As any product photographer will tell you, a large, well constructed scrim is an indispensable item to have on hand in your studio. A scrim is a panel of diffusion material, preferably in a frame, that is placed in front of a light source in order to modify the quality of the light striking your subject. The scrim differs from a large soft box in one very important way; the light passing through the diffusion material of the scrim can be moved. This means the photographer can modify the amount and angle of drop-off, the contrast and position of shadows, and the degree of specularity brought out in the image.

In the flat lay image above, a scrim was placed about 60 inches above the staging platform with a bare bulb light source about 24 inches above that. The result was a virtually shadowless image with a subtle drop-off in intensity towards the edges.

But I digress (a lot)… if you didn’t know a scrim was a must-have in the studio, you do now. And this is where my story, or more accurately, my cautionary tale, begins. During a recent move, my scrim suffered irreparable damage at the hands of a band of anti-photography activists (AKA - movers), leaving me temporarily scrimless and in need of a replacement.

If you have been reading this blog for any amount of time, you know that I love good equipment but balk at spending a ton of money on anything that I could just as easily make for myself. And I actually enjoy the whole process of designing and building stuff for the studio. I would even go so far as to claim that most of what I make is at least as good, and often better, than what I could buy at B&H. The savings are usually worth the effort. But in this particular instance, I should have just bought a new Matthews scrim and called it a day. Let me explain why.

I came across a video on YouTube, posted by another photographer, in which he demonstrated how he built his own diffusion panel. It was a smashing video and I apologize that I haven’t been able to find it again and cannot provide either a link to the video or the well-deserved attribution for its creator (I’ll add it here when I find it). I didn’t follow all of his recommendations but it gave me some very helpful pointers for the project. The first step was to draw out a plan and start a shopping list. With that done, I hit the streets in search of everything I would need for, what I expected to be, a quick and straightforward DIY afternoon.

As a frame of reference (pun intended), you can buy a four-foot square Matthews scrim from B&H for about $100. The size was smaller than I needed and I was pretty sure I could make one twice that big for half the cash. Nope.

Here is the finished project:

It’s big, sturdy, surprisingly light, and works like a dream. But, if you consider the man-hours spent in sourcing materials, buying some items twice, and struggling with my bargain-basement sewing machine for a weekend, this is the world’s most expensive scrim. I wouldn’t be surprised if my cost and time estimates for this project were even less accurate than some of NASA’s.

It started out well. The metal conduit I used for the frame was cheap and easy to track down at Home Depot. The corner pieces were slightly more problematic as HD only had three of them. Seriously, just three. So I needed to find another hardware shop and add another hour of driving and a gallon of petrol to the tally. With the materials for the frame poking out the back window of my not-a-pickup-truck automobile, I went in search of good quality bleached muslin for the diffusion panel. I eventually found what I was looking for in a fabric store but had to drive to a neighboring city to find the place. This shop, gigantic, with about a million different kinds of fabric, was having a sale, I was thrilled to discover. But my excitement turned to chagrin when I learned that the sale only covered 999,999 of the shop’s items, but not the muslin.

Fabric in hand, I went back to the hardware store because I had forgotten to get grommets, elastic, and some spring-loaded clips that I planned to use to secure the material to the frame.

Doesn’t look like much, but I needed about twenty of these to attach the material to the frame. The elastic was easy enough to find, but those clip things must be illegal in my area because I could find them nowhere. We have three big Walmarts in my neck of the woods and I looked on every shelf in every department at all three of them before giving up. I later learned that these things are called “cord stops”, but only after trying to describe them to half a dozen Wally World employees who had no idea what I was talking about, were thrown off by my accent, or both. I did find them though, as evidenced in this picture, but only after driving back to the fabric shop (which seemed to have somehow moved another 15 miles further away in the interim). Of course, the anything-except-muslin sale was over by the time I returned and I had to pay the exorbitant full price of $4 for each of these low-tech gizmos. Daylight robbery.

Adding insult to injury, they didn’t have as many of these clips as I would eventually need. In the end I gave up on this attachment strategy and decided to go with heavy duty zip ties, which are what I should have planned to use in the first place. This, of course, meant another trip to the hardware store (at least I was being greeted by name by this point) and several more fistfuls of cash.

Next up was the 2-inch webbing material for reinforcing the muslin panel. Now, if you aren’t used to buying stuff like 2-inch webbing, I have a recommendation for you - don’t. I had to go back to the fabric store (three visits, so far) because no local store even knew this stuff existed and was flabbergasted to find out that it costs the same as 24 carat gold chain, is sold by the inch (maybe it was by the foot - it was all a blur by now), and that I needed an insane amount of it. To be honest, that last one was my own fault. I had my hastily drawn sketch in my pocket but hadn’t bothered to figure out how much edging material I would need. For a 4’ by 5’ scrim I had to have 36-feet of this rare and expensive commodity, to reinforce both sides of the muslin. It would have cost about $40, if they had had that much of it. But, of course, they didn’t. They had about half the amount that I would need.

I spent the rest of the afternoon driving from shop to shop looking for 2” webbing and, just as I was getting ready to throw in the towel, a genuinely helpful shop employee informed me that, “Harbor Freight has them wenches (sic) you could use”. Another 30 minute drive brought me to a Harbor Freight where I discovered they did, in fact, have a “wench” who kindly offered to show me their selection of winches. And that is where I found a heavy-duty ratcheting tie down with a 2” webbing strap. It was even the correct length and cheap, at about $10 for a 20’ strap. I was also thrilled to find heavy-duty grommets, with applicator included, for around $8. With my hard-earned booty in tow, I headed for home.

Arriving home I set to work constructing the frame. I wanted a 4’ x 5’ scrim which meant I would have to cut a foot each from two of the conduit pieces. I couldn’t find my hacksaw but did manage to dig up a miniaturized version of the tool from the bottom of my toolbox. It was a tad rusty but, not one to be discouraged by a touch of oxidation, I charged ahead. After what felt like half an hour of vigorous sawing I was depressed to find I had hardly scratched the surface of the tubing. Redoubling my effort I gave it another 10 minutes, stopping only when my shoulder began to cramp and rivulets of sweat obscured my vision. After a brief rest and a couple of bags of IV fluid, I was preparing for another assault on the still largely intact conduit when I thought to check the condition of the saw blade. Somehow my sawing had removed all the teeth from the rusty blade, leaving a well polished strip of metal that could not have sliced butter. Returning once again from Walmart, with a new blade ($3) and a cheap, but also new, hacksaw ($10), I set upon the conduit and was amazed at how quickly and completely it yielded to only moderate effort.

With the pipes cut and frame assembled, it was time to trim the fabric to size and sew the reinforcing webbing into place. But first I needed a good night of sleep to recover from my first day of this epic adventure.

I arose well-rested and eager to press on with the project. So eager, in fact, that I dispensed with my usual eye-opening mug of freshly brewed Starbucks Italian Roast. This was a crucial decision for which I would soon pay dearly. You may be familiar with the timeless DIY aphorism “measure twice, cut once”? I would propose that to measure only twice before the cut is woefully insufficient, especially when one is severely under-caffeinated. Despite carefully measuring twice I still managed to end up, not with the planned 4’ x 5’ panel, but with a perfectly trimmed piece of muslin that was two-feet wide and ten-feet long. I had purchased more than enough of this material ($30 worth of it) but neither of the remaining pieces would be large enough to complete my mission.

Having learned the dangers of operating machinery (scissors, in this case) with inadequate stimulant levels in the bloodstream, I hastily gulped down three venti-doses of joe before attempting the 50-mile round trip to see my shady muslin dealer (now, that’s a good pun). Another $30 and an hour in the car saw me back at the cutting table with scissors in hand. Measuring eight times, the cut was perfect and my 4’ x 5’ was ready to hem.

My sewing machine is not one of the higher-end devices on the market. Purchased during a back-to-school sale, my machine cost about the same as the cardboard box that a Bernina 880 Plus comes in. The good news is that I saved $14,149 by not buying the Bernina (MSRP $14,199). But I’m digressing again.

The sewing went fairly well. But I should clarify that by “fairly well” I mean that I didn’t sew any part of myself or my clothing to the project, I didn’t break more than six needles, and the bleeding stopped without the need for sutures. The final step involved placing the grommets through which the zip ties would pass. This was 90% successful, from the perspective of the overall project, with only a single hammer-blow to a single thumbnail (in fairness, this amounted to a 100% failure from the perspective of the thumb in question).

Zip ties were used to attach the grommeted panel to the metal frame and the job was done. Here is one of the first photographs taken with the scrim in place:

I am very happy with the softness of the lighting from a point light positioned 24” behind the scrim, and with the specular highlights from a second bare build studio light held much closer to the scrim.

But are these pleasing results worth the frustration, blood loss, and enough cash to pick up a new Hasselblad H6D? Doubtful.

So if you are looking for advice on building your own studio scrim, here’s some… buy a Matthews from B&H.

Thanks for dropping by! Take a minute to visit the newly redesigned website at allanwallsphotography.com and be on the lookout for the new photography podcast, Shoot the Breeze , out soon and available from iTunes.

Until next time….