Photographing paintings for artists

Somewhat out of the blue I've been approached to photograph paintings created by local artists, with some then being printed on canvas either for sale as such or as a keepsake after the artists has sold the original. I've used a 450D + Tamron 28-75 and the results have been pretty good. Not perfect, but good enough to turn out a good print that has satisfied the client. I realize that the way I'm doing it is not ideal, but these are amateur painters who don't have the cash to have a pro lab spend a fortune doing exact colour matches etc.
I've just shot the paintings under shaded natural light with the camera profile under standard, although I'll admit I forgot about profiles and shot the first one under Landscape, which explained why the blues came out a bit too vivid.......
Can anyone recommend camera settings to simply get an accurate and, as far as possible, colour correct image that only needs minimal post processing. We are prepared to get a simple light setup, what sort of gear would be appropriate at the cheaper end of the market? There probably won't be that much cash in this so we don't want to spend too much, just enough to do a good job for the local arts community and any fussy clients we will happily send off to a proper professional with the 350megapixel camera, drum scanners, Roland printers etc. Out of curiousity, typically how much does it cost to have a typical artists canvas fully colour matched and produced - I'm assuming it's heaps but I really don't know.

Thanks,

Hal55

You don't mention whether you will be doing the printing or someone else. If you are doing the printing, it is a much simpler process.

I have taken pictures of quite a few paintings at the local historical society I volunteer at. It really isn't that big a deal. The main thing is getting square to the painting, but it isn't too hard if you pay attention to the borders in the viewfinder vs the edges of the painting. And it is a simple matter to fix any small distortion from being not perfectly square using perspective correction in post-processing (usually used to fix buildings and architectural shots).

As far as the lighting, I don't think it matters all that much either. I mean, you can take as long an exposure as you need (obviously, use a tripod). As long as you have enough light that you get good contrast, it should be fine. You certainly don't need to go out and buy anything special. I pretty much stick with Auto WB.

I usually use manual focus for such work, but AF can work too, if the painting has areas that the focusing can lock onto. I usually use manual anyway, because under such controlled conditions it's just about as easy and you can nail it, using 5x and 10x enlargement with Live View.

Now, what about the color? Well, yes, it can be kind of hard to exactly match the color in the print with the color in the original. But that is why I asked if you are doing the printing. If you are, then you probably already know how your printer works vs what you see on the screen, and maybe you have it pretty close already. So you adjust the image of the painting in post-processing based on that. You might have to print the painting several times to get it really close, but I have never had much trouble getting very close very quickly.

If you want a very professional job done, then you need to employ much more sophistocated methods, but from your original post, it sounds to me that you should have no trouble as long as you have some experience with photography and printing.

What sort of painting, anything behind glass needs to be removed from the frame first, as already said make sure it's perfectly square, also with oils and possibly acrylics you may get reflections and also shadows if a highly textured surface, so a polarizing filter may be useful. I use faithful as a setting when photographing my stuff. Printing is of course a whole new ballgame, with possibilities for endless fun!

I have had good success photographing paintings even when they're behind glass. If you use a light from directly above or below (or both), just slightly in front of the painting, you get very little reflection. Then stand well back with your tripod legs covered with a black cloth. I have taken many pictures of glass-covered paintings like this and they come out perfectly.

Biggest problem we are having at the moment is getting the print to match the brightness, or lack of it, to the original. The client brought her piece back to compare to our print, which turned out to be too dark, and has now left the painting so we can match it more closely. Would shooting under controlled lighting solve or reduce this problem? It's amazing just how far out myself and partner were in recollecting what the original looked like - we both thought the print was spot on when it was nothing of the sort.
The fact that the printer, an Epson 9890 only six months old, has now decided to misbehave and is not reading a new ink catridge, rendering it useless until a tech turns up and fixes it, is making this job even harder.

Hal55

Brightness is one of the easiest to adjust aspects of an image, from my experience, especially when the image is too dark, as in this case. I would think that you could brighten the image using an image editor. Why is this not working?

To photograph 2D artwork optimally, here's a few things to look at:
1. Camera and Art set-up
a. Is the artwork and camera square and level? Try using a tape measure to all four corners to check
b. Tripod and release
c. Lens - try using a prime lens, and preferably a dedicated macro. I find that having a little length, like a 100mm vs a 50mm on FF gives me a better working distance. Make sure that you take the time to calibrate your lens and camera to make sure of focus. We use the Datacolor Lens Checker,but you can set up a tape measure and objects as well. (There are a number of videos and articles on this) No sense in shooting and finding out that everything looks soft!
2. Lighting
a. even lighting - use a meter to make sure you are less than a 10th of a stop off in total, center and corners! One of the best way is to use two lights each side, cross focused on the art.
b. custom white balance based on lighting! This will help minimize variables in post, and make sure you are only using one color temp light sources.
c. If you are shooting anything other than watercolors, you will need to cross-polarize (lens AND lights) to eliminate specular highlights.

The thing to remember is that colors do not always reproduce as the human eye sees them. Due to optical brighteners in substrates, and the way certain minerals and pigments respond to various wavelengths of light, there are times when getting close enough will do!

If you ever want to see some of the art work I have copied for repro, go down the coffee and tea isle in most markets and look for Celestial Seasonings. One of my clients that I had the wonderful fortune of doing work with on a large number of originals used on the tea boxes!

I know that this is most likely way more than you wanted to know!

Good luck with your project!

hal55 wrote in post #13406701
Biggest problem we are having at the moment is getting the print to match the brightness, or lack of it, to the original. The client brought her piece back to compare to our print, which turned out to be too dark, and has now left the painting so we can match it more closely. Would shooting under controlled lighting solve or reduce this problem? It's amazing just how far out myself and partner were in recollecting what the original looked like - we both thought the print was spot on when it was nothing of the sort.
The fact that the printer, an Epson 9890 only six months old, has now decided to misbehave and is not reading a new ink catridge, rendering it useless until a tech turns up and fixes it, is making this job even harder.

Hal55

I'm assuming that you are using a fully colour managed monitor/printer set-up.
You should also consider ensuring that you have a properly colour-balanced lighting setup for photographing the artwork That means only one type of light source - doesn't matter what it is, daylight or tungsten - but not mixed - and no fluorescents around............
Set a manual white-balance on the camera, for every session.
Also include at least a grey-card, but preferably a colour patch card, in each image - if you have to fill the frame then take two images, one with the colour patches, one without. Then you can at least check the colour balance and saturation and brightness against a known quantity.
Meter the lighting in manual off a gray card held in front of the artwork - better still buy a hand-held lightmeter and use it in incident measuring mode.
Hope this helps.

I've read the original post again and I think you're right, Paul. It sounds like he is using a more sophisticated arrangement than I was thinking. I thought it was a totally amateur setup such as I was doing. I guess doing it up more professionally is the best way to go if you want to spend the time and money.

Thanks all for the input, and doing a colourpatch/gray card is a great idea. Gives a known point to start from, which is more than we have at the moment and is causing headaches. Will certainly try and get the proper lighting asap.

Hal55

hal55 wrote in post #13401739
Somewhat out of the blue I've been approached to photograph paintings created by local artists, with some then being printed on canvas either for sale as such or as a keepsake after the artists has sold the original. I've used a 450D + Tamron 28-75 and the results have been pretty good. Not perfect, but good enough to turn out a good print that has satisfied the client. I realize that the way I'm doing it is not ideal, but these are amateur painters who don't have the cash to have a pro lab spend a fortune doing exact colour matches etc.
I've just shot the paintings under shaded natural light with the camera profile under standard, although I'll admit I forgot about profiles and shot the first one under Landscape, which explained why the blues came out a bit too vivid.......
Can anyone recommend camera settings to simply get an accurate and, as far as possible, colour correct image that only needs minimal post processing. We are prepared to get a simple light setup, what sort of gear would be appropriate at the cheaper end of the market? There probably won't be that much cash in this so we don't want to spend too much, just enough to do a good job for the local arts community and any fussy clients we will happily send off to a proper professional with the 350megapixel camera, drum scanners, Roland printers etc. Out of curiousity, typically how much does it cost to have a typical artists canvas fully colour matched and produced - I'm assuming it's heaps but I really don't know.

Thanks,

Hal55

a 60 macro or 50 2.5 macro would give a nice, flat field with little distortion
x-rite colorchecker passport lets you get consistent colors

Get a scanner.

Large scanners cost a fortune, and scanning in sections and then stitching the sections together is harder than using a camera, in my experience.

I'm going to reshoot one of the paintings tomorrow and will try it with Adobe RGB instead of sRGB which we have been using. Hopefully this will give more accurate colour rendition than what we have been getting.

I now see why pro labs cost $200 just for colour matching. Getting it nearly right and turning out a good print is easy enough, getting an exact match is really frustrating at times. One or two have turned out near perfect first go, others are being an utter pain.
Hal55

I met up with David Tobie (Datacolor) the other day and he showed me the Cube and Color Checker for the latest in their color management. One thing I found out, is that the Koday 18% Gray Cards are not chromatically correct for white balance. The nice thing about their targets is they seem large enough to actually see. The Cube will also show deviations in lighting from side to side.
Another person to talk with about color management, is John Harris at Reed Photo Imaging in Denver CO.
Good luck!