Best camera and lens for photographing art

[clicker]

I photography paintings using a full frame digital camera and a 50mm lens.
The experience is somewhat mixed as some colors do not seem to reproduce as well as others. When I shoot 35mm film slides I tend to have better results, and I am wondering if anyone shoots art with a medium format camera ?

 

[Roger Hicks]

The bigger, the better. I've used 6x7, 6x9 and 4x5 inch, mostly Linhof but also MPP and Gandolfi.

Cheers,

R.

 

[sepiareverb]

45 was the "standard" back when I last did this. A friend shot for the Guggenheim, all sheet film, even installation shots.

 

[ChipMcD]

I have a friend who was a professional museum photographer. She shot art on chromes with an 8 x 10 view camera as the standard apparatus. As an earlier poster said, the bigger, the better. Maybe today they would use a medium format digital back.

 

[Jamie123]

A medium format back on a view camera seems like an ideal solution. Friends of mine who are art dealers have a photographer they hire who does repro work. He used to shoot 4x5 slides but now he switched to digital.

 

[newspaperguy]

Back then a 5 X 7 Corona view.

The RF format matches most artwork better than the 4 X 5.

Now, as noted, the commercial world has gone to digits.

.

 

[menos]

So if you go all out without a limited budget, a medium format digital will be it.
I wonder, how in comparison one of todays high res 35mm full frame cameras fare.

There are quite some differences in the lens, you use though.
Every camera manufacturer has one or a few specific lenses, that are optimized for repro work.

I use Nikon for SLR things and the older Nikon 60mm 2.8 AF-D Micro-Nikkor is one of the best repro lenses made by Nikon. I use it now, to digitize my BW negatives.

If resolution is the problem with using the 35mm format, a high res full frame 35mm camera with repro lens and a heavy professional tripod with stitching setup can be a solution - it might come in lower in upfront cost than a medium format solution and has the benefit of being compact, quick and portable, to do secondary purpose.

You might get some input from professional landscape shooters, who do hike and use 35mm with stitching instead of medium format on the pros and cons for this approach.

 

[Ranchu]

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&...=&as_occt=any&cr=&as_nlo=&as_nhi=&safe=images

second link!

🙂

 

[FrozenInTime]

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&...=&as_occt=any&cr=&as_nlo=&as_nhi=&safe=images

second link!

🙂

Good link - that should come in handy for digital photos of B&W hand prints that are too big for the scanner.

 

[Sam N]

For most uses the full frame DSLR should be fine. Just get a longish lens (though make sure you'll have enough room to work) with low distortion and CA and get your lighting as even and full-spectrum as you can. You'll want a fully color-managed workflow. Use a color-checker and a custom RAW profile to make sure you're getting accurate colors.

 

[HuubL]

Canon 5D + Canon EF 100mm F/2.8. "Cheapest" way to get there...

 

[Andy Kibber]

I'd think most folks shooting art professionally would use digital medium format.

 

[Roger Hicks]

I'd think most folks shooting art professionally would use digital medium format.

Scanning backs on LF are preferred by those who need the very best quality -- museums and the like.

Cheers,

R.

 

[drinkingeye]

I think this one is a good choice (if money isn't a topic)

http://www.hasselbladusa.com/products/h-system/h4d-50ms.aspx

 

[sevo]

Scanning backs on LF are preferred by those who need the very best quality -- museums and the like.

And for archival use they might still stick with three (or more) separations to 8x10 black and white - when it comes to preserving as much as possible of an image for eternity (i.e. more than the 500+ years a painting will last), neither colour film/print nor digital are particularly high regarded so far.

 

[tlitody]

A full frame dslr should be fine. I think your problem is the subject is low contrast so slide film is better suited to it. But levels adjustment in Photoshop by slding the adjusters into the histogram ends should bring most, if not all, of that colour contrast back. Just did some adjustments for an artist who uses a digital camera to photograph his work. All the images from camera were flat looking. You need lots of light on the subject which will increase the colour contrast when photographing it.

 

[Roger Hicks]

And for archival use they might still stick with three (or more) separations to 8x10 black and white - when it comes to preserving as much as possible of an image for eternity (i.e. more than the 500+ years a painting will last), neither colour film/print nor digital are particularly high regarded so far.

Very true, but from what I understand -- you may well know more about this than I -- they'd probably write the separations from a scanning-back file.

Cheers,

R.