Shooting art

Friend asked me to shoot a few pieces for him on display tomorrow morning and he is going to be making a few 8x10s of them...

will be using my tripod.

he wants dead on framed shots.... tiny aperture with long long exposure for high detail?


Any advice?

^good point about not needing huge depth of field for this project (assuming artwork is 2-d). I'd be around f/8 and I'd want to be at the longest practical focal length (ie. I'd go 40mm rather than 20mm). ISO 100, obviously.

ah--before you start--place something grey in the frame (coplanar with art piece) and get a shot of it for color balance adjustments in post.

Look at what the light sources are and determine if you're really getting even lighting.

I'd recommend not combining flash + ambient. Choose one.

Ah--one more thing: if texture is an important aspect of the pieces, try shooting flash only (kill ambient with aperture or gel the flash) off camera and at an oblique angle. Ok-that's probably beyond the requirements of the job !

Between my 3 lenses which would work best?

And F8 or 9 over 5.6?

All depends on what size his art is. Your macro lens with undoubtedly be the sharpest as macro lenses are designed to be sharp across the entire frame. But you'll have to set up the art and camera to get the required and appropriate depth of field. But 100mm on your Rebel might be too long a lens. You'll have to assess the situation when you get there.

I there is glass or metal involved then I'd say flash would not be good!

As to focal length, heck, you have three very good lenses. Bring them all and then what will best serve you will depend on the conditions -- your pick.

As to aperture, f/5.6 would be fine and, if there will be movement nearby or even traffic on the street, a wider aperture can enable a faster shutter speed. Just make sure that your camera has an accurate perpendicular line-of-sight/framing. If the artwork is a bit too high to get that "fully framed", it would be better to go a bit wider or farther back and then crop it rather than to risk bad perspective. Or, of course, shoot from a ladder!

I have done several pieces of flat art. There are a few techniques that will help you get better images.

1. Get an old lens cap and cut a small hole dead center. Thread 4 equal lengths of string through the cap.
2. Use your tripod with the center column upside down so that the camera is between the legs
3. Raise the legs so that they will be out of the image completely but you can raise the lower the center column to fill the frame as much as possible.
4. Shoot on a hard surface, a low table is perfect. Cover the surface with flat black paper to reduce reflections.
5. Diffused light is best get some diffusion material and make large diffusion panels that you can clamp onto chairs or light stands. The lamps you use should light the subject evenly from about a 45 degree angle.
6. Once you have your set built place the lens cap over the lens and use the string to make sure that the subject and camera are directly centered. Use a small contractors level to make sure that the art work and the camera are both level. Do not use a plumb bob to center. If it comes off it could go right through the art work.
7. After you remove the lens cap get a circular pol filter to reduce reflections into the camera. Just turn it until the image looks the best.
8. Do a custom color balance, with a grey card in the first frame. Then bracket the exposure by .25 stops. Keeping the shutter speed a constant, will reduce the chance of vibration. Also use a remote or the 10 sec timer.
9 Log each item and exposure.
10. Have fun with the project.

Good stuff, thanks everyone!

It just so happens I do art reproduction work professionally, so I have a plethora of advice to give.

But first, some questions:
What is that medium and substrate? (type of paint or other colors being used and on which type of paper or canvas)
If it is on canvas, is it coated with varnish or is it a matte surface?
If it's paint, does the surface have a rough texture or a smooth one?

Once you've answered that, I can tell you whether flash or tungsten lighting, whether or not to use polarizing filters, etc.

To make a dead-on photograph, first find something you can use to prop the artwork up with, using an adjustable easel is a cheap and simple solution, just make sure it can tilt back-to-front and ideally doesn't use "step" adjustment. If not that, simply hanging the work on a wall will do good enough if all works are the same size, or you can adjust the height at which they hang.

Once the work is in place with the long side laying horizontally (if possible, so you won't have to rotate the camera to fill up the frame), take it back off and measure it's vertical size, then find a small mirror to place or hang at half the picture's height, as this will be your guide. Make sure the mirror is flat against the surface as you want it to represent the plane of the painting. Now adjust the height and position of the camera on your tripod so that the the lens is looking directly back at itself in the mirror and that means you're straight-on.

Since you said "dead on framed shots", I'm assuming you meant the picture in the frame, which can make things complicated depending on how you want to light the painting, and most importantly, the frame will always cast shadows on the artwork, so be aware of that. What I do if someone requests a framed shot is to photograph the art and frame separately, and then just place the artwork back into the frame in Photoshop, this is a good idea as flash can decimate the detail in a frame and will over-expose it, while under-exposing the painting... and add drop shadows to the art.

Finally for the camera side of things, a 600D is really pushing it for art reproduction, but if it's just 8x10's then it's alright. For settings, set aperture to f/8 (on full-frame this could be as high as f/11), ISO100 or else, and the shutter speed will depend on the lighting method. With flash, this will be anywhere from 1/160 to 1/250th depending on your camera's sync speed.

The 100mm f/2.8 macro is the ideal lens you could have for this job, as it has no field curvature (very important), is extremely sharp, and is the right focal length too. What I mean by "right focal length", is that as you might know, the angle at which light hits something is the angle at which it reflects, which means that a longer focal length lens will pick up less light from off-angles than a wide would and this allows for more controlled lighting and placement. Going any longer is not recommended as it just makes it harder to space the camera far away enough to fit in artworks significantly bigger than 50" within a reasonable room size.

Finally there is the question of white balancing and color-correction, but as I don't know the lighting type (flash/tungsten/ambien​t) I can't go in much further.