Taking Photos of Watercolor paintings

<p>I have posted here on this topic before but still experimenting with different (relatively) low cost options for lighting watercolor paintings. My questions this time is about using small LED panels such as those marketed for video. Reading about these suggests that the temperate can be adjusted or modified as needed. The combined lighting power, however, is quite low relative to conventional hot lamps. Any help much appreciated.</p>

<p>From what I've seen those things are well overpriced and well underpowered. You can buy similar LED arrays from hardware stores for a fraction of the price, sold as camping or workshop lights. All that's missing is a dimmer rheostat - as if you'd need to turn the pathetic light output down at all.</p>

<p>I've tried using the cheap camping/workshop LED lamps for still photography. They have a colour temperature of around 10,000 K, and need a custom white balance or amber filtration to make them useable. The high CT gives them a low CRI rating, but the colour rendering doesn't look too bad to me once the white-balance has been corrected. What's wrong is their low and uneven light output, but if you're prepared to work in the dark and wave them about during a long exposure, you might just get a half-decent copy using them.</p>

<p>Why not just use a couple of speedlights? They're over an order of magnitude more powerful, have a good CRI without any special filtration, have a much more even illumination pattern and can be bought at a fraction of the price of those "special" videography LED arrays.</p>

<p>As it sounds like you've started to figure out, low-priced LED units are close to worthless. And the professional grade units that can be useful cost a fortune. <br />The easiest way to get both what-you-see-is-what-you-get results and enough light to work by is to use hot lights. Lowel Tota Lights are affordable and put out a nice broad beam that would be well suited to the type of work you've talking about. But 1,000 watts of hot light from a couple of feet away is -- surprise -- pretty hot and might not be the best thing for the paintings.<br />Rodeo, as usual, is right. Try flash. Almost any flash will do but ideally both should be the same. Basically you need to put one on each side of the painting, about halfway from top to bottom, back just far enough to cover the painting, and out to the side just enough to get them at a 45 degree angle to the surface so that you don't get reflections. Then experiment to get the right exposure.<br />One challenge in oil paintings is that they have texture to the surface (from the brush swirls) that may show up in the photos. Putting some diffusion over the flashes (it can be as simple as a layer of handkerchief) can help.<br />Some of the older books like the Leica Manual and Graphic Graflex Photography have whole chapters on this, although using photofloods rather than flash.</p>

<p>+1 for flash. You don't need a $500 top-of-the-line camera flash. Get 2 identical cheap flashes with adjustable manual output. Yongnuo YN460 will work, there are many other options used or new. Get 2 cheap wireless triggers, I use Yongnuo RF-602. Alternatively, you can use 2 PC cords with a Y-connection, or one PC cord and put the second flash on an optical slave.<br>

<br /> Place them about 45 degrees from the artwork, one on each side. Put them rather far away so the light will be even, 4 times the size of the artwork if you can. Use manual output, use trial and error to get the exposure right.</p>

<p>I use a room light in an old Smith Victor fixture. The light may be positioned precisely so only one light is needed. Check the paintings on my page.</p><div></div>

<p>Aside from lighting considerations, I'd highly recommend using X-Rite's Color Checker Passport. It makes getting accurate colors a lot easier (which can be surprisingly difficult with layered watercolor washes).</p>

<p>Thanks for the helpful comments. I do have two old Vivitar 285 flashes (not the HV version). But I have very little experience with off camera flash. What I would need to trigger these two flashes off camera? I am shooting a fairly old Pentax DSLR. Thanks for any help.</p>