Hello all,
I'm sure some of you good folks are reproducing original pieces for artists. Over the past few years this has become a rather large part of my business as well, but I do have a question concerning shooting original art. For the most part I am scanning art, anything up to 20x24 and a couple of 20 x30 pieces as well. I'm using an old Epson Expression 1680 and it's doing an excellent job. Of course I do have to scan sections and then reassemble in PS, but that's seldom a problem. Occasionally I am presented with a piece that simply will not scan properly due to the medium and its reflective properties. The only draw back to scanning in this manner is the fact that the scanner captures EVERYTHING. Now you might say, well, that's a good thing, but not always. And I'm sure some of you folks know very well what I mean. When I have an original that presents this sort of problem I have a friend shoot it on camera in his studio. Now of course that would be great if he had a 4x5 camera back and a load of resolution, but that's not the case. 14MP is the best he can do and quite frankly it just isn't enough. However, I've been thinking that perhaps we could devise a setup where he could shoot sections, as I do with the scanner, and capture a higher resolution per section. Then I can stitch them together as usual and have more res and hence more detail. Could also control the lighting better to facilitate the capture of brushstrokes etc as with a Cruse Scanner. I suppose in essence I am trying to construct a poor man's version of a Cruse Scanner, but I'd like to get some feedback from the group if any of you are approaching this task in such a manner. Perhaps some sort of description of your setup etc. Any info would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you,
Gary