Taking photos of paintings

[londonhmfc]

Hi,

 

I am an artist and i need to take some good quality photos of my paintings. At

present whenever i take a photo i get a big reflection of the flash in the

centre of the painting. WIthout the flash the detail is not good enough. I also

need to take close ups which is also proving difficult. I have an olympus E500

DSLR. Can you advise any good setting for this purpose and/or whether it would

be useful to get some proper lighting and if so, what!!

 

Thanks in advance,

 

Danny

[tobiasfeltus]

danny,

have a quick search in the forums, as a few of us have written relatively extensively about the topic.

 

on camera flash is useless, however, and if you dont have access to studio lighting you would be best using indirect natural light, grey card for exposure and wb, and possibly a polarizer if you have promenant brushstrokes. as you will be aware, the painting has to be varnished, if oil or alkyd, before photographing, to even out colours, but this also evens out glare, etc.

 

incidentally, a way to get your camera dead center and square is to place a small mirror in the center of the painting. when you can see your eye through the finder, then you are centered.

 

t

[londonhmfc]

Thanks - i found a lot of useful stuff. In terms of getting some decent lighting - what would you recommend? I dont want anything very expensive but something that will do a good job?

 

Thanks

[yves_jalbert]

My personnal suggestion would be that if you need very good results without spending too much money is not to use a flash at all. I agree with T Feltus that the on-camera flash is useless for this job.

 

Here is a suggestions without flash (and you could be quite surprised with the results).

 

1. Natural light coming from one side (entering a window) and a white foamcore board on the other side to use as a cheap but quite effective reflector. Camera and painting in- between the two. Be very careful not to place your painting too close by the window or foamcore or the white light will be too strong, you don't want to over do it, put the painting far away from both. Instead put the camera on tripod, timer trigger (probably ten seconds on the E500) so you don't create camera shake by pushing the trigger. Experiment with this and should have quite nice photographs.

 

 

Here is an alternate suggestion using flash photography this time.

 

1. Contact a few local photo shops. Rent a professional on-camera flash that you can put on top of your camera (like a powerful Speedlite). In Montreal I can rent one for 11$ the whole weekend - good deal. This flash will work automatically just as your on-camera flash, but with the addition of much more output. You don't want to point that beast at your painting but to tilt it completely upwards at the ceiling and bouce the flash off the ceiling for best results. Or you could also try to tilt it up at 45-60 degrees up towards the ceiling, move back a bit from the paintning and put a white foamcore panel under the painting, tilted towards the painting to remove any shadows that light coming from the ceiling might create. A bit of experimentation but again, a well lighted subject with smooth even light all over. This should work perfectly if the ceiling is below 14 feet.

[ellis_vener_photography]

The easiet and least expensive way will be to take your paintings outside on an overcast day. Ifyou live somewhere where it is sunny most of time putthe painting i nthe shade of your house or studio. This will produce very even light. Make sure your flash is turned off. Take care to square the camera up to the canvas and get back a bit. Use a tripod and the frist shot of each painting include a gretagmacbeth color checker (about $50). If your camera will let you do it shoot raw and use Adobe camera Raw in Photoshop elements 4.x to proces the raw to Tiifs or JPEGS.

[londonhmfc]

Great Guys!

 

A few more questions:

 

1) If i were to use artificial lighting - what exactly should i get (makes and models....)

2) Are there any settings on the camera that i could change that might help?

3) SHould any tripod fit the camera or should i get an olympus one?

4) Unfortunately i am in London UK so weathers not that great! What is the advantage of using RAW?

 

Thanks again!

[yves_jalbert]

Danny,

 

Wow man, that's a lot of questions, many of which have been answered many times before in other forum categories where they should be posted. So I'll keep this short, hoping it still helps.

 

1. Like I said before, my suggestion for artificial lighting is to use a pro flash and bouncing the light. If you want to move into the studio department there are many make and models of which all will work with any camera. Think photoflex.com, manfrotto.com and Bowens just to name a few. Be prepared for the steep learning curve if you move in that direction, and the initial thousands of dollars investment which kind of goes against your initial requirements.

 

2. Yes, as said before, a longer exposure will be needed if using natural light so you might want to set your camera to take the picture automatically after a few seconds instead of you pushing on the trigger. If you are going to make large exposures on the photographs, you might want to think about lowering that ISO setting to 100 instead of having it high up there in the 800's. That way you will get the best quality when sending the images to the lab to have them exposed.

 

3. Any photo tripod should fit any photo camera unless it has some very rare non-standard mount. Think about stability before brands here. You want a tripod with solid legs that holds the camera steady.

 

4. This question makes no sense to me. RAW has no relation to the wheater. The London wheater is what you will need in your situation. The frequent overcast days will allow you to get diffused light instead of the harsh direct light from the sun (which you certainly don't want to use!!!). RAW on the other hand is just a file format. It's non-compressed, compared to JPEG so it takes a lot more space. It's used most often in commercial photography as RAW images will need post-processing using software. Because the file is uncompressed and large it's easy to manipulate with software without loosing quality.

[poul]

the best thing is, indeed, to shoot outside on overcast day. the next best thing, from my experience, is to use shoemunt flash bounced 100% from white ceiling. still use tripod to position camera exactly in front of the middle of the painting (i use measuring tape for more precision):

[charlesteton]

Hi Danny,

 

The website below might help.

 

http://www.betterphoto.com/exploring/shootingPaintings.asp

 

I was always taught to use two umbrellas at 45 degrees from camera, one either side.

 

Good luck.