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How to make painting reproduction with Leica R system?


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Is there anyone, who has experience with painting reproduction using camera SLR?

My equipments as follow:

Body: Leica R4

Lenses: - Elmarit R ? 28mm, f/2.8

- Summicron 50 mm, f/2.0

- Summicron 90 mm, f/2.0

- Elmarit R Apo macro 100, f/2.8

- Apo thelyt R 180mm, f/3,4

 

We still don?t have lighting equipment,

 

With this forum we want somebody who can give advise:

1. Which one more appropriate continous lighting or flash lighting?

2. Which lense of ours appropriate, or do you have other opinion?

3. Can you give an illustration about visual aid how to take photograph the painting appropriately.

 

Thanks for your kindness

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Two electronic flash units on light stands will do the job. You should have one on each side aimed at about a 45 degree angle towards the painting. The 50mm Summicron should be OK. It would be best to use the flashes on manual and make an exposure reading with a seperate incident flash meter. It's a good idea to include a set of color control patches and a grey scale along the edge of the frame so the lab has an idea of what the color should be.
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Museums ban electronic flash out of concerns that the flash might adversely affect the painting. Not that any damage/deterioration has been documented, but they say they don't know what long term effects there might be. It may not be an issue for you--just something to be aware of.
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Are you photographing in a museum, gallery or home? A lot will depend on what sort of

working distance you can get and at what angles you can place the lighting if you use your

own. It will also depend on whether you will be able to turn off the musuem or gallery's

lighting. The painting's surface can also scatter a lot of light around if it is textured like in

an oil painting. In that situation a polarizer on the light or the lens might help get rid of

the glare. As for which lens, if you have the working distance, the 100 f/2.8 APO is the

best lens in your kit and made for this kind of thing so it would be the best choice.

Otherwise, the 50 summicron should do a very good job as well. Make sure that you are

photographing the painting from straight on. You want to make sure that your camera

lens is perfectly parallel to the painting and positioned so that you don't have to tilt it up

or down. You will definitely need a tripod. Forgive me if this is all obvious, I am just trying

to be thorough. <P>As for lighting, continuous lighting will be easier to set up and verify

if you don't have strobes with modeling lights. That said, if this is a museum they may not

want to subject the painting to that much bright, hot light. If this is the case you will

probably fare better with flash lighting. For placement, you want to make sure that your

lights are far enough to the side so that they don't produce direct reflections. You want

only diffuse reflection. As Al said, 45 degrees is a good rule of thumb as long as your

lights are far enough from the subject and your lens is long enough. If you have very little

space and need to use a wide angle lens, then you might need to space them further apart

than 45 degrees. If you have plenty of room, 45 degrees will probably be perfect. You just

need to judge with your eye, and of course look through the camera to see what it sees.

This is where modelling lights or continuous lighting comes in handy. <P>There is a really

good tutorial on this in Light-Science & Magic : An Introduction to Photographic Lighting.

It is put out by Focal Press. They spend several pages talking about this type of situation

and how to light it and what to do if there are space issues. They include illustrations and

lighting diagrams. <P>If all else fails, you just have to photograph it with what you are

given. These two shots were taken for a professor at the National Gallery in Iceland, but

they did not want me to use lighting equipment. I just used a tripod and the 100mm APO.

It was shot on the DMR. <P><img src="http://www.stuartrichardson.com/saga-panels1-

web.jpg"><P><img src="http://www.stuartrichardson.com/panel-2-detail-

web.jpg"><P>You take what you can get. If you are doing a painting, color will probably

be critical, so use a natural film if you can. EPN is good if you are using daylight flash, and

if you are using continuous lighting you will probably need to use a tungsten film. For the

best accuracy you will probably benefit from using a color temperature meter and proper

cc correction. Anyway, telling you all this makes it sound like you are getting ready to

photograph the Mona Lisa before they throw it in the fire, but depending on how serious

you need to be about this they are all things to consider.

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Flash photography is banned in museums because it would be distracting to other patrons and the paintings might be subject to hundreds of flashes a day. For a number of years I use to photograph a few dozen paintings a month for an upscale antique dealer so he could submit the photos to places like Christy's for their art auctions. I always used electronic flash.
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Depending on the size of the paintings I'd suggest to get a apropriate copy stand. The aim of the game is to get the camera as exactly as possible above the center of the painting. Another chance would be to draw a line at the heigth of your lensmount middle (camera on tripod) on a wall and hang the pictures according to it. I'd also draw a line on the floor to know where to place my tripod. If you have plenty of studiospace use the longest lens possible (180mm) to flatten camera centering errors. Putting your tripod on a dolly or preferrable anything else that allows fine movements for and backward might make the work more convenient. Proper processcameras used to have rails to allow extreme precise movements.
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This may or may not have any relevance here but I have been seeking a means to make informal but very accurately coloured photographs of paintings, finished and in progress, to view on a PC monitor. For whatever reason/s yellows and blues were always out and uncorrectable until I tried a digital camera and then only shooting in RAW, and that does the job. Photoshop would probably do it, also, but I don't have - or really want, that.
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Jonathan has made a very important statement. There are colors in paintings that are simply outside the gamut of any photographic system. Colors that E-6 films can't reproduce, colors that RA-4 papers can't reproduce, colors that inkjet printers can't reproduce. No photoreproduction of any sort can convey the impact of paintings like Van Gogh's sunflowers paintings.

 

Also, consider the scale of detail on the painting, and what the target print size is. 35mm may not cut it, no matter how good the lens. Lots of this sort of work is still done professionally on 4x5 film. There's even been some serious use of the 16x20 Polaroid cameras, despite the limitations of the color gamut of the film, there's no other 16x20 color film manufactured.

 

The key is to recognize that you're dealing in artistic compromises here, not perfection.

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I would suggest you buy or rent a digital SLR. For color rendition, shoot with a Gray Card, and custom white balance, and you'll get truer color than you will with trying to color balance various film emulsions.

 

As noted above, a continuous lighting setup, with two lamps (in softboxes or umbrellas), at 45-degree angles to prevent reflective glare. And, i wouldn't use anything wider than 50mm. Also, maybe a bubble level to ensure your camera is perfectly parallel to the ground to minimize distortions you'd have to later correct.

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Doesn't a "painting reproduction" require paint brushes and canvas? That has been done for many centuries by many renowned artists of other artists' works.

 

And here we are all talking about a flat photograph of a 3-dimensional painting. How quaint. Of course the camera itself is not the problem. It is the medium and the lighting, i.e. the inability to reproduce paintings on film, or sheet metal for that matter. Reproducing one thing in another element is impossible. A vase "reproduced" in steel is not close to the porcelain vase at all. The painting shows a different life than an inkjet print or a reproduction inside a book.

 

Yet we are all talking about a "painting reproduction" via the R4, light and film. I think we should be much more modest and acknowledge that we are at best creating a postcard of the painting. No more are we capable of.

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