A three dimensional(3-D) measurement method with orthogonal composite grating based on fringe contrast and background calibration is presented. We get the phase-shifted sine fringes from the composite grating image captured on the reference plane, and the zeroth order spectrum and first order spectrum of the phase-shifting sinusoidal fringes can be obtained by filtering in spatial frequency domain, then the ratio coefficients of contrast and background between the sinusoidal fringes can be calculated out. When an object is measured, the contrast and background of the demodulated deformed fringes can be calibrated by these ratio coefficients, and new 3-D measurement mathematical model is set up. Experiments prove that the new method can effectively reduce phase error, and improve measurement accuracy.