Is this possible?

[candidrachel]

Do you know if you can photograph a photograph? I've been trawling though my archives for candid shot of children playing for my website (no easy feat there are 1000's!!) and asked my sister for feedback and she suggested some photos of her son at an Easter Egg hunt years ago. The trouble is they were taken using film and we don't have a scanner so my question is is it possible to take a digital photograph of the photograph? Will the quality be rubbish?

Thanks in advance.

[digirebelva]

You can, I have seen it done and done it myself, but (there is always a but) the quality is (usually) going to suffer v's scanning the image. It doesn't hurt to try with digital though and with todays software for PP'ing the outcome may be all you need for the website.

[naeno]

With sufficient lighting, I've actually had better results taking a picture of a picture rather than scanning the picture in. I like to take them out on my front porch to take the pictures, the combo of outdoor lighting and shade turns out well. Make sure to mount your camera on a tripod. It won't work well if you take the picture by hand. Good luck.

[wulf]

It is like taking a photo of a painting. Two things to watch out for (apart from focus and sufficient light) are:

1. Glare. If the lighting isn't diffuse and soft, you might end up capturing reflections from the surface of the photo.

2. Angle. If the photo is not flat to the plane of the camera, you will introduce some odd perspective which might be interesting but is more likely to make the result look unnatural.

Wulf