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Author Topic: Cross polarize for Art Documentation  (Read 2500 times)

ben730

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Cross polarize for Art Documentation
« on: January 12, 2018, 02:14:19 pm »

Hello
Is there a reason to not cross polarize for art documentation?
I have troubles with reflections and when I polarize the light and
put a polfilter in front of the camera this problem is solved.
But I'm not sure, if I don't change the colours with this technique.

Regards,
Ben

JeanMichel

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Re: Cross polarize for Art Documentation
« Reply #1 on: January 15, 2018, 02:08:42 pm »

I do quite  a bit of the type of work, both in-situ for exhibitions and in studio for reproduction purposes. For some works, in studio, cross-polarization is the only solution in order to control reflections; control is the important word, as eliminating all reflections can render a textured work such as an oil or acrylic painting into a flat lifeless reproduction. Colour accuracy is another matter. No matter how you adjust for colour temperature and include a colour checker shot, the end result will not be exactly what the original work looks like by itself. With normal photographic equipment, you can get close, even quite close but never exactly match the work's colours. And if the end result is a cmyk publication you have a whole slew of additional restrictions. A Pantone to cmyk swatch book is my friend when trying to explain the issue to artists. In spite of all this, it is a lot easier to do this work digitally than it ever was with film!
For critical work, I try to get the artist to be present when I do final, final-final, and final-final-final tweaks to images before biting this into publications.
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ben730

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Re: Cross polarize for Art Documentation
« Reply #2 on: January 15, 2018, 04:45:04 pm »

Thanks for your answer JeanMichel
You boiled it down to an essence. This is actually also my state of knowledge but I wanted to be sure that I'm not wrong.
There are many people speaking of reaching exact matching colours with their gear but I have never seen them.....
Regards,
Ben

JeanMichel

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Re: Cross polarize for Art Documentation
« Reply #3 on: January 15, 2018, 09:36:26 pm »

And, check out the competition: Google Art Cam !
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Kirk_C

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Re: Cross polarize for Art Documentation
« Reply #4 on: January 15, 2018, 09:50:17 pm »

.... as eliminating all reflections can render a textured work such as an oil or acrylic painting into a flat lifeless reproduction. Colour accuracy is another matter. No matter how you adjust for colour temperature and include a colour checker shot, the end result will not be exactly what the original work looks like by itself....

In over 20 years of shooting art in L.A. I rarely could reproduce an oil panting accurately. Acrylic paints are worse. I still have the Minolta color meter, the SINAR P and all the filters sitting here in the studio. There are just some wonderful things that can be done with paint that no film or sensor can reproduce. A veteran artist will understand that.

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framah

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Re: Cross polarize for Art Documentation
« Reply #5 on: January 18, 2018, 04:54:40 pm »

The thing with paintings is to use the polarizing filters but NOT to fully cross them, but pull them back a bit just so you can see the beginnings of specular light points off the tips of the paint.

 It seemed to  more match the original than if I fully crossed them.

I have had sucess with reproducing oil, acylic and W/C paintings as well as fabric art.

I was using a Betterlight system in a high end 4x5 studio camera with a pair of 900w Northlights so that helped.

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