Photographing oil paintings

[Jeffrey Frankel]

A friend asked me to photograph an oil painting. I have never done this
before and I put lights at 45º, behind the camera, and using a 50mm lens
shot from a distance of about 1.5 m. The painting was 60cm x60cm, and the
oil was still fresh, less than two weeks old. The prints had two problems.
One was streaks of light, and the other was some parts of the painting
appeared transparent - instead of a black area I could see the canvas.

Any suggestions would be welcome

Thank you

Jeffrey Frankel

[Francis A. Miniter]

Hi Jeffrey,

The streaks of light may be caused by areas of the painting that have a glossy
finish to them, at least as seen from the 45º angle. To solve that problem I
would on re-shooting use a more diffuse light source, perhaps with a bounce.
Black areas that appear transparent to the canvas are at the other end of the
scale - very coarse texture. So all in all, you may be getting too much
contrast. So,

1. What film are using? I would suggest changing to the lowest contrast
film you can find - Kodak Portra, maybe.

2. What paper are you printing on? Again, go to a low contrast paper.

Francis A. Miniter

[Robert Monaghan]

see http://medfmt.8k.com/mf/art.html for discussion and tips etc.

hth bobm
--
* Robert Monaghan POB752182 So. Methodist Univ., Dallas Tx 75275 *
* Third Party 35mm Lenses: http://medfmt.8k.com/third/index.html *
* Medium Format Cameras: http://medfmt.8k.com/mf/index.html *

[Jeffrey Frankel]

Thanks for useful advice.

Jeffrey Frankel

[Mike King]

Used to assist shooting and cataloging a collection of oil paintings. At
that time we shot 4x5 and used cross-polarization to eliminate reflections.
Polrized hot lights (made by Kodak) and another polarizer at 90 degrees on
the lens, needless to say, the exposures were very long, but the results we
eye-popping.

--
darkroommike

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