Photographing artwork

[PAKirk]

Any advice please.
I have been asked my mother whom is an artist to photograph her work.
The photos will be used to make prints ect.
I am looking for the highest possible quality results for this.

I presume the best way to set up is have the art work on a perfectly vertical mount and use a level on the camera hot shoe to line up correctly to gain a nice flat focal plane.
Lighting- I will require a nice soft uniform light setup.
Kit I have
Static lighting
2x 150w (equivalent to something like 800W) 6400K with white brollies.
Flash
2x 160W Heads 1x soft box and I (gold) brollie
Canon speed light 580 EX II

Lenses:-
Canon 24-70mm F2.8L
Canon 70-200mm F2.8L
Canon 100-400mm F4.5/5.6L
Canon 18-55mm F3.5-5.6 IS (Kit lens)

Ok question time….
Which lens would be best?
Should I purchase a macro lens?
Should I use static lighting of Flash?
If I use flash should I purchase 2x white brollies or another soft box?
Should the lighting be setup close to artwork or some distance away?

Large FStop/ Fast Shutter VS Small fStop/Slow shutter?

Any advice would be appreciated I don’t mind spending some £££ to do this job well..
Thanks

[zona5101]

Originally Posted by PAKirk

Which lens would be best?
Should I purchase a macro lens?
Should I use static lighting of Flash?
If I use flash should I purchase 2x white brollies or another soft box?
Should the lighting be setup close to artwork or some distance away?

Large FStop/ Fast Shutter VS Small fStop/Slow shutter?

It going to depend on the size of the artwork, but you'd use the lens that allows you to get the entire object in the viewfinder in focus.
macro? if the stuff is small.
Since the artwork is static, i'd shoot with your continuous lighting. You can watch for reflections, hot spots and unwanted shadows easier with continuous light.
Closer the light the more it will wrap and produce softer shadows, so i'd keep the light as close as possible as long as it's not causing some other issue.

You don't say if the artwork is paintings or something more 3 dimensional - this will drive your aperture to achieve the necessary depth of field. Obviously using a tripod will allow you to be less concerned with shutter speed.

[PAKirk]

Thank you for you'r reply.
The artwork is paintings.
Using the continuous lighting makes sence as you explained.Will I be better to try and get soft boxes for the lights or will the brollies be ok?

[cyber3d]

I've got a list of what I do when I have to digitize paintings. I've done quite a few of these. This may be overkill for you, but it will get you the best possible images you can get.

Here it is in no particular order:

1. Use the longest lens practical.
2. Find the sweet spot for that lens (you can usually find out on the net)
3. Use the largest F-stop within that range. You want to get the most DOF as possible without the lens crapping out on you. So don't go too far from the sweet spot.
4. As you said, be sure to align the camera to the painting. It must be perpendicular in both axis.
5. Ideally you want at least four continuous light sources. I use eight - four on either side. I set them up vertically - two columns on either side. I use 1000watts total for my setup. This set up works for paintings 2 1/2 ft x 3 1/2 ft and smaller.
6. Be sure to let them warm up to settle the color temp.
7. Measure everything out so that everything is symmetrical.
8. I say you should set up for the largest painting you have to shoot. You will keep the same camera exposure settings and distance to the painting for all the paintings regardless of their size. You will only vary the zoom.
9. Get a white card (the size of the largest painting) and shoot it as though it was a painting.
10. Download that into the computer and analyze it with software to ensure there are no hot spots from the light sources. I use both Threshold and Posterize to analyze the evenness of the light.
11. Lock your mirror in the up position to minimize vibrations
12. Use a remote shutter release or the time delay function on your camera
13. If you can use the "camera view and control from computer" function if you have a newer Canon EOS. You can control everything from the computer.
14. Use a really steady tripod
15. Shoot at the highest image mode possible (RAW of course)
16. Remove the paintings from their frames and glass
17. Don't crop the image in the camera, do it on your computer
18. Write down as much as you can - you may want to shoot more later or have to reshoot some.
19. In regards to the light source. You may have to play with the positioning depending on the type of painting. Oil painting requires more side lighting to capture the strokes. Pastel can be more direct, but you have to ensure no reflected hot spots depending on the paper type. The same goes for airbrush paintings. Mixed media art .... you are on your own!
20. Oh yeah, if you use the two columns of continuous lights on either side of the painting be sure they are parallel to the plane of the painting (when viewed from the side) and also parallel from the front, now that I think of it.

I use continuous instead of flash because I have more control over them.

Good luck.

[Doug Sundseth]

From your description, it sounds like you're going to be shooting flat art. If you're shooting 3D pieces, the answers will change.

Since the subject isn't moving, shoot with the lens, focal length, and aperture that has the least distortion and the best sharpness across the image. At a guess, that will be somewhere in the 50mm to 100mm range, at f/5.6 - f/11.

You can test this by shooting newspaper pinned up on the wall. The text will make it easy to see any distortion or softness.

For lighting, I would recommend incandescent lights without color correction to daylight. Daylight adjustment is done by absorbing and re-radiating the photons, and the re-radiation isn't a smooth black-body spectrum. Daylight incandescent bulbs and any fluorescent bulbs have spiky spectra with dropouts at some frequencies. This makes for poor reproduction of certain colors, which would be a problem for art reproduction.

If you go with plain incandescent bulbs, on the other hand, you can color correct either at the time you take the photo (in camera) or in post easily.

I would also shoot a color card at the start of each session, and I'd use manual everything for consistency. A good fine art printer should be able to use the color card shot to ensure that your corrected images are printed where they are supposed to be.

The good news is that once you have your setup and the first good shot, the rest of the shoot should be really easy to handle. Just swap out the pieces of art and press the shutter release. You should be able to handle any post processing as a batch for all the shots.

[PAKirk]

Thank you very much for your info, very usefull.

I will let you know how I get on.

[jasikajohnson]

Photography is itself art, Most of the professional photography needs great outdoors. They need digital and specialized camera. Painting photos are also great artwork.