[tigeba]

Regarding the white background patent, I'm by no means a professional photographer but the majority of the items in their patent strike me as basic if not incredibly obvious to a photographer that specializes in this type of work. The first figure is a 4 point lighting setup, something that you could find in hundreds of different textbooks. Their lens selection ( 85mm ) is in no way novel. There is always some debate, but many photographers prefer either an 85mm or 100mm for portraiture. If you look around you will find groups dedicated to taking portraits with the Canon 85mm 1.2L. I'm having a hard time finding how their claim does anything other than describe almost every photography studio in existence. Many video and photo studios even have a white cyclorama built right into the walls, it is almost their default behavior to facilitate what the patent claims to be unique.

It is possible that their specific claims relate to some of their very specific ratios and distances, but it seems like a stretch to me.

[lotsofmangos]

I've commented this before, but Amazon's white background patent stresses that it achieves a seamless background with no need for post-processing.

There is a very good reason for this.

When this technique was developed, post-processing was done with a wand in a darkroom and electronic computers were yet to be built.

edit - actually, if you replace the camera with an audience, the effect predates photography. Infinity cycloramas being a popular set building technique in 19th century German theatre.