Shooting chromes for artwork reproduction

[Uri A]

Thanks Rick for your explanations!

Yeah, I'll shoot digi for web as well, but the brief is for chromes, so... still trying to find the best emulsion. Wouldve gone with E100G, but it's all over for Kodak, so looks like it'll have to be Provia with very slight magenta filter perhaps (from memory it's a touch green). I'll test it out.

Thanks everybody

[rdenney]

When you get to the photoshop part learn how to use channel masking. Remember that film can't reproduce all the colors exactly and you will have to do some work - that's normal. Profiling won't help, the amount of tuning it will save you is minimal. Finally, I find including a set of color swatches or a grey card is entirely and totally useless.

Jeez, Lenny, your color memory must be pretty accurate to remember the hues in a painting after it's gone to its new owner. And your digital camera must be pretty accurate to provide the person making the scan an accurate notion of the color. Must be a better digital camera than mine--I carefully and accurately dialed in the color balance on mine but still had to make significant adjustments to align the colors.

And when I got the colors looking right on the IT8 target, shazzam!, they also lined up on the painting I used for a reference. Just like magic. Don't know how I would have lined up colors for paintings no longer in my possession without having included the color chart. But, as I said, maybe your color memory is better than mine.

Rick "it's always easy to guess" Denney

[davisg2370]

It may be easier to rent a digital scanning back to get direct large digital files rather than go through processing and scanning and get accidental color problems along the way. It will require hot lights to be used rather than strobes, but you can get fluorescent tubes that have a high color rendering index to eliminate color spikes, or use plain hot lights.

[rdenney]

Man, you guys think painters have more money than photographers. Renting a digital back, laser scanning each image? My last gig would have cost me $1500-2000 in my costs to do either of these.

Artist: "Rick, can you photograph my artwork so I can make reproductions in the future?"

Rick: "Sure. My out-of-pocket costs are $2000, and my price to you is $2800."

Artist: "That's more than I grossed from the paintings that sold at the show!"

Rick: "Yes, but that way you'll be able to make reproductions four times the size of the actual painting, and be able to count the fibers on the canvas."

Artist: "Could I take these pictures myself with my D5000?"

The approach I took with my client limited my out-of-pocket costs to two rolls of Fuji 160C, which I bought five years ago and put in the freezer, plus lab processing, and it added up to maybe $40.

Rick "just sayin'" Denney

[davisg2370]

There is a reason why professionals who specialize in art reproduction are expensive. I worked in a studio in Lexington, KY that survived from them and we used a digital slr for low quality work that will be used only for projection or web, but a scanning back with a full lighting set up for museums and galleries, and even individual artists that are looking for high resolution images for all manner of uses. The small pieces are on a copy stand with color corrected lights and cross polarization, while the large pieces are on a wall with strobe or hot lights, also cross polarized and color corrected. The cameras are fitted with APO enlarging or copy lenses for flat work. Is it cheap? No, but the quality keeps people coming back.

[rdenney]

There are always those who have the scratch to pay high prices for high-end work, and those with the skills to earn that work. But those who can figure out how to fulfill the requirements of people without that scratch will find plenty to do, also. Artists are generally much poorer than museums, given that they actually have to sell their work instead of living on donations and grants, but even the starving among them have needs, too.

Rick "providing a good quality alternative to the artist standing the painting against a tree on an overcast day" Denney

[Drew Wiley]

There are always reproduction errors of some sort. Polarization introduces a shift in values
between different elements of the scene simply because it is polarization. Great for destroying impasto. Guess that's why most Rembrandt paintings look horrible in books.
But working without polarization is an even bigger evil. I built a huge copy table system
with fixed hot lights and capable of multiple camera formats. It was very predictable and good casual money for awhile, esp when tungsten or Astia LF film was routinely avail. But I can understand why a specialist nowadays would invest in any expensive scanning back rig and plug an obscenely expensive Apo El Nikkor on it, esp for museum documentation.
Be a nice specialty niche.

[bob carnie]

We do a fair amount of repro work here. Our kit is a phase back with the use of polarized light and we do use macbeth cards to white balance , grey balance and set end points for black and white..
The phase is tethered to a mac workstation and we can control the repro pretty well.
I have done a lot of repro work in the past using film but frankly do not see the point with what is available these days.

We are considering the Betterlight scanning back for this purpose and are looking into the Uberscanner which is touted to be pretty shit hot.
I am looking for a way of taking CieLab numbers on original art and then matching them in photoshop. I think by knowing the colour values of the original it goes a long
way to laying down the same values on paper.

I must concur with what Mr Denny is implying that there is no such thing as colour memory.

[Jim Michael]

I can see the value in including a color swatch chart and grey card in each batch of film. You are being careful with your process control in exposure & lighting, but every color process in the lab has some variation, even when that process is "in control".

[bob carnie]

very true.. I can run 4 step wedges a day on my lambda and read them .. the software will tell me I am in control on each one, but my eyes are telling me they are different...

I can see the value in including a color swatch chart and grey card in each batch of film. You are being careful with your process control in exposure & lighting, but every color process in the lab has some variation, even when that process is "in control".