Archiving hanging art
photographing 2D artwork, paintings, framed photos, plaques, and other oversized items
Resolution
2016 FADGI guidelines recommend:
- 10k pixels across the longest dimension
- or minimum 600 ppi of the physical object
Taking photos
You need to think about:
- How to mount it
- How to light it
- What camera settings to use
Materials
- camera
- tripod
- easel
- 2x clamp lights
Mounting
Ideally you want the camera on a tripod facing the midpoint of the artwork.
The best way is to hang the artwork on the wall. If you can’t do that, an easel will work. You can also use thumbtacks or low-tack tape (artist’s tape).
Take it out of the frame if you can to prevent glare and reflections. If you can’t, you can use black foam core to either side of the camera to block light from the room.
For unframed posters that curl up, you can use a magnetic poster hanger. Or do the best you can with weights on the corners, shooting from above.
Lighting
Even lighting is the most important thing. If you’re an artist and serious about taking photos of your artwork, you should probably spring for some $$$ lighting. But here are the $ options.
- You could shoot outside and use the sun
- You can shoot inside and use lights
The downside of shooting outside is you need to wait for the right conditions. Rainy days won’t work. You want a sunny day but some diffusion from the atmosphere is helpful. Direct sunlight may be too bright. Some people shoot under a porch or at the edge of their garage. Trees probably won’t work since they cast uneven shadows.
Shooting inside gives you more control. Block the windows and turn off the overhead lights. You want two lights. They should be identical and placed symmetrically. Place them either side of the artwork at a 30-45 deg angle to the wall, at the same height as the camera. Make sure you aren’t seeing a reflection from the lights.
Clamp lights from the hardware store are cheap. They can be mounted on chairs. I’ve seen a recommendation to use 100W incandescent soft white bulbs, but the incandescents I bought were casting uneven light. Now that they’re being phased out it may be hard to find good quality incandescents. I settled on using a 100W LED bright white (3000K color temperature) bulbs.
Camera
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Mount the camera on a tripod and position it square to the artwork. Use a remote trigger or self timer to take the shot. This way you can use a longer shutter speed if needed without worrying about motion blur.
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Start off setting the white balance appropriately for your light source. If you have a gray card, use it. If not, choose the incandescent or sunlight option, as appropriate.
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Use the lowest ISO setting available (100 or 200). This will minimize noise. If you don’t have enough light for proper exposure, you can bump it up later, but hopefully you’ll have headroom to increase shutter speed so it won’t be necessary.
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Set the camera mode to aperture priority. (It may make sense later to use manual mode and dial in a shutter speed to get repeatable shots.)
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Set the aperture pretty narrow, somewhere from f/11 — f/16. A wide aperture results in a shallow depth-of-field, which actually isn’t too bad—the canvas is flat, after all. But starting with a narrow aperture is best to ensure that the finest details stay sharp.
At this point you can probably start shooting. You should check that the exposure and focus are ok. If they aren’t, here are some tricks:
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(Optional) If the artwork is very light or dark and you want to preserve that effect in the photo, you can use a grey card (or newspaper with big black X) as a neutral target for exposure and focusing. Trigger the camera self-timer and remove the newspaper before each shot.
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(Optional) If you want repeatable shots, you can switch to manual mode and dial in the shutter speed once you’ve seen what the camera has been selecting automatically. If you’re having trouble with the focus changing, you can also focus manually.
References
https://www.vmfa.museum/teens/wp-content/uploads/sites/19/2014/02/How_to_shoot_art-FINAL.pdf
https://expertphotography.com/photographing-artwork-tips/
Stitching photos
If you can’t get a high enough resolution in one photo, you can stitch multiple photos.
I only tried this once and results weren’t perfect. I used Hugin and this tutorial.
Here’s the procedure I tried:
Open Hugin
Load images
Align
Projection tab. Fit button. Leave on Rectilinear.
Create panorama
Change width to 12000px (or desired resolution).
Only use Exposure corrected, low dynamic range.
Open in photo preview app.
Crop.
Export JPG.