----- Original Message -----
From: "Bill Gillooly" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Friday, March 03, 2006 10:25 AM
Subject: Re: EOS Photographing paintings
Buy or rent a true macro lens (EF 50mm f/2.5 Compact Macro would be ideal
or the new EF-S 60mm f/2.8 USM Macro).
In addition to being corrected for close working distances (which you are
shooting from) a macro lens is also corrected for a flat-field so the
center and the corners of the field all come into focus at the same time.
Not super important for photographing the real world, but critically
important when photographing flat artwork like a painting.
Macro lenses are also highly corrected for linear-distortion (bending of
straight lines) which is important to photographing rectangular artwork.
No other lenses, particularly zooms will be so well corrected.
Mr. Bill
I have photographed a lot of paintings-most of this work was for color
separations-then printing to limited editions. This work was usually done
with a 4x5 camera and a 300mm
Nikon Apo flat field lens (specific to copy work). The suggestion to shoot
with the 50 or 60mm macro is excellent. Next you need to keep all your lines
parallel to one another. A level for both the painting and the camera is a
must-so you need to keep the plane of the film equidistance at all four
corners to that of the painting.
You should include Kodak color checker strips on at least one side so
that correct color balance can be achieved.
Lighting from a window is fine if you're doing this for insurance purposes-
but NOT for reproduction. I always worked with strobes and light across the
face of the painting-never shinning the light directly onto the canvas (pain
in the arsh with the reflections and light fall off). I do this with two
large umbrellas one soft white (to one side) and one silver to the other (I
was told that my results were as good as the Geographic's 1/2 million dollar
copy camera set up- so this does work.). Using a flat disk in a flash
meter-meter to get your light even to with in 1/10 of a stop at all four
corners and the center and you should get great results. This all said I do
not feel the 20D will give you the right colors- we have done some digital
repro work- but used the 1Ds and changed to color matrix to #4 and this
gives the needed contrast.
Cheers Wilber Jeffcoat
*
****
*******
***********************************************************
* For list instructions, including unsubscribe, see:
* http://www.a1.nl/phomepag/markerink/eos_list.htm
***********************************************************
