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Best way to capture replicas of paintings


davidcolemandc

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Hi, I'm new to the S and 70mm lens. I absolutely love it! More than I thought I would. I need to take reproductions of paintings for a friend of mine. She is the artist of the paintings.

 

What's the best lighting setup using the Leica S? So far I've read two strobes (with a softbox) at 45 degree angle of the painting. Painting on an upright stand. Is this the best setup or would you get too much texture from side-lighting?

 

Thank you for any suggestions.

 

David

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Yes, it's the most popular setup for copying flat art. Some use cross polarization with the gels on the lights and polarizer on the lens and profile the camera.

 

Usually, with two lights at 45 degrees, there is no texture exposed. If you want texture, you play with the ratios of your strobes. In some situations , with smaller pieces, one light is enough and it lets to show some texture.

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Because you are going to reproduce contemporary works of art I would recommend, If you have the possibility, the sun.

 

It is the best light for many different materials (oil, gouache, watercolor...).

 

No matter how big the painting is (big paintings need much more room when using artificial light), it delivers very nice results regarding uniformity and exactness in the color reproduction.

 

You must find the best angle of incidence, to emphasize (or not) the texture, and to reduce glares. A polarizer on the lens would perhaps be necessary.

 

You need, of course, a bright, cloudless day, or exactly the opposite, a perfectly gray overcast weather.

 

Remember to include the standard color patches and a gray 18% card, to facilitate the post processing.

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I've just retired from over 30 years of owning and running two art reproduction businesses. The first, The Printmaker, was located in Santa Fe, New Mexico where I photographed, scanned and proofed art to be run on an offset press, often running the old Heidelberg myself, and then Kauai's Printmaker where I photographed art and made giclee reproductions in Lihue on the island of Kauai.

 

Reproducing art is a specialized business — one that is technically challenging and requires a good eye for color. It is, however, very rewarding. It is one of those professions where clients (artists) become close friends and professional relationships last a lifetime. And it pays for all of those Leica goodies.

 

I've prepared a PDF book on photographing art and it is on my website:

 

 http://www.kauaisprintmaker.com/how-to-print-the-perfect-giclee.php

 

This little book will show you how to set up your lights, capture and process the file in order to make an exact copy of a painting.It will also show you how to print the capture on canvas and then coat and stretch the giclee.  But you need to download soon as this site will come down in a few weeks. Best of all it is free.

 

I purchased an S2 to speed up the capture process but, to tell the truth, I mostly continued to use a 4x5 with a BetterLight scanback because it gave me a much larger file with greater dynamic range. Don't get me wrong, the S2 files are great and certainly better than anything I ever got from my Nikons but the scanback was and is the perfect tool for reproducing art. Still, you can make the S2 work. You will need to profile the camera with your lights since the color of the S2 files are not out of the box accurate. A good profile will fix this. And, as has been mentioned, use a Kodak (Tiffen) Q13 patch along with another standard white, grey, black patch. Then you will need to test your setup to see what numbers to plug into those patches. For example, you might need to use a highlight setting (A patch) of 240 to hold detail in the highlights or 30 in the shadows (B patch) to hold your shadow detail. Another person's setup might require 230 and 40. It all depends on the printer used. Sounds complicated but with a little work and testing you can shoot and print a copy of a painting that looks exactly like the original.

 

Since I have sold my business, I no longer have S2 profiles or I would pass it along. But you really should build your own camera profile since it is influenced by the lights. I was using NorthLight HID banks with polarizing filters on both the lights and the lens in the studio but took Lowel Caselights with polarizing filters in the field. Both required different profiles as one was 4800 deg. K and the other 5500 deg. K. I used eyeOne profilemaker to make my profiles but you can also do this with X-Rite's Colorchecker Passport at 1/40 of the price.

 

One last thing, if the original art includes metallic or florescent colors, you can't use cross polarization. In that case try moving your lights to 60 deg. If that still gives reflections then shoot one shot cross polarized and another without polarization. Then mask and blend the exposures in Photoshop.

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Thank you so much to everyone. 

 

Printmaker - I just downloaded your book. It's very comprehensive and just what I was looking for. Thank you so much! I did get some glare on my first try. I tried moving it to 60deg then I got too much detail from the canvas. So I'm going to look into cross-polarization. Yes, the colors where a little off. I used the X-Rite Colorchecker classic card that came with my Spidermunkey. Should I also get the Colorchecker Passport to create the profiles? Or can I do that with the classic card?

 

Thank you for all your help.

 

David

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Thank you so much to everyone. 

 

Printmaker - I just downloaded your book. It's very comprehensive and just what I was looking for. Thank you so much! I did get some glare on my first try. I tried moving it to 60deg then I got too much detail from the canvas. So I'm going to look into cross-polarization. Yes, the colors where a little off. I used the X-Rite Colorchecker classic card that came with my Spidermunkey. Should I also get the Colorchecker Passport to create the profiles? Or can I do that with the classic card?

 

Thank you for all your help.

 

David

Hi David,

 

I think that depends on how far you are going to take this. The Colorchecker Passport is only $100 and does a good job. If you were going to do this for a living then going with a higher end program might be better. But the eyeOne Profilemaker setup does basically the same thing — you shoot a card and the software makes the profile. The card is bigger and has a lot more patches but the principal is the same. It just costs more.

 

Camera makers set up their profiles to give pleasing results but that is not the same as accurate results. A blue may have too much magenta or a red too much yellow. Looks great but not like the original colors of the painting. Some kind of custom profile is required for accurate results.

 

I'm not sure which card you mean by classic. The Macbeth Color Checker has been the standard for decades. Then they came out with the Color Checker DC. The white patch of the DC version is better in that it is a pure white where the original Color Checker is slightly yellow. I like the QC or the Q13 for checking whites. But I'm splitting hairs. The Passport is basically a downsized version of the classic Color Checker with some new tools for color temperature added. It does a good job.

 

You can get polarizing sheets for most lights. They are not too expensive. I think I paid somewhere around $30 each from Calumet. Okay, I just dated myself. B&H has them for about $50 – and they are a little smaller. BetterLight has them for their HID lights at $175 and $263. I used both and for everyday use the BetterLight filters are superior. But for occasional use the Rosco filters (17x20 or 17 inch rolls) are just fine. Do check out the BetterLight page as they have an interesting profiling plug in listed as well as tons of info on art repro: http://www.northlightproducts.com/html/copy_lights.html

 

Using a profile gets you in the ballpark. Getting a perfect match requires getting the right numbers in the white and black patches for YOUR reproduction process. And other thing, getting the grey right (RGB all at the same number) gets the color right. If you can shoot and print a good grey, then all of your colors will look good. 

 

And one last thing to keep in mind, you are going to need a good monitor. I used a 27 inch NEC SpectraView and calibrated it every week.  Now I use an IMac Retina because I'm mostly just working in black and white these days. If I were back in the business, I'd get another NEC... and an Epson 9900.

 

Good luck with this. PM me if you need anything more.

 

Tom

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Oh and as mentioned, the sun also works. I like to shoot early in the morning before the trade winds start. Shooting on the shaded side of the building with a cloudless sky lighting the painting.

 

You will however get a few reflections on the high points of oil paintings especially in the shadows. You will see these when viewing at 100%. No big deal when you are making JPEGs for a web site but they are a problem for high end repro. Using a large gobo helps remove these tiny highlights.

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Thank you very much for your generosity in writing that book and making it freely available, Printmaker!

I agree with you in that working in the reproduction of art is highly rewarding. It is pure craft, technique, and does not occupy or 'contaminate' the mind as it happens with other branches of commercial photography. I mean: if you want to pursue a career in fine art photography (= do your own projects), it won't be possible to earn at first your living only with that, so that a commercial photography enterprise of some sort or other must be followed in order to make money. Reproducing art is a very nice way of doing exactly this!

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