What kind of light for painting photo reproduction

[esox]

I have a shooting session with painters to take pictures of their paintings for catalogs. The will be very large frames : 2m x 3m and smaller ones.

I never took photos of such large pieces of art. What is the best way to enlight those paintings ? Light box, ombrella ? I thought about 4 lightboxes, 2 on each side with an angle of 45° at about twice the distance between the camera and the painting. What is needed of course is a very homogenous light.

Can I use several 32 ng cobras or is it better to have something more sophisticated ? What power ?

The camera will be a 645 DF+with p65+ DB. 80 mm or 28mm lense ?

Thanks !

[BartvanderWolf]

I have a shooting session with painters to take pictures of their paintings for catalogs. The will be very large frames : 2m x 3m and smaller ones.

I never took photos of such large pieces of art. What is the best way to enlight those paintings ? Light box, ombrella ? I thought about 4 lightboxes, 2 on each side with an angle of 45° at about twice the distance between the camera and the painting. What is needed of course is a very homogenous light.

If you cannot use polarized light, it will help to use lighting surfaces that are as large as possible, because that will make specular highlights overall larger as well, and light fall-off with distance is less. It also depends on the painting technique that was used.

The camera will be a 645 DF+with p65+ DB. 80 mm or 28mm lense ?

Longer focal lengths will offer easier to achieve perpendicular alignment to the painting surfaces, and they allow more even lighting because the lights can be placed relatively closer to the camera and further from the paintings.

Cheers,
Bart

[esox]

You mean large lightboxes is better than ulbrellas ?

[BartvanderWolf]

You mean large lightboxes is better than ulbrellas ?

Hi,

The reflections you will see on the surface of the paint/varnish are reflections (mirror images) of the lightsource(s). When the lightsources are small, the reflections will be bright and small. When the lightsources are larger, the reflections will be larger as well, and less specular (locally clipped to white hotspots) but rather somewhat smoother (depending on the paint technique, although such large works are probably not painted with a 'painting knife').

The better method would be to use polarized light and a polarization filter (at crossed angles) on the lens, which will reduce the visibility of the lightsource reflections to virtually nill. However, due to the size of the artworks it may be difficult to fit such large lightmodifier areas with polarizing foil, especially if one doesn't do such hings more often. One may want to use smaller lightsource areas, which would also call for longer light to subject distance to reduce light fall-off over distance.

Cheers,
Bart

[esox]

That kind of light ? http://www.photoflex.com/products/tritonflash-strobe-head

Or that one ?

http://prostudio360.fr/Flash-de-Studio/?gclid=COav75OlkLUCFQ7LtAodYysA1w

[MrSmith]

You have flare/reflection on the bottom left corner of the Suffolk poster.
And is that a tripod reflection in the middle of the bottom text area on all 3?

[David Watson]

You have flare/reflection on the bottom left corner of the Suffolk poster.
And is that a tripod reflection in the middle of the bottom text area on all 3?

That'l teach me to rush off a quick edit at night.  Yes quite right about the tripod legs which I can correct in PS.  The Suffolk print was faded on the left hand side as were one or two others from exposure to sunlight.  Thank you for the advice.