Photographing art work

[Hank]

[font color=\'#000000\']We do a lot of this, including slides for entries as described by jdemott and digital files for prints.  We don't polarize, but the material is available in sheet form from most pro lighting stores.

As for lighting, we use two off-camera strobes w/ or w/o soft boxes- doesn't seem to matter and not worth adding or removing from the lights.  That's because of the most important detail of the setup:  A plain old king-sized bed sheet.  Not available at photographic prices from camera stores, so you have to pay a lot less for one at a discount or department store.   ::

You need king sized so you can pin the midpoint of one end to the wall above the painting and out of frame.  Drape the remainder out and over the camera and tripod (your second tent pole), and pull the sides out and away from the setup, draping them over something or weighting them to the floor if you don't mind working on your hands and knees.  Now you have a large light tent.  Hit the sides with your strobes and you will have incredibly uniform lighting and no reflections from oils.  A strobe meter is really helpful, but even with that it is still a good idea to BLH.  (bracket like heck).

This setup should be really useful to you with so many paintings to shoot.  Simply slip in and out of the tent to exchange one painting for another and keep shooting.

Hope this helps![/font]

[Jonathan Wienke]

[font color=\'#000000\']One trick for getting the camera aligned perfectly perpendicular to the artwork:

Put a mirror in the easel/frame/table where the artwork goes, and align the camera so that the center of your lens is in the exact center of the viewfinder. You'll be perfectly squared up, and won't get any perspective distortion.[/font]

[DLab]

A lot of valuable informations can be found in Kodak publication:Copying and Duplicating in B/W and Colour.I have copied thousands of paintings and i think that film is far better than digital[its all about accurate color after all,isn't it?].good luck

[rickster]

Hey Jon...
I'm very interested in this script. I see that's it a beta release, have there been any issues during use?

[Dinarius]

another question.........

Will the Calibrator mentioned above work with Photoshop Elements?

Thanks.

D.

[rickster]

This is what has worked best so far...

1. Shoot in garage at night. Tried the attic but way too much vibration.
2. Use a ladder as a tripod. Crude but effective. My tripod is not good enough to hold a 20D with a DO 70-300.
3. Level the camera with wood shims. Again, crude but effective.
4. White bed sheet on the floor in front of the painting.
5. Lighting... This is the tricky part. The only thing that I have found to work are the overhead fluorescents (four tubes that came with the house) and two screw in fluorescents in hot light fixtures pointing up. The camera is about 12-15 feet from the painting and the lights are midway between the two. Not a lot of light but no glare either. The polarizer didn't seem to help much, maybe a little. I have to make sure the lights have warmed up before shooting. This might be an issue as it gets colder.
6. Exposure, F8 at whatever.
7. I shoot a ~40"x50" white board and then a Color Checker and then run the ACR calibrator on the CC and use the white board to check for even exposure and adjust for vignetting.
8. Shoot the painting and convert in ACR using the above saved ACR settings.
9. Open in PSCS, crop, white point, black point, capture sharpen, creative sharpen, output sharpen, print.

Looks pretty good so far, but I'm still trying different setups. I was really fighting color temp until I tried the ACR calibrator. That script works great!

I'll post a sample image for critiques here soon...