Wayne,
Yes using a gray card certainly helps. Remember though to move the gray card
next to the
highlights and the shadows. Also try angling the gray card with the spot
meter next to
these areas that might reflect stray light. Moving the strobes will absolutely
be
neccessary. The polarizing of the lights is ABSOLUTELY neccessary for this
process to work.
Don't worry about the tiny amounts of distortion created by a high quality
lens. On 4x5
cameras most people use a 90mm for copy work. I mostly used a really good
Mamiya 65mm/f6.2
on a Universal body with a 6x9 film back. This lens had fairly good contrast
and was sharp
enough with the 6x9 back to do a professional job. I'm sure there was some
very slight
distortion but who the hell could tell. Most of the paintings I shot were
fairly large.
Yes the slight movement of the polarized lights will make all of the difference
on deeply
saturated colors of oil paints on canvas. The key is to not get too dark in
the shadows and
not get light bouncing of the highlights. Depending on the work it is not too
difficult to
get inside of one stop and most works will allow you to get to about a 1/3 stop
with a spot
flash meter. After doing a few, the light movements and spot metering process
really gets
easier. However at first it can be tedious. Another reason not to use a too
long of a lens
is the fact this process gets much more difficult as the strobes move further
away from the
work. I don't know what the gamut range of oil paints are but they are quite
different from
slide film. On printed or lithographed work a gray card with two are three
spot readings
works fine and there is usually very little effort needed to get right on the
money. One
more thing, I usually have solid black background and a scanner color
calibration chart or a
printers color calibration chart just on above the piece. This will allow for
the necessary
corrections when the slide is to be scanned for publication. Most galleries and
artists are
very critical of the color and contrast and will not pay for the job unless you
have it damn
close.
I've only done some copy work on my stuff and friends stuff with a 35mm (OM3 or
4). And once
I used a 35-70/f3.6 at 35. And once I used the 28/f2.8. It was ok and it was on
negative
film. Sometimes I would just shoot outside with the OM. The Zuiko lenses that
I have used
offer excellent color saturation and contrast. Nothing wrong with these lenses
for copy
work.
As to using hot lights. Good luck to those that can do this. Although I've
seen some good
overall exposures, I doubt the quality and consistency of the colors. There
are labs that
do it with special copy lighting systems but I'm not familiar with their
equipment. All of
the top guys I learned from used strobes and polarizing gels. I'm sure this is
not the only
professional process of copying oil paintings but it is the only one I ever
learned.
Next time ask me about shooting jewelry ... there's another useful skill I had
to learn
quickly.
Phillip Franklin
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