=7521428579&rd=1

Do an e-Bay search for "big picture" there seem to be several vendors selling the same application. Above is an example, but there are many others so pick and choose your vendor.

I posted some more examples in the "Weekend Photo Fun" thread, look on the 2nd page.

[davekelly]

simon,

Do you use the photo quality paper for it?

[simon1966]

In this instance I did not, I just used a decent quality letter paper. I like to use Hammermill 24lb laser printer. I have a color laser printer in my home office which I use for all my business mail and I like a heavier paper stock.

[Anonymous]

ennout, check out these two sites, I think you will like what you see.
www. Realistic Backgrounds.com
www. Scenic Express.com

Ron