Question for the Fchat photographers

jelpspeed · Feb 28, 2008

Hi guys

A good friend of mine is coming next week with his real fancy digital SLR camera to take some pictures of my paintings, I´m planning to take good pictures of my artwork to make lithographies and limited prints to sell.
My concern is, that my friend has a nice camera, but I´m not sure he is the most experienced in taking this kind of pictures, since he works for a local newspaper and takes good pictures of our city and it´s daily behavior.

Can you experienced guys give me some advice on taking this pictures?
should they be taken in the outside? direct sun? in the interior of my studio? tungsten lamps? flash?

My studio is lighted with common tungsten white lights, I remember that someone told me that those lamps tend to change the tones and colors of the pictures.

Any advice for the photoshooting? I´m really excited, and I don´t want to mess it!! I really want a nice result.

Best regards
Thanks in advance.

Ever Lopez
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LuxPride · Feb 29, 2008

I just spent the last 6 hours shooting art of different kinds, ... Here you go!

The diagram in this link best follows how I shoot art, it gives a pretty good description of the process..
this technique can be done with household equipment, if your patient...
http://www.bowdoin.edu/visual-arts/portfolio/photographing-art.shtml

The rest of these links have some info that may help you out,

http://www.dallasartsrevue.com/resources/How-to-Photo-Art.shtml

http://artlinkswap.org/photographing_art.shtml

http://finerworks.com/hints&tips/photographingartwork.asp

http://www.nitaleland.com/articles/photographing.htm

by the way, great work! Beautiful!!

jelpspeed · Mar 11, 2008

thanks for the tip.

I have a few questions, do you take only one shot of the painting? or take lots of pictures, and after the shots you join them in photoshop? My camera is a Canon Xti.

Thanks in advance.

davidgoerndt · Mar 12, 2008

If you want high resolution photos of your work, make sure the camera used is of high enough resolution to start with. The only digital slr camera with
enough resolution would be, IMO, the Canon 1ds Mark III at 21 mega pixels. You can use lower res cameras but the end result may not be adequate for your needs. If you are doing high quality reproductions you will need at least 250 ppi at the finished size of the repro. Most of the current digital slr's would have to be bumped up in resolution to get to the size needed. First I would check with a fine arts printer and ask them what file size they need to do the quality job you need, then see if the camera your friend has is adequate.

kevfla · Mar 12, 2008

....with a digital back or shoot 4 x 5 'chromes.

Either way, you will need the precision of the view camera to make sure the image is squared-up with no convergence of the sides. If you needed "jury" slides for entering shows, then the digital SLR would be fine. But if the end result is to have something to make reproductions from, you have to go with the large-format.

KevFla

jelpspeed · Mar 13, 2008

thanks for your comments, but I didn´t fully understood them. and maybe I couldn´t explain what I was trying to do.

the first option is to take a single picture of the artwork, and print it like that (maybe 10.2 Megapixels straight from my xti)

the second option, was to take several pictures of different areas of the artwork (overlaped) so that after completing the whole artwork by parts, the photoshop cs3 can merge them into one hi res picture.
the image illustrates how he told me to take the pictures, each colored square represents one shot at the artwork, all of them overlaped on each other, so the CS3 can make the magic to get 1 hi res picture at the end.

sorry about my english, but I´m trying to explain it as he told me, and I really don´t know much about this. =)

thanks in advance.

Ever
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blackwood · Mar 13, 2008

The above will work, but there will be blurring where different segments are pieced together.

It may be good enough, it may not.

How big do you want these prints to be? You can probably rent a medium format film camera. Shoot fine grain film (100ASA or lower) and you'll be able to scan them at much higher resolution than any digicam available (including the 39MP hasselblad).

jelpspeed · Mar 14, 2008

blackwood said: ↑

The above will work, but there will be blurring where different segments are pieced together.

It may be good enough, it may not.

How big do you want these prints to be? You can probably rent a medium format film camera. Shoot fine grain film (100ASA or lower) and you'll be able to scan them at much higher resolution than any digicam available (including the 39MP hasselblad).
Click to expand...

mmm. I don´t know where I can rent a camera such as what you told me, and neither the scan at that resolution.
I´m planning to make prints in a size about 24" x 16", what do you think? not as big as the artwork.

Best regards.
Ever

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