How to photograph your artwork at home to a professional standard using a 2 light set-up. A video in 3 parts. Updates below
Part One:
What equipment you need.
Camera-buying tips.
Lenses, lighting, tripods, monitors, colour and grey cards, filters, software and calibration.
What you need for cross polarisation photography to remove glare from oil paintings.
Next Parts:
Part 2; • How to Photograph Artw...
Part 3: • How to Photograph Artw...
UPDATE
High-end phone cameras have really improved in the last few years. If you're just photographing your work for social media and your website, shooting raw with lights and a tripod, you may find the quality acceptable, . For printing, a proper camera is essential.
One thing I missed out in this video is that some lights are better for colour accuracy than others, and this is expressed using a CRI rating. A higher rating, particularly above 85-90, will give you more accurate colours out of the box. You can, of course, correct your colours in post production, but starting off as accurately as possible is good practice. Your should be able to find the CRI rating of a light in the retailer's product description.
Another thing I should have talked about is light modifiers. Softboxes make a light source bigger and more diffused, creating softer shadow. For shooting flat art reproduction, I don't think they're really necessary. However if your work is sculptural and involves shadows, you should consider them. Also, theoretically they could help with light falloff between the centre and the top of a piece if you shoot very large work in a small space, but I haven't found this necessary personally - just move the lights back. Softboxes are great for shooting framed work and other product shots though, and a great addition to your kit. I have two budget ones, a Selens 65cm and a Godox 120cm. I use the Selens one in particular all the time, and not just for photography and video work - it's great for lighting my work as I paint.
A bit more on lighting: studio strobes are what professionals generally use, but are relatively expensive and complicated to use. Speedlights are very useful for general photography - I use mine mainly for macro, but are also quite complicated to use, and may be slightly underpowered to use at optimum aperture with polarising filters (with strobes, you can’t extend the shutter speed to compensate for lower light levels). For most artists I would recommend continuous lights like my awesome Godox SL60Ws - they're very simple to use, and you can also use them to light your work as you paint, and for video too.
In the video I suggest a full frame camera is a necessity for printing work, but that's not quite right. Full frame may give you better results, particularly for larger scale prints, but a good quality APSC camera will print just fine at smaller sizes.
Macro lenses are often great for art reproduction, because they're designed to be sharp. However some other non-macro prime lenses are also designed to be sharp and will also give you great results. For excellent lens reviews I recommend Christopher Frost and Dustin Abbott (links below).
I perhaps under-emphasised the importance of having a decent, regularly calibrated monitor. They are your window into your raw file. If colour accuracy is important to you, definitely get a monitor made for photographers and designers: an IPS panel with high colour accuracy and at least 100% sRGB colour gamut (100% Adobe RGB is ideal if you’re printing, though they are more expensive, or alternatively Apple's P3 is almost as good), and a calibrator/colorimeter.
CaptureOne Pro is apparently a good alternative to Lightroom, and also I perhaps shouldn't have been so dismissive of Affinity Photo - it's cheap, other people rate it and it should do everything you need it too.
My specific camera recommendations are probably out of date since making this video, and I'm not really a gear reviewer. I think my general recommendations are sound though. Decide your budget first and work to that. Most modern APSC camera will probably be fine. There are so many good camera reviewers on RU-vid (links below) - a quick bit of research will give you some good options. Upgrade when you hit a wall with your current gear - when you find it can't do what you want it to.
Apologies to my wife, Claire, for dissing her tripod lol!
Links:
Lens & Camera Reviews
Christopher Frost: / christopherfrost
Dustin Abbott: / @dustinabbotttwi
DP Review: / dpreviewcom
Specialist UK camera stores:
Wex Photographic: www.wexphotovi...
Park Cameras: www.parkcamera...
MPB: www.mpb.com
Vanguard Alta Pro 2 with Ball Head:
amzn.to/3DUOoFK
Polarising Filters
amzn.to/30MMlpd
13 авг 2024