Cool, glad to hear you like the blog. As far as background support systems, it depends on the type of background. You have the right idea, for a basic backdrop you just need some beefy light stands, the size of which depends the size you're going for on the background. At present for example, I use 2.7m paper rolls and need large stands to support it.

I would say you should start by looking for a set with two medium-beefy stands and a crossbar. A nice example comes in the form of the Manfrotto MA 1314B set. It's a combination of two decent stands and a bar to go across the top of them. It's designed for a paper roll so it will hold whatever background material you're using, and from B&H it's only $230 for the set and it light enough to be portable.

-mark

Shawn

P.s. I'm looking for advice on o portable backdrop setup (with greenscren and black and white and…). With your experience, can you suggest (or blog about) what solution would be wisest? An aspect I'm thinking-on is how I might choose the backdrop stands to double-up as light-stands, in case I add some mor strobes to the three I already use. Currently I have a foldable/popopenable solution to do torso-portraits, but I'm unhappy with it and the unstableness of the singlestand on which it's hooked on

Rethanks.