the right lens Photographing paintings

[chrissny]

Great forum.

I just bought a 5D mark II body and need to know which lens would be best for photographing large oil paintings. I read something about macro lenses are best and I was looking at the Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 USM Macro Lens. Would this be a good option ?

I also need it for photographing flowers that I use as reference for painting. Thats where I thought a macro lens would come in handy. I don't have enough money right away for two lenses.

I have a tripod and about 7-10 meters distance away from the paintings to play with.

At this moment I only have two daylight/ full spectrum white lamps that I use to paint with to use as lighting.
kind regards.

 

[beagle1]

Great forum.

I just bought a 5D mark II body and need to know which lens would be best for photographing large oil paintings. I read something about macro lenses are best and I was looking at the Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 USM Macro Lens. Would this be a good option ?

I also need it for photographing flowers that I use as reference for painting. Thats where I thought a macro lens would come in handy. I don't have enough money right away for two lenses.

I have a tripod and about 7-10 meters distance away from the paintings to play with.

At this moment I only have two daylight/ full spectrum white lamps that I use to paint with to use as lighting.
kind regards.

the Canon 100mm 2.8 macro would be a good option but the most important thing will be the lighting set-up. For suggestions on how to properly light this ask in the lighting section here (DPreview) or at a Canon lighting/flash forum here:
http://photography-on-the.net/forum

 

[LeftyAce]

Great forum.

I just bought a 5D mark II body and need to know which lens would be best for photographing large oil paintings.

How large are these oil paintings? You neeed to be able to fit them in the frame, so make sure the lens angle of view is going to be big enough with the amount of space you have to back up. It sounds like you might not need macro for the paintings (7-10m is not macro)....but it would be useful for flowers.

 

[chrissny]

Thanx for the reply, will have a look

 

[chrissny]

Thanx for the reply.

For now I have to chose a lens that I can use for both floral close ups, portraits and photographing the paintings which range from 1m x 1m to 2 m x 1,5m as I can't afford buying so much at once.
So any suggestions to lenses would be appreciated

 

[chrissny]

I used to watch how the curator of a museum in Cape town photograph my paintings. She had two very strong white lights with a indigo blue coloured gel (don't know the proper name for it) in front of them both placed at curtain angles with the camera and she also always needed a couple of meters away from the paintings.

It just turned out to be so expensive as I painted a lot and here in Germany I just cant afford to have it done every time.

I decided that I have enough interest in photography so I want to learn to do it too. Also to collect my own reference material.

 

[Hugowolf]

I just bought a 5D mark II body and need to know which lens would be best for photographing large oil paintings. I read something about macro lenses are best and I was looking at the Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 USM Macro Lens. Would this be a good option ?

I also need it for photographing flowers that I use as reference for painting. Thats where I thought a macro lens would come in handy. I don't have enough money right away for two lenses.

I have a tripod and about 7-10 meters distance away from the paintings to play with.

At this moment I only have two daylight/ full spectrum white lamps that I use to paint with to use as lighting.

100 mm might be too tight for large paintings. You may want to consider a shorter focal length. The 50 mm f/2.5 compact macro does well for this sort of thing. Even the 50 mm f/1.8 might work well enough when stopped down to f/5.6.

Basically you want a lens that has little geometric distortion, good color rendition, little vignetting, and is sharp from centre to edge. Macro lenses are good for this, but any decent fixed focal length lens will probably work.

You don’t need to gel the lights, providing they provide a broad spectrum of light. Just shoot raw and make sure to shoot a gray card (or even paling white sheet) along with the paintings. You can do a color balance based on the gray card.

Lighting is important. The standard setup is two identical lights at 45° to the work. Measure each light for distance from the plane of the work and from the camera position. Ideally you want no more than a tenth of a stop difference from the centre to the edges. I you don’t have an incident meter, then you can place a large sheet of plain paper where you intend to shoot the paintings, shoot that and examine it in Photoshop, or any editing software that will show you luminosity values. If the lighting is uneven, you can move the lights back. It is best to shoot with the camera tethered to a computer (the Canon software will allow you to do this).

To minimize post processing, it is a good idea to ensure the lens is aligned dead centre with the paintings. This avoids keystoning, the trapezoidal effect that occurs when the camera is at a slight angle.

Brian A

 

[chrissny]

Dear Brian, thanx a lot