Shooting gallery painting - need tips

[EricWHiss]

Hi,

I've got a job to shoot some large (4 foot by 6 foot or 1.5 x 2 meter) oil paintings for a gallery catalog and possibly some smaller sized reproductions.   I'm planning on shooting this with my Rollei/p20 and either my 150mm apo macro or 90 apo macro lens depending on how far away I can get from the painting.    I also plan to light this with strobes but only have 2 heads.    I do have polarizing film for the heads and plan to use this with a pol filter on the lens in case there isn't enough space to put the lighting off at angles from the work.  

Just wondering if some of you that do a lot of this type of shooting can give me some lighting tips on how to get even lighting on the painting, and anything else that might be useful - either to do or to avoid doing?

Thanks,
Eric

[snickgrr]

Eric,
If it's a one day thing, you can borrow some of my strobes.  I have tons.

[EricWHiss]

Eric,
If it's a one day thing, you can borrow some of my strobes.  I have tons.
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Wow that's very nice of you.  Do you think it won't be possible to get even enough lighting with just the two heads?

[snickgrr]

Might be hard depending upon how far away you can get the heads.  The old inverse square law can come into play.
I have twenty thousand watts and I think 15 heads so I can spare some one day and not notice it.  Just let me know.
Paul

[EricWHiss]

John,
That's what I'm planning to do as well.  I've got polarizing gels for the lights which I am holding in place with gel keys on the profoto standard zoom releflectors.  I've taped up white cards at corners and in the center of a rectangle a bit bigger than I think I'm going to shoot and have been able to get relatively even lighting with the reflectors off to the sides and pointed with the center of the lights off to the side of the wall.    I have found that I just barely have enough light to hit f/11 with the cross polarization at ISO 50 and 600 w/s on each light.  This may be enough.

 The polarizing filters I have for my lens are not doing such a nice job as just another sheet of the polarizing film though.  I wonder if I need a better filter for the camera?  Any recommendations anyone?

Edit:  I've found one of my filters - a B&W Kasseman is working with the others much better - wow never noticed how much difference there is in these.  Just need to get a step 67mm to 77mm step up ring and I'm all set for next week.


Eric

[BobDavid]

I use two Elinchrom heads with wide angle reflectors plus polarizer panels and then have a polarizing filter over the lens. I've photographed 8' X 6' paintings with this setup and have had excellent results. I think you'll be fine if you shoot at ISO 100 at f/8, especially if the reproduction ratio is as small as you described. Being that the P20 is a 36mm X 36mm sensor, you are able to take advantage of the optical sweet spot of your lenses. It's usually the corners where falloff and blur occur.

[EricWHiss]

John, Paul, and Bob

Thanks for your replies and help.  This forum is awesome!


I ended up marking all my polarizing gels and filters for orientation so I hopefully won't have to fiddle with this at the gallery but I'll remember that coin trick just in case.    

I'm using these gelkey's to hold the polarizing film. They're pretty nice actually.   http://www.photokeys.com/GelKey%20.htm

Eric

[ynp]

Thank you for the "coin tip"; I have never seen this before. I use two heads on one side of the big painting as well.
Yevgeny

[ixpressraf]

I use two Elinchrom R4 torches  with cross polarizing. This hives perfect illumination from corner to corner as they are especially designed to get an even illumination on large surfaces.
Sometimes you can find these torches on Ebay and they can be refittet to work on almost all powerpacks.

[tom_l]

a lot of great tips here!

A few comments.
I'm using  2 Xenolux 1500ws heads for these paintings. 4 Heads for big, contemporary style paintings. At max. power, this gives me f:11 at Iso 50, shhoting tehtered with linear curve.
A medium long tele lens like a 120  Macro is a must have. With shorter lenses, you have larger  angles of reflections, this can be tricky without polarizing filters. Try with and without filters on the flash heads, and every position of your filter on the camera.
Most galleries and museums have white walls. But it can happen the you have to work in a room with dark (you will loose 2 stops) or color walls (colour cast). Same thing with floors, if your big painting is near the floor, cover the floor with 2 sheets of white, matt paper to avoid color reflections.


Tom

[eronald]

Shooting gallery painting - do you mean a study of a place where needle users commune and worship  ?
Sounds like something which might sell well


Edmund

[Bit Dozer]

My name is John Lamberton. I work as the photographer at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, MO.  My function here is to shoot art every day and I might have some pointers for you.  

1. We use polarization while shooting artwork as a last resort due to the fact it WILL compromise the integrity of the image.  It will change the contrast significantly with single polarization and color and contrast with double polarization.  I’m guessing you are considering using it to control secular highlights.  We have found some pretty amazing masking techniques in Photoshop that will take care of the highlights without relying on polarization.  Conventional wisdom states the lights should be at a 45-degree angle to the artwork, I find a somewhat shallower angle tends to help.
2. As to evenness of lighting, I have been using a little application from Robin Myers called EquaLight 2 that pretty much takes care of the problem.  It is a little harder to use with larger artwork though.  You will need a clean white surface that is the exact size as the crop of your capture.  Foamcore works great.  In short, it maps the variance in lighting a produces a mask to correct it.  It works great.
3. Move the camera as far from the art as possible to avoid capturing light scatter off of the artwork.  Scatter will appear similar to flare.  If you are out of the scatter zone you won’t be capturing it.

Hope this helps.


John

[EricWHiss]

John,
Thanks for  your post.  Since your technique seems to differ a bit from the others, it would be great to get just a bit more detail/clarification on few things.  Could you tell us more about your masking technique?  Also when you write that using a shallower angle with the lighting - do you mean closer to the lens axis or closer to the plan of the artwork?  I looked up EquaLight 2 and see its not too expensive, but its changing the file some yes so maybe better to try and get the lighting even as possible on set up. How much difference do you see with the software?
Thanks,
Eric



 

My name is John Lamberton. I work as the photographer at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, MO.  My function here is to shoot art every day and I might have some pointers for you. 

1. We use polarization while shooting artwork as a last resort due to the fact it WILL compromise the integrity of the image.  It will change the contrast significantly with single polarization and color and contrast with double polarization.  I’m guessing you are considering using it to control secular highlights.  We have found some pretty amazing masking techniques in Photoshop that will take care of the highlights without relying on polarization.  Conventional wisdom states the lights should be at a 45-degree angle to the artwork, I find a somewhat shallower angle tends to help.
2. As to evenness of lighting, I have been using a little application from Robin Myers called EquaLight 2 that pretty much takes care of the problem.  It is a little harder to use with larger artwork though.  You will need a clean white surface that is the exact size as the crop of your capture.  Foamcore works great.  In short, it maps the variance in lighting a produces a mask to correct it.  It works great.
3. Move the camera as far from the art as possible to avoid capturing light scatter off of the artwork.  Scatter will appear similar to flare.  If you are out of the scatter zone you won’t be capturing it.

Hope this helps.
John
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[BobDavid]

Equalight is excellent. I try to light as evenly as possible to get within 20 points from the edges to the center. I shoot a sheet of foam core on top of the art work and then lift it off and shoot the art. I shoot the foam core so that the values come in at around 248, 248, 248.

Of course, I've made a profile for the camera and include a Greta MacBeth mini color checker in the frame. I use a multi-shot camera in 4-shot mode.

I disagree with John about cross polarization. As long as the camera is profiled with a cross polarization setup, original detail and image "integrity" are maintained.

I am in contact with several well regarded institiutions in the Northeast that use the methodology described above.

[Bit Dozer]

Equalight is excellent. I try to light as evenly as possible to get within 20 points from the edges to the center. I shoot a sheet of foam core on top of the art work and then lift it off and shoot the art. I shoot the foam core so that the values come in at around 248, 248, 248.

Of course, I've made a profile for the camera and include a Greta MacBeth mini color checker in the frame. I use a multi-shot camera in 4-shot mode.

I disagree with John about cross polarization. As long as the camera is profiled with a cross polarization setup, original detail and image "integrity" are maintained.

I am in contact with several well regarded institiutions in the Northeast that use the methodology described above.
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   Bob is correct.  You will need to profile your camera under the lighting conditions you intend to use the camera.  That includes daylight, tungsten, stobe, polarization, cross polariztion, it doesen't matter.  Without it in this case, the cross polarization will degrade the colometric integrity of the image.

[Bit Dozer]

Equalight is excellent. I try to light as evenly as possible to get within 20 points from the edges to the center. I shoot a sheet of foam core on top of the art work and then lift it off and shoot the art. I shoot the foam core so that the values come in at around 248, 248, 248.

Of course, I've made a profile for the camera and include a Greta MacBeth mini color checker in the frame. I use a multi-shot camera in 4-shot mode.

I disagree with John about cross polarization. As long as the camera is profiled with a cross polarization setup, original detail and image "integrity" are maintained.

I am in contact with several well regarded institiutions in the Northeast that use the methodology described above.
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 When capturing art you should always have a standard. I use A Mini Checker and a Kodak step wedge on every capture.  That way you will be able to profile your camera for every shot.