Appropriate camera/film for art gallery shoot?

[DougK]

OK, here's the situation. I was browsing around a local art gallery yesterday with some amazing glass pieces on display and I got permission from the gallery managers to come in and shoot a few photos for my personal use.

I'm not sure a rangefinder would be the best choice for this situation and I was thinking about going with either my TLR or an SLR and a tripod without a flash. The gallery is fairly dimly lit with dark battleship gray walls; the glass works are generally lit from below through diffused panels, above from spots, or a combination of both.

Which film would you recommend for this shooting situation? I would like to use color film so I can at least try to do justice to these works but I'm not sure if I should get tungsten-balanced film or go with regular film and try to color-correct later in Photoshop if it comes out off.

Thanks in advance!

 

[Stephan]

If its an art gallery they may have special lighting that would require you to use daylight film... But otherwise if you're shooting color use tungsten balanced film, it'll be a lot easier to get the color right after scanning.

 

[jlw]

I used to do a lot of photography of artworks, and still do a fair amount of shooting in galleries (contract work for an art museum.) My take:

-- Actually, a 35mm RF camera would be my first choice as long as the artworks aren't too small. (This assumes your camera has effective parallax compensation.) I'm more confident in my ability to focus and see clearly through an RF than I am through an SLR. If you're not, or if you need closer focusing to deal with small artworks, then the SLR would be a good second choice. I'd stay away from the TLR -- parallax would be too much of a headache, IMO.

It's true that you can get more exact framing with an SLR, but since you mention that you'll be scanning your film I'd say don't worry about that. Just frame each shot a bit loose, and crop the final image the way you want it.

-- I'm pretty familiar with the type of lighting setup you describe, and I can tell you that your biggest challenge will be contrast. You'll have your work cut out for you balancing between the refracted highlights in the glass and the darker parts of the work, not to mention the surroundings.

Because contrast will be such an issue, I'd suggest shooting on color neg film rather than slide film. Tungsten-balanced color neg films aren't available in 35mm, but you can either use an 80A filter (as someone else suggested above) or shoot a gray card in each lighting environment and use this as a guide for balancing your prints or scans.

-- Good that you're planning to use a tripod. When shooting, I suggest walking all around each work and taking a good look at it from all angles. Notice not only how the shape of the piece looks, but how it catches the lighting and reflects the surroundings. One problem with photographing glass is that it has no opacity of its own, so areas that aren't lit don't have any presence except via what they reflect of their surroundings.

In a studio you could use fill cards to put reflections where you want them to help define the shape of the piece; in a gallery, you'll have to use whatever reflections the surroundings provide you. (Tip: Wear dark clothing to avoid creating accidental self-portraits!)

Good luck and have fun...

 

[DougK]

Thanks everybody for your feedback and advice, this was something I'd never tried before and it was great to have some hints before I went out.

I wound up going with the Bessa R and 35 C. Skopar, which worked out better than an SLR or TLR would have (right on the money, jlw, good call). Unfortunately, I didn't grab the film I thought I did when I was running out the door. I had a roll of tungsten-balanced 160 slide film ready to go but when I got to the gallery the film that had landed in my bag was Elite Chrome 100... with no 80A filter in the bag (thank God for Photoshop). Definitely glad I took the tripod, as I needed 1 second to 1/4 second most of the time to get adequate depth-of-field. I tried to err on the side of under-exposure if I was in doubt as to what my meter was telling me. Overall, a great learning experience and I'll be much better prepared the next time I get the urge to try something like this.

Hopefully, I'll get a couple of decent shots on the roll, as I'd like to give the gallery a thank-you print for letting me shoot without restrictions and of course, to post a few shots here.