Camera advise

Hi everyone,

I am looking for some advice on spending €500-€1000 on a camera that will upgrade my IPhone SE and was hoping you could help me out.

I am an artist based from the Netherlands and am curently using my SE in my studio and in galleries for taking photos and videos of my paintings (I have attached some examples below). I love using my IPhone because it is portable and it makes sharing on social media easy, but it’s far from a professional camera. And it’s lacking quality for using my photos (overview, close up and galerie shots) on my website and portfolio.

I am looking for a professional camera that will give me the best quality photos and videos (photos are most important) I can get for the budget. I have limited experience in photography and am looking for a portable model (without compromising quality) that is easy to use, so, without me having to become a pro and having to purchase new lenses and accessories to get the perfect shot. I am willing though to give up compactness/portabilit​y for quality if it comes down to it.

I have asked some local dealers for advice and summed it up in the list below:
* Sony CyberShot RX100 V
* Leica D-Lux with f1.7 Summilux
* Panasonic Lumix LX100
* Sony A6000 with a 16-50mm lens
* Sony A6300
* Sony A7 with a 28-70 lens

Again, I am a photography rookie, but I am more than willing to learn and look forward to making a start with a new camera.


Thanks,
Tom

Example of my work, the colors and textures:

Hello,

Photographing a painting has a lot less to do with which camera you select, and most to do with lighting.

Choose any Nikon/Canon/Sony/Fuji system, something inexpensive with a fairly normal or telephoto FOV lens (to avoid perspective distortion) that can be mounted on a stand.

Lighting will be paramount. It changes everything. It's the difference between a snapshot of your work, and a true representation of your work. Lighting modifiers will play a huge role, to avoid adding hot spots, etc, such as spectral highlights. You may laugh a little, but this is serious, you may find a PVC frame with a large white sheet acting as a bounce surface over a painting to serve as a modifier. You will not find a commercial modifier like an umbrella or softbox that will do the job. You will likely need to custom make your own modifier and select lights to bounce on it, or shoot through it, to get an even non-spectral-highlighted result.

My gut says to look at a Nikon D5300 or a mirrorless like a Fuji X-T1 or Sony A6300. You can get an excellent manual focus lens, like a Rokinon/Samyang, as autofocus will not be helpful anyways, so you can control everything and get incredibly good glass this way. From there, some AC powered studio strobes would be ideal (like Flashpoint 320M series, inexpensive, excellent).

Very best,

To get nice photos of your artwork, you're going to want some nice lighting. I believe it is common to light the art with a light on each side of the panting a fair distance away. That would create nice even lighting across the image and allow you to show off the artwork.

On the other-hand, it looks like your studio already has decent lighting. So it may be that you just need to manually set the exposure to make sure it shows the way you want it to.

For photographing your art, I'd probably want a longer focal length so you don't get lens-distortion. Probably something like 85mm-135mm. As for body, any of the base SLR offerings from Canon, Sony, or Nikon would work.

I think another important factor is end-use. What do you intend to do with the images? If all you plan to do is share/display them online, you really don't need an expensive camera with a high-megapixel sensor, especially if you're working with the same lighting on every shot.

The only camera in your list that I have any experience with is the LX100. This would do the job very well, though the lens is 'only' 24-70mm focal length. I reckon you'd be OK at the 70mm end though.

Also, learn how to shoot and edit 'RAW' pictures. As an artist, I'm sure you have a keen eye for colour and will want good dynamic range. To achieve these, shooting RAW will give you much more control in post-processing. Most people are familiar with the 'JPEG' format, which is actually a finished image that has been processed for you, by the camera. By and large, these are OK, but if you are finicky, you will soon start to feel frustrated with them and want more control. The RAW file is precisely that - the raw information, unadulterated, straight off the sensor. It contains lots more information that a JPEG and permits much more editing. Once you're happy, you then save it (typically) as a JPEG.

You should be able to get great results with your iPhone SE once you have good light. There would be no need for any time spend on editing raw files as the colours and balance will be right once you add light. In reality having a more 'pro' or bigger camera won't change anything for you

iPhone SE is okay but you're not going to get detail you would for virtually any new, higher dynamic range camera.

This is a small camera with a new sensor.

https://www.currys.co.​uk …-bundle-10171174-pdt.html

No idea if that is a reputable dealer.

One cheap method of photographing paintings is to take them outside when it's cloudy (the Sun is a great large light, and clouds a giant diffuser for uniform lighting). In your first example, you can see most the light is on the left side of the canvas. The standard way of artificially lighting artwork is to have two identical lights angled diagonally towards the painting (both 45 degrees). Light can also be more uniform if the lights have diffusers on them. When I photograph artwork, I put it on a portable easel I have that lets the painting be perfectly perpendicular to the ground. Then I make sure the camera is exactly parallel with the painting (to be sure there's no distortion).

Left Handed Brisket wrote in post #18713264
iPhone SE is okay but you're not going to get detail you would for virtually any new, higher dynamic range camera.

This is a small camera with a new sensor.

https://www.currys.co.​uk …-bundle-10171174-pdt.html

No idea if that is a reputable dealer.

Currys were a TV and white goods retailer, and merged with Dixons, who although being a general electronics retailer did at least start out as a propper camera store. You could even buy darkroom stuff from Dixons until the mid/late 80's. Now although traded as Dixons Store Group, DSG, they trade under the Currys PC World name.

I would be very careful buying a camera from them though. They are a box shifter now, and although the deal looks good, the 18-55 is a very old version, as it is an old non IS version of the lens, let alone STM. Also for the OP now might not be a good time to be buying new kit from a UK retailer while based in the Netherlands. What with the whole Brexit thing and all.

A 200D with a 50 ƒ/1.8 STM would be a very good budget Canon option for the OP for the sort of work that they want to do. As lots of others have said though for this sort of work lighting is paramount, and you will need to get either two external flash guns, or some LED panel lights with some sort of softbox modifier. I would potentially look at LED panel lights, not the photography specific ones, but work lights, which will do just as well, provided that care is take to set a custom white balance for them. That can either be in camera, or done in post if shooting RAW, which would be the preferable option. I would have suggested the 50mm ƒ2.8 macro as a better lens option, since with it's 1:2 reproduction ratio, but very flat image rendition it was designed for this sort of work. It seems to be unlisted now, so I guess has been discontinued. The new 35mm macro may also be a good Canon choice on something like the 200D.

Alan