D60 photographing art work

[RRRamsey]

I've recently acquired the d60 and am looking for the best lens and workflow for photographing art work ie oils, watercolors for reproduction on an epson 9500 wide format printer. By work flow I mean lighting, camera settings and lens.

[phoby3]

Wouldn't that all depend upon the size of the art work and the distance that you have to work with. For example, if you were to try to copy a Calder mural and could only step back 10 feet from it a 50mm wouldn't quite do the trick.

Lighting as well is dependent on a number of issues, but essentially it is safe to say that if you set up light one life size copy stand you will be fine.

The critical issue is color correction. If you do not use a color meter finding a standarized white card so that you can set a custom white balance of the camera based upon the lights you do use.

I once used a 55mm macro (very sharp lens) two light heads with soft boxes that were able to cover edge to edge the painting both at 45 degrees. There was questions by the curator about the strobes but when considered against quatrz, the museum opted for the strobes.

So to make a short story long, that part of the "work flow" will have to be decided by your personal experience, and the particular needs of the job that confronts you. Each piece of art work should be approached seperately.

[DWard]

I am working on the same application with a G2 and several have suggested using polarizers on both the lense and the lights.

This can have a significant impact on light intensity when using strobes I image.

My experience doing this sort of thing with large format (4x5, 8x10) cameras 30 some years ago is that getting good even lighting is the first challenge, then minimizing (or controlling) reflections, and finally making sure the lense is critically sharp. That means a macro lense for D60. Personally, I would use the shorter focal length to keep you within reasonable distance if working in confined space, plus it does minimize camera shake from floor vibrations etc. if using "hot lights"

Hope these thoughts are useful for creating your workflow.

Happy Holidays,
David

[RRRamsey]

Thanks..... most of my art work is either oils any where from 11x14 inches to 4x6 feet. the later fairly rare, or watercolors no bigger than 22x30. The only lens I currently have is 28-135 canon is zoom. if I shoot at 28 macro it tends to "warp" or "bow" the image.
I agree with your color correction assesement and have been custom setting the WB. I'm mostly interested in which lens will give be the sharpest results. Or lenses.
Thanks and happy holidays

[DWard]

Bob,
Yesterday afternoon I did some tests with strobes and polarizing filter on the camera. The test image was a drawing in a metal frame with glass.

I found that the most important consideration for lighting was to have the two lights at an oblique angle to the art. This eliminated any reflections on the glass and resulted in even lighting. When done this way the polarizing filter on the lenses had virtually no impact.

By oblique I set the lights two feet in front of the wall where the art was hung and 5 feet from the far side of the art to the light. i.e. light on right side 5 feet from left edge of frame I also had the strobe aimed at the far edge.

Using the Zoom at widest angle is causing the barrel distortion zoom in to 50 to 60 mm and give it a try. I had the same problem with the zoom on my G2. Macro lens is the best, Fixed focal length is next best and Zoom toward mid-range seems to be the third of three options.

David

Hope this helps.

David