How do you photograph paintings?

Discussion in 'The Artist's Corner' started by ChiefBuddha, Mar 13, 2012.

  1. I have some paintings of mine that i'm going to put up for sale online. I have a nice dslr camera, i just need to know whats the best way to take the photo of the paintings to get the most out of the painting? i.e. high/low aperture settings, exposure, background, flash/no flash, etc. Please let me know if you have any knowledge of any of this [​IMG] Thank you
     
  2. I've noticed the best results are from using natural light on a sunny day, with no flash. Flash gives it an unnatural balance of light in the photo, IMO.

    Also, it's good to use the Lens Correction Filter in Photoshop CS5 to fix any lens distortion, and other tools to help tweak the digital image to make it look more like the actual image.

    Also, I remember in high school we had a room used to take slides of our artwork, where we placed it on this machine which held the camera directly above the center of the work, with two lights on each side, with a grey background.

    Hope this helped a bit
     
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    Hope all that comes out. Should be able to zoom in and read it. If I wasnt at work I'd just type it out.
     
  4. Basically, you want the camera to be perfectly parallel to whatever you are documenting.

    You need to make them parallel on all axis.

    This means up and down and left and right.

    Then you want your light to be at the same angles, off to the side and at the same power.

    Whoever said outdoors with natural light is wrong.

    If you can use two of the same power light bulbs and a tripod (for long exposure) you will be better off.


    It is actually pretty complicated, but here:

    [​IMG]

    Basically picture that, but on it's side (so the board would be your artwork).

    The middle pole is for the camera and the two poles on the side are for lights.
     

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