OK so I'm not a complete noob, but I'm still VERY interested in what people have to say about photographing pieces of artwork.
Here's my situation:
My father wants me to photograph around 120 pieces of art work, lithographs, prints, paintings behind glass etc... These photographs will end up in a small-ish book. (None bigger than 8.5x11)
The lighting is BAD. It's ceiling bulbs in a house and the ceiling is brown wood.
Do you guys have any pointers for this? The prints are being put on the floor one at a time, and I have to photograph them.
Here's my plan:
White balance beforehand to make life easier. Use my 50mm 1.4 @ f2 - 2.5 (depending on light), at around ISO 800-1600. No flash, of course. This seems to work for me in my head.
Do any of you have any pointers. I REALLY don't want to mess this up!
You want to make sure you're shooting the art straight-on with the least amount of distortion possible. Can you mount it on a wall? If so, shoot it with the longest, sharpest lens you have available to avoid distortion. Tripods and MLU are your friend - stop down the lens waaaay beyond f/2.5 and try to use a low ISO.
Flash isn't bad in photographing artwork - you just need to make sure it's even. I've seen a lot of artwork being photographed using two softboxes 45 degrees off the camera axis. That will also give you much better control of the color temperature. You'll also want to use a gray card (or just a white piece of paper, if it's all you have available) and shoot in RAW just in case.
You definitely will want to use a tripod and shutter release so you can work at ISO 100 to get the lowest noise (and not have to worry about camera shake). Stop down the lens a bit more (f5.6-f11) to get optimum sharpness. Make sure there are no direct reflections of the light source on the glass in the picture. Put a polarizer filter on your lens and adjust to minimize remaining reflections. Using a flash would make your life much easier; use a flash with a swivel head bounced off a large surface (white/light-colored wall or ceiling in the room) for a good light source. For a more advanced setup, you can shoot flash units through polarizer sheets directly at the artwork, using an on-camera polarizer to block specular reflections from the flash off the glass (which preserve polarization) while letting through non-specular reflections off the artwork.
I do not have access to a tripod for this. It HAS to be handheld, unfortunately. I have a polarizer, but it will cut down the amount of light coming in so I'd rather not use it. I'm definitely shooting RAW mode, and just took a few preliminary shots, handheld, at ISO 1600 @ F2.2. Shutter speeds have been in the region of 1/160 to 1/200. The shots look excellent in LightRoom, very sharp and detailed, but I realize it would definitely be better to be stopped down quite a bit, and at low ISOs. It's frustrating but I just don't have the tools I could really use....
I did do a manual white balance using a grey card, for what it's worth!
Do you have access to electrical outlets? If so, see if you can round up some desk lamps or any extra lights you can find. A few lights close to the image, coming in at 45 degrees from the left and right sides so there is no direct reflection path to the camera, will give you much more flexibility with ISO/aperture/shutter speed.
The better solution is still to get hold of a tripod. For indoor work where you can use a shutter release and let the camera settle for a while before shots, you don't need a good tripod --- even the cheapest piece of plastic junk will let you take much better pictures than you could by hand.
First off, you'll want to keep the ISOs low, 100 is ideal, for best quality and detail retention. Second, stop down the lens a bit more, again to improve detail. I'll bet the 50mm's sweet spot is around 5.6... Second, you'll need to hang or prop up the work. If its on the floor it will be difficult getting the tripod over it at a driect angle unless you've got one of those tricky rotating head-type tripods.
But most important will be your light. If the light is bad in the space then you'll need some flash. But that opens up a discussion too long for this thread. But everything you need to know about lighting artwork (lighting anything actually) is in the book "Light"Science and Magic" by Hunter and Fuqua.
you might want to use a macro lens--which tends to be better for maintaining a flat field: imo and experience, the 50 2.5 macro is a better lens for this type of work than the 1.4. if you need to shoot at a wider aperture, because of the light, you might want to consider one of the tilt and shifts which would allow you to get more detail in focus at the wider apertures/
Got a good IS lens - this is where it might really help, if it's up to the task otherwise. You have a pretty good idea that the subject is already stabilized
Looking at the conditions you have to work under, and the equipment [ or lack thereof ]I have one piece of advice....dont bother!.....no tripod ?...for Gods sake, they are a pittance to rent, and why not move the art work where lighting is adequate at worst. If you are photographing for a book, then this 007 style setup will result in a below par end result at very best.
I don't understand why you have such awful constraints?
Full shadow outdoors will give you the best simple even lighting for flat artwork...
Your 50 will work perfectly fine (even if the CM is a little better), but you definitely want to stop down to f5.6 *minimum* IMO to get good sharpness across the frame.
If your shutter speed is high enough you can get by without the tripod, but make sure your are parallel to all edges in your framing... and use a perspective fix in PS when needed.
A flash can be used... as said, bounced off a large surface. You can easily use a cheap Sunpak 383.
Setup a controlled area to take the pictures. Bring the art to this location. Make sure you are absolutely square to the art work. Use a tripod (if as you stated above you can't do this, don't even waste your time on the project). ISO 100, f5.6 or 8. Shutter remote. Use off camera flash with umbrellas. Two flash units and two umbrellas each on a light stand will insure good lighting (control them with ST-E2 or 580EX). Control reflections in shooting area. Shoot tethered to a notebook computer ... inspect your images carefully (make sure you have final images) for each piece before moving on to the next piece. Include a white balance reference in each image. Possibly consider using a longer lens than the 50mm.
Thank you for ALL the advice. I'm saddened that I'm being bombarded with "don't bothers.". The art can not be moved because 90% of it is VERY fragile, to the point of extreme delicacy required. Second, my father does not live on the same country as me, and it's not possible for me to get hold of all the equipment I need. Last, I think the results so far, preliminary of course, look excellent with the 5D II... This camera is astonishing.
But again, thank you for the help. I guess that, while I can't follow all the advice, it's very interesting to hear all the points of view!
Is it really impossible for you to pick up an inexpensive tripod and remote release? Sure the 5DII has great high ISO performance, but a tripod will do wonders for your work... correct composition, low ISO, can stop down more, and so on. Heck, even a DESK or something would work in a pinch. A shelf perhaps. Anything? You don't have to be MacGyver to pull this off.
Is there any way you can get more light into the room? Open windows, desk lamps, ask friends to borrow their lamps... anything. He doesn't live in a remote jungle far outside of civilization, does he? Do you? There's gotta be a way to get more light in there given that you can't take the artwork outside or anything.
Tripod and such advice from above. That's a given.
Then also consider doing custom color balance. Not just white balance, I mean color balance. If it's art, chances are the artist didn't just want white to be white but also red to be red. If the light is as pathetic as you say, white balance is not enough, as that will only get neutral tones where they belong. Don't get me wrong, it's better than nothing, but it's not enough if color matters.
Here's an example - and I'll grant you that it's the worst example I could find: sodium vapor lights, that yellow street light. One of them is white balanced only (grey picker on swatch #22), the 2nd one is also color balanced. Not perfect, but given that this is the worst light I could think of, not too bad. Tungsten light can be calibrated much easier. There are several ways to do this, plenty of literature available - also depends on what raw converter you use.
Can you tell I am a stickler for this stuff? May have to do something with my last job
A very cheap no-name video tripod would probably be enough in this case for you to drop your iso down to 400 and use a smaller aperture... if you can carry both a tripod and the camera where you are going... though you make it all sound so mysterious... I somehow imagine you are being smuggled across a boarder under the hay in an ox cart to obtain priceless images of secret art pieces...
