Shooting artwork for website suggestions

[hockey44]

Advertisement (gone after registration)

Any suggestions welcome on "ideal" settings for shooting painted canvas with acrylic paints? Obviously using a tripod, however since there is no dimension (flat canvas) what is recommended DOF-- or does it matter? Best to shoot wide open with either my 35 or 50mm Lux ? Acrylic paints can sometimes have glossy (reflection) surface appearance-- is there any way to 'tone this down'? I am using grey card for white balance and have Sekonic light meter (not sure it that is necessary inside using natural light on white wall). Thanks for help--learning how to best use new M240 and plan to do Thorsten Overgaard's course later this year. Thanks guys

[Advertisement]

The Leica Q3 is available for pre-order at B&H Photo Video and Adorama

[lenicolas]

You need a tripod of course and a spirit level to make sure everything is level.

Shooting tethered and checking the images against a grid in Capture One is recomended. This would also be useful to check if focus is good all the way into the corners and help you pick an aperture.

 

Light-wise I would use artificial, but if you have to go with natural, use a handheld lightmeter to make sure you get the same incident light everywhere in the frame (especially important with Artworks larger than 1m). If you get diferences in light that you can't avoid, write down the readings so you can correct it in post.

 

For reflexions on the surface of the print, again the way to go is to use artificial light. There is a technique called Cross-polarized Light where you use a polarizing filter on the light source, and one one your lens, and you adjust them so the reflexions disapear.

With natural lights, I would simply use a circular polarizer on the lens and hope to reduce the reflexions as much as possible.

[wattsy]

Lenicolas has pretty much covered it. I'd also add that, if you are converting in Adobe Camera Raw or Lightroom, you might want to enable the lens corrections because the 35 Summilux has optical distortions that this kind of work will make apparent.

[JohnJWhite]

since there is no dimension (flat canvas) what is recommended DOF-- or does it matter?

 

Yes, it matters. Most lenses won't sharply focus the entire image of a plane onto another plane. The problem is called "curvature of field". So full aperture is probably not going to give you a sharp image across the field. Also, most lenses are sharper stopped down a bit. So, by stopping down, you increase resolution, and increase depth of field. Try f:5.6 through f:11 in half stops. Shoot them all, and then compare the results on the computer screen.

 

As you stop down, diffusion is the limiting factor on resolution. Diffusion is caused by photons changing direction as they pass close to the edge of the diaphragm, diffraction. So the smaller the aperture, the greater the proportion of bent (diffracted) light rays vs light rays that are unaffected by the edge of the diaphragm. So, as you stop down, depth of field increases, improving the image, while diffusion also increases, making things worse. f:8 is typically the optimum in the 35mm format.