AlunFoto wrote: >Hi Christine, >I'm working on a project to record the works of my great granddad, to >be represented in an exhibition in Lofoten in June. It's as Peter >says, colour is critical. I use a grey card thingy from Lastolite to >shoot a reference shot, and then adjust WB in post. According to the >printer guy it works pretty well. He also appreciates that I use >ProPhotoRGB in Lightroom for my colour space, and says it gives him >the latitude he needs. > >I believe the K-5 would suffice for most paintings. It depends on >their size, really. In my case all the reproductions will be in 1:1, >so I guess anything over two square meters of canvas could deserve a >stitchup of two or more shots. For my own part I use the 645D since I >can, but I would have got by with K-5. > >My usual "trick" for lighting is to place the paintings on the floor >and position the camera perpendicularly above on a tall tripod. If >possible I do it in a room with a white-painted ceiling to bounce a >flash off. It works pretty well in most cases. Avoid having other >bright light sources around if you can. > >I bought my edition of "Light; Science and magic" in 1989. Possibly my >best photographic investment, even though -or perhaps because- I >mostly use ambient light. :-)
The only thing I'd add to this is that you need to see the paintings and know how the artist works before choosing a lighting set up - some painters use techniques like palette knife, or even just very heavily loaded brushes, which make their paintings' texture vitally important to the look: They can be quite literally three-dimensional works of art. In cases like this you'll need some amount of side lighting to show the effect accurately. -- Mark Roberts - Photography & Multimedia www.robertstech.com -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
