Lenses for Flat Art

[NicolasUribe]

Hey, new guy here...

I'm not a photographer, although photography plays an important role in my work. I'm a traditional painter, and I have just purchased the 10D body... I was using a Sony 828 and it worked well, but it wasn't what i thought it was going to be when photographing flat art.

My question concerns photographing my paintings... now the setup is taken care of. I have good space and good lighting. Now... is there a lens that you guys could recommend that could help me with my paintings' photography... obviously barrel distortion is one big problem, because my work tend to be around 60"x80" or similar rectangular sizes...

Also it would be cool if the lens could be an all in one lens... i was thinking of a zoom wide angle tele... my choice was going to be the EF28-135 f/3.5/5.6 IS... but i have read some reviews and the say that sharpness was a problem with this lens... and obviously i need sharp photographs.

Anyway, if you guys could help out i would be very grateful,

thanks in advance,

nicolás

[DocFrankenstein]

I am not sure, but I'd imagine you'd want some wide angle...

17-40 comes to mind. Or maybe a prime of some kind.

Not sure.

[sGu]

what's your shooting distance? how big is your object? that might help us to provide advice on your lens choice.

For sharpness, your best bid would be "L" glasses, also depends on how much money do you have to invest in them. Distortion can be corrected in photoshop, so if you want wide angle, you can.

If you have room to reposition yourself, primes could be very good options, 50mm, 85mm, 135mm are great lenses, with SHARP results delivered

[mdude85]

well, on the 10D, the 28mm is probably not going to be wide enough . ... this is because it has a 1.6 crop factor. In other words, your lens isn't a 28-135, it's a 28*1.6 to 135 * 1.6. 28 * 1.6...that is something like 44 mm. That is not very wide. You'll want to try to find something lower than 20 mm on the wide end, and you'll probably need two lenses to cover wide to telephoto on a large crop factor. On the telephoto end 135 is fine for now, but eventually you'll want something that goes past 200 mm.

For your art, I'd recommend the 50 mm f1.8. It's small, cheap, fast, and very very sharp. If you put it on a tripod and use mirror lockup, you'll be able to see brush strokes. :) The other 50 mm lens is the 50 mm f1.4, but it's a lot more expensive than the f1.8.

[NicolasUribe]

what's your shooting distance? how big is your object? that might help us to provide advice on your lens choice.

For sharpness, your best bid would be "L" glasses, also depends on how much money do you have to invest in them. Distortion can be corrected in photoshop, so if you want wide angle, you can.


Well as I said the sizes vary, but they're on the realm of 60"x80", 50"x70".... pretty rectangular shapes. My shooting distance is pretty good...I guess i can go back 15 ft...

I use PS to correct distortion, but i prefer to do minor corrections rather than a lot of correcting with that tool... the painting has to be cropped a bit....

I'm serioulsy contempleting on investing on an "L" lens, but i just want to be sure i make the right choice, and check out my cheaper choices.

[sGu]

for wide angle, i suggest 17-40mm; then a 50mm, either 1.4 or 1.8 is fine; on telephoto side, a 70-200mm f4 should be enough to give you sharp results while justifying the cost.

this way you are covered from 17-200mm with some moving around.

my 2 cents

[Cal Maier]

Nicolas,

I don't think you need "L" glass. The primes are very sharp and most exhibit little if any barrel distortion. One lens that I have had good success for copy work is the 50mm f/2.5 macro. This lens is very sharp and edge distortion is not a problem. The 50mm would give you a FOV of 80mm on the APS sensor, but it sounds like you have ample space for your copying.

Most of the prime lenses are very sharp, and definately sharper than most "L" series zoom lenses.

Cal CPS432

[Hatem Eldoronki]

My wife does a lotta painting. Tips:
-Do not use a wide angle lens, as they tend to distort the perspective (barrel distortion). Use a prime, like the $70 Canon EF 50mm f1.8, and set the aperture to around 16 or 18.
-Make sure the surface of the painting is completely flat, AND parallel to your selected lens...
-Use Evaluative metering, and not Partial.

[drisley]

I agree, a prime like the 50F1.8 (or wider) would be great.
The 17-40L has a fair bit of distortion.

Actually, the sigma 12-24mm lens apparently has very low distortion, even at 12mm!

[BDM]

Hey, new guy here...

I'm not a photographer, although photography plays an important role in my work. I'm a traditional painter, and I have just purchased the 10D body... I was using a Sony 828 and it worked well, but it wasn't what i thought it was going to be when photographing flat art.

My question concerns photographing my paintings... now the setup is taken care of. I have good space and good lighting. Now... is there a lens that you guys could recommend that could help me with my paintings' photography... obviously barrel distortion is one big problem, because my work tend to be around 60"x80" or similar rectangular sizes...

Also it would be cool if the lens could be an all in one lens... i was thinking of a zoom wide angle tele... my choice was going to be the EF28-135 f/3.5/5.6 IS... but i have read some reviews and the say that sharpness was a problem with this lens... and obviously i need sharp photographs.

Anyway, if you guys could help out i would be very grateful,

thanks in advance,

nicolás

You should get a good 50 mm or so micro lens - - Canon if you have a Canon camera, Nikon if you use that equipment. Such lenses are made for flat field closeup work and should have little to no discernable barrel distortion.

I would NOT choose a zoom lens for this type of work. Even the best have fairly obvious barrel distortion at the wider focal length settings and they just are not as sharp used closeup as a micro lens.

Micros generally are available in three focal length ranges - - around 50 mm, 100 mm and 200 mm. If your art work is the size you mentioned, I think the 50 or 100 mm range would be good. 100mm might allow a bit more working room for lights, etc, and so might be a good choice.

You will also need a good tripod and take good care to make the camera back absolutely parallel to the surface of the original.

Bruce

[BearSummer]

Hi NicolasUribe,

I would suggest that you get the 50mm f2.5 macro lens. It is one of the most corrected lenses that canon make so you should experience very little barrel/pin cushion distortion.

However... The angles of view with this lens on a 10d are
Horizontal - 25*34'
Vertical - 17*10'
*=degrees, '=minutes

This means that you are going to have to be 16 feet 7 inches away (thanks pythagoras) at least to be able to get all of your 80*60 picture in. If you cant back up at least 17 feet then I would suggest that look at getting something a touch wider. Or see if your local camera shop (friendly camera club) can loan/hire you a 50mm so that you can see if it works.

For wider look at the 35mm f2. (11ft 7inches distant) or the 28mm f2.8 (9ft 3 inches distant)

Best regards

BearSummer

[Hatem Eldoronki]

(thanks pythagoras)

That's incredibly good advice!! (What's the pythagoras formula, I suppose?)

[Jesper]

Also it would be cool if the lens could be an all in one lens... i was thinking of a zoom wide angle tele... my choice was going to be the EF28-135 f/3.5/5.6 IS... but i have read some reviews and the say that sharpness was a problem with this lens... and obviously i need sharp photographs.

I don't think the sharpness is a problem with the 28-135 IS USM. Note that there are a lot of technical perfectionists, especially in Internet forums. You can make perfectly sharp photos with the 28-135, especially if you stop it down a bit (to f/8 for example) you won't see an enormous sharpness difference between the 28-135 and an "L" lens. The Canon "L" lenses are the top quality professional lenses, which are also more expensive.

Don't let people tell you that only "L" lenses are worth buying....

[BearSummer]

(thanks pythagoras)

That's incredibly good advice!! (What's the pythagoras formula, I suppose?)

Well not exactly pythagoras but a good dose of triganometry, knew the distance from the middle of the frame to the edge, looked up the angle of view for the 50mm lens on a 10D, fired up excel (hate radians), converted degrees and minutes to radians, bish bash bosh, and out comes 'you need to be this far away'.

distance = distance from center of picture to edge of picture / tan(half the angle of view of the lens) = 30/tan(17* 10') = 30/tan(8.583)= 198.7 inches

And... being sad now... if he told us how tall he was, the angle the picture is displayed at (ie wall mounted or on an easel leant back at 10 dgerees) and how high the bottom of the picture is we could tell him what his aperture he should shoot it at.

ey noo ey goed two skool phor sumfink

Best regards

BearSummer

[Hatem Eldoronki]

(thanks pythagoras)

That's incredibly good advice!! (What's the pythagoras formula, I suppose?)

Well not exactly pythagoras but a good dose of triganometry, knew the distance from the middle of the frame to the edge, looked up the angle of view for the 50mm lens on a 10D, fired up excel (hate radians), converted degrees and minutes to radians, bish bash bosh, and out comes 'you need to be this far away'.

distance = distance from center of picture to edge of picture / tan(half the angle of view of the lens) = 30/tan(17* 10') = 30/tan(8.583)= 198.7 inches

And... being sad now... if he told us how tall he was, the angle the picture is displayed at (ie wall mounted or on an easel leant back at 10 dgerees) and how high the bottom of the picture is we could tell him what his aperture he should shoot it at.

ey noo ey goed two skool phor sumfink

Best regards

BearSummer :lol: :lol: :lol:

[NicolasUribe]

(thanks pythagoras)

That's incredibly good advice!! (What's the pythagoras formula, I suppose?)

Well not exactly pythagoras but a good dose of triganometry, knew the distance from the middle of the frame to the edge, looked up the angle of view for the 50mm lens on a 10D, fired up excel (hate radians), converted degrees and minutes to radians, bish bash bosh, and out comes 'you need to be this far away'.

distance = distance from center of picture to edge of picture / tan(half the angle of view of the lens) = 30/tan(17* 10') = 30/tan(8.583)= 198.7 inches

And... being sad now... if he told us how tall he was, the angle the picture is displayed at (ie wall mounted or on an easel leant back at 10 dgerees) and how high the bottom of the picture is we could tell him what his aperture he should shoot it at.

ey noo ey goed two skool phor sumfink

Best regards

BearSummer


See... they told me this was a good forum... not because there's a bunch of pro's here but because you can sit back and somebody will be willing to do the MATH for you... :D

excellent advice guys. Thanks alot.

[Kevin M]

I photograph paintings with a 10d regularly and use a 50 F/1.8. Excellent sharpness and colour plus no distortions that I can detect. Shooting distance with a 50 on the 10d of 36 x 24 canvas is around 8 feet. Good procedure is to shoot raw and include a pure white patch on your first frame to set WB before converting.


http://www.titanicart.com/

[dtrayers]

Whether you get the 50mm f/1.8 or the 17-40 f/4 or the 28-135 IS or the 35 f/2...

Get a copy of PTLens for Photoshop. It's free and will correct any barrel distortion.

http://www.epaperpress.com/ptlens/index.html

[Hatem Eldoronki]

Get a copy of PTLens for Photoshop. It's free and will correct any barrel distortion.

http://www.epaperpress.com/ptlens/index.html
The lens definitely matters.
Photoshop itself has the free transform tool that would basically do the same thing to correct perspective. What I don't like about such corrections, the original quality gets worse, and your original composition might get literally bent out of shape, into a different shape that the lens didn't originally capture. I am only saying this because the original poster of this thread might want to sell his paintings, so I thought that a precise representation of his work would be mandatory. I again vote for the 50mm f1.8, or a prime lens with little distortion characteristics..

[Jon]

Go with the macro if you're really concerned about accuracy of reproduction. They're optimized for moderately to extremely close-in work and to have a good flat field.