 George |
Photographing Art I just took several of my paintings to a photo studio. They used a 8meg digital camera. I see in the paper I can purches a canon 8meg camera. could I get the same results or is it more involved. I plan on haveing these files sent to a geclee printer for repoductions. What other equiptment will I need. Thanks, Geroge
|
|
|
|
||
|
Melissa L. Zavadil |
Well, are you a photographer and how willing are you to learn a new art form if you are not. If I stated to you that I saw a paint brush at michaels could I right off paint what you can paint. No, probably not. Photography is a skill of painting with light and capturing it. It will have the capability to do what you want probably but, it will not take the picture for you. Photography is a form of art like any other. If you are willing to work on this form of art and develop your skills I am sure that you will be capable of producing a high quality piece. Lighting will be tricky for this based on your medium. If you do oils reflections can be extremely difficult to deal with to get a good result. Your lens quality and the way you mount your painting (no angle) will be an issue, your lighting will be a major issue. All of these things will need to be well thought through before you decide to purchase the camera. I expect that Just the basics for this would be: tripod, lighting kit, adobe photoshop, backdrop. And of course the needed computerware to process your discs. You will probably need a special lens just for this type of work one that will not distort the edges-I'm not sure exactly which one (someone here might be able to help with that). You will most likely need to learn your manual controls on your camera to get the 'best' outcome and you will most likely need to learn a program like adobe to touch up any hotspots or other blemishes in the photo that might need cleaning or a posible saturation adjustment to ensure a best posible reproduction. Just my thoughts, I believe that you can do it if you desire to learn the trade with some effort and time!
|
|
|
|
||
|
John A. Lind |
George, Certainly you could learn how to do it yourself. I agree with Melissa's observations. In addition, there are some special skills in doing "copy" work beyond just having a camera to do it with: (a) Lighting: making it even across the work and illuminating it in a manner that avoids specular highlights if it has a texture to it and "hot spots" . . . without losing "modeling" of the texture in the photograph if the desire is to maintain it. (b) Perspective: maintaining a rectilinear perspective of the work so that it remains perfectly rectangular and doesn't become trapezoidal or some other shape with opposing sides of different lengths. This requires great care in setup of the copy work and the camera. (c)Distortions: using lenses that are extremely free from pincushion or barrel distortion, spherical aberration, and astigmatism (usually not a problem). Lenses used for this should also be extremely flat field for copy of flat artwork . . . so that its entire surface remains in critically sharp focus across the entire field of view . . . some details about important lens characteristics Melissa mentioned. Not all professional studio photographers are highly skilled at this type of work. It's not something most routinely do, if at all. Very few have some of the tools for it although improvising can work well if the photographer knows what to do. Smaller work can be done on a "copy stand" which is traditionally used for copying documents laid horizontally on a bed with camera looking down on it in a special mount. Larger work is usually be done mounted vertically. I would want to be using a geared column tripod with a 3-way gear head on top for precision . . . most don't have a tripod and head of this type (unless they're seriously into high-mag macros which also would use this). If you've found one that does it well, good! Finally, consider how big you want to make the Giclee prints and with a digital, you want enough pixels to print it well . . . I'm thinking no less than 300 dpi, more if at all possible (up to about 600 dpi), as it will give you the greatest reproduction of detail from your artwork. -- John Lind
|
|
|
|
||
|
George |
Thank you all for your help. I found a photographer in town and plan on using him. He has experence in this field. After concidering all thats involved It would be better served to let the experts do it and stick to what I do best. George
|
|
|
|
||
|
This old forum is now archived. Use improved Forum here
Report this Thread |
||