Best Nikon lens for shooting large paintings on a DX-Format DSLR

[s._radke]

<p>Dan Brown had recommended the 55mm /f2.8 AI-s Micro Nikkor. Does that have Auto Focus? If not, I'll have to take that off my list of possibilities. I got SO tired of having to manually focus my old Olympus all the time.</p>

[leslie_cheung]

<p>For your situation (if you will fix distortion in post), you don't need a macro nor the 35 1.8 or 50 1.8 or whatever. Shoot at base ISO, f8 or 11 on a tripod and you'll be fine unless you print it very, very big and look at it really, really close up. However, spend as much money as you want if you want that 1 or 2% worth...</p>

[photo5]

<p>Any 55mm Micro-Nikkor will do. 55mm f3.5 or f2.8 will work well. Make sure you light the paintings evenly. If you have a hand held incident light meter that is the best way to determine how even the lighting is. The 55mm Micro-Nikkor is sharp wide open but f5.6 is a good safe aperture. You really do not need an AF lens for this kind of work.</p>

[dan_brown4]

<p>S. Radke; the 55mm is a manual focus, it was offered as a budget choice. Macro lenses are one area where manual focus is still the norm. But I understand, if you want AF, you want AF ;-)</p>

[s._radke]

<p>I don't understand the difference between a 60mm macro/55mm macro and a lens that doesn't specify "macro" like an AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.8D lens. Is a 55mm macro similar to the 50mm regular lens? I noticed the 50mm is a lot less expensive yet has rave reviews about sharpness.</p>

[s._radke]

<p>Anybody out there have experience with the tokina 35 f/2.8 macro? Is it a sharp lens?</p>

[Andrew Garrard]

<p>Depending on the state of the paintings this may be a non-starter, but could I point out the benefits of a flat bed scanner? Some will let you scan with the top up; support the paintings, scan them in strips and stitch them in Photoshop. If you have (or can borrow) such a thing, it'll get you to a few hundred megapixels a lot more easily than an SLR - so long as it's okay to have something (gently) in contact with the front of the painting.<br />

<br />

Just thinking outside the box. :-)</p>

[gerry b.]

<p>If you plan on doing a lot of this type of copywork, and if your paintings have significant surface texture with any kind of reflective surfaces (gloss on oils, for example), you will want to use cross-polarization with the lights. You buy two polarization gels for the lights, and then the polarizer on the lens will eliminate virtually all reflections off the painted surfaces. This type of work is much easier with flash than with photofloods or other hotlights (you can cook the gels if you're not very careful with hotlights).</p>

[s._radke]

<p>Alexander, Your scanner suggestion is a good one. I've scanned 11" x 14" and 12" x 16" originals in the past (in pieces), but unfortunately this just isn't feasible for, say, a 20" x 24" oil which may not even be completely dry. Gerry, thanks for the polarizing gel tip. I have a polarizer on my camera but not the lights. Good idea. My paintings usually vary from glossy to semi-gloss.</p>

[dan_brown4]

<blockquote>

<p>I don't understand the difference between a 60mm macro/55mm macro and a lens that doesn't specify "macro" like an AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.8D lens. Is a 55mm macro similar to the 50mm regular lens? I noticed the 50mm is a lot less expensive yet has rave reviews about sharpness.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>S., what you are doing is copy work. Certain lenses are specifically designed to do this. For one thing, they have a characteristic called flat-field. This means the plane of focus of the lens is flat and parallel to the plane of the image sensor. Most lenses exhibit some field curvature, it's the nature of optics. A macro lens (what Nikon refers to as a "Micro" lens) is specifically designed as a flat filed lens. For another thing, the optics of a macro/Micro lens are designed to focus on objects that are relatively close. Ordinary lenses are designed to focus at infinity. For anothger thing macro/Micro lenses have a helicoid tapered from accurate close focus. For another thing, macro/Micro lenses are color corrected for the most accurate color fidelity possible.</p>

<p>Unfortunately, many manufacturers use the term "macro" to apply to zoom lenses that can focus fairly closely but they are not good choices for copy work.</p>

[s._radke]

<p>Dan, the thing that confuses me the most is that I thought micro (macro) lenses were specifically meant for close-up photography -- bugs on flowers, etc. -- but I will be using it not for a close-up of my paintings but for the whole entire thing. Can you explain to me how a lens meant for close-up work can do an equally good job on capturing a large, flat painting? The lens isn't focusing in tight but capturing a full image of a particular subject. Again, please pardon my ignorance!</p>

[ShunCheung]

<p>Last month, I attened an one-hour short seminar with a Nikon instructor about Nikon lenses. He explicitely pointed out that the 60mm macro (and some of its predecessors) is a flat-field lens that is designed for copy work. To use it properly, you need to line it up so that your camera's sensor plane is completely parallel to the painting.</p>

<p>Dan Brown, Matt Laur, B. Hall and a few others have all explained why this type of lens is desirable for copy work. If that is still not clear, I suggest the OP to search a little more for more detailed explanations.</p>

[s._radke]

<p>Thanks for the info. I realize that the others have explained the attributes of the lens which make it desirable for copy work and I'm not questioning that. I was simply not clear on how a lens type that, from what I've seen, is mainly used for close-up photography can also be used like a regular lens to capture an entire large subject like a painting -- not a CLOSE UP of the painting. Maybe my question is not clear but I'm not sure how else to phrase it. I have zero experience with this type of lens and am trying to understand HOW it can be used for both. More out of curiosity than anything else.</p>

[dan_brown4]

<p>Sometimes you just have to trust us. :-)</p>

[eric_arnold]

<p><em>Anybody out there have experience with the tokina 35 f/2.8 macro? Is it a sharp lens?</em></p>

<p>why yes, it is. the bokeh is particularly satisfactory wide open, although you'd probably be using it stopped down for copy work. what's great about it is you can use it as a normal lens, plus handheld macros are far more doable b/c of the short focal length. there's a lot more inherent camera shake at 1:1 with my tokina 100mm, but the 35 hardly wobbles, even at extreme close range.</p>

<p> </p><div></div>

[sjoerd_leeuwenberg]

<p>Dan mentioned a lot of specifics about macro lenses, the only thing you don't need of those is the close focus ability. The rest is very important for your kind of work.<br>

The flat field will ensure that the whole painting is sharp (if the painting is straight of course.) and not just the middle.<br>

The lenses also have very little distortion, which means that your frame will still be straight, if it was to begin with.<br>

Another point here may be that getting further away from the painting with a 55mm micro (super quality for very little money) changes the perspective in a good way.<br>

The color reproduction should speak for itself, but hugely depends on your lighting of course.</p>

<p>Also, I would not stay away from manual focus, I would run towards it. With the D7000 on a tripod and on liveview, you can zoom in to pixel level live and get it sharper than with the naked eye. You can even hook up a HD monitor and use that if you take a lot of pictures that way. Also make sure you have a sturdy tripod and use a remote shutter release.</p>

[JDMvW]

<blockquote>

<p>what do I do for paintings bigger than that?</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Go WIDER. Try a 28mm lens or that focal length on a zoom to see how it works.</p>

[Andrew Garrard]

<blockquote>I was simply not clear on how a lens type that, from what I've seen, is mainly used for close-up photography can also be used like a regular lens to capture an entire large subject like a painting</blockquote>

 

<p>Just to clarify: a macro lens <i>can</i> focus very close, but - at least for the ones discussed here - it doesn't <i>have</i> to. You can use it like a conventional lens of the same focal length, but with the flat field, colour reproduction etc. advantages. There are few weird lenses that are for macro only and won't focus to infinity (Canon's MP-E65 springs to mind), but we're not talking about those.<br />

<br />

As an aside, I was (perhaps embarrassingly) unaware of the flat-field characteristic of these lenses. Is this shared by other macro designs, or unique to the wider ones? I'd ignored the short macro options and got a Tamron 90mm so I had some working distance, but if they're particularly good for flat shots then I might keep an eye on the used market. Does anyone know how accurately flat the 90mm Tamron, 100mm Tokina, 105mm Nikkor, 150mm Sigma, 200mm Nikkor etc. are?</p>

[bob_sunley]

<p>"Flat field" is the kicker reason for a macro lens, it means that the edges of a flat object like a painting are in focus at the same time as the center. Most lenses have a curved field, it's shaped like the inside of a large sphere. This means if the center of the painting is in focus, the edges won't be.</p>

[peter_eisenburger]

<p>you will need to change the standard settings of the D7000. they are much too too soft for painting photography. you need the setting for sharpness a few notches higher. take also care of saturation (maybe one notch higher). ISO 100 of course. take good care of light and WB.</p>

[Kent Shafer]

<p>You could also consider the 45mm f/2.8 PC-E Micro-Nikkor. It's rather expensive but should satisfy your desire for very high quality.</p>

<p>The suggestion to cross-polarize (polarizers on lights and on lens) is very good and likely to produce a striking increase in the clarity of your images. Probably much more important than subtle distinctions between lenses.</p>

[samuel_lipoff]

<p>I've done a lot of copy work, and the Micro-Nikkor 60mm f/2.8 is ideal. As many have already mentioned, there are many desirable properties of macro lenses for copy work. Another desirable property is their ability to focus extremely close to also get detail shots of paintings, which you might not want to overlook.</p>

<p>I wonder if you might find it easier to move the paintings and your lights to give you more than six feet of room. If not, you'll have to use a wider lens. Many zoom lenses have an range of little to no distortion around focal lengths from 28mm to 35mm. I have also had the problem of not enough room while doing some copy work, and have employed the 28mm f/2 Ai-S and 35mm f/1.4 Ai-S lenses, which can be incredibly sharp relatively close when stopped down. Neither is distortion free, nor has a perfectly flat field, but the former is easily corrected in post-processing, the latter is compensated for by f/8, but both offer terrific resolution.</p>

<p>If you do a lot of copy work, you might be interested in reading "Copying And Duplicating: Photographic and Digital Imaging Techniques", a classic book published by Kodak.</p>

[photo5]

<p>The Nikon 28mm f2.8 AIS lens also employs CRC (Close Range Correction) so as to make it usable for copy work if stopped down. I've never tried it but I imagine it would be good at f8 or so. I use my 55mm f2.8 Micro-Nikkor for copy work with great results.</p>

[karissa_walker]

<p>to answer your question -- a macro lens can focus both close up <em>and</em> like a regular lens.</p>

<p>I also recently purchased a 7000 and have been trying it out with my old manual 55mm (the fact it worked with manual lenses was a feature I wanted). It worked beautifully. Since it is a manual lens you will have to set it up on the camera (under the set up menu choose non cpu lens data -- you enter the focal length (55) and the maximum aperture (the widest you can open the aperture -- in my case 2.8).</p>

<p>A couple of things from documenting my own work -- a good solid tripod is a must, a light meter is definitely helpful and consider buying an expo disc to use in setting a custom white balance or shoot raw and adjust if needed in post processing (reproducing colour accurately is usually what I find hardest).</p>

<p>Something else you might find helpful are some intro photography courses -- not a one day workshop but something over the course of a semester or two where you can take your time and become more comfortable with the technical side of using your camera. I took a black and white photography course years ago and found it incredibly helpful (in fact, since getting a digital camera last year I'm taking more photography courses now). It's a different way of looking and it will enrich your own art practice.</p>

<p>My $0.02.<br>

Karissa :)</p>

[s._radke]

<p>Thank you, everybody, for your input! I learned a lot and will definitely be getting a macro (micro) lens!</p>