How can i improve photo?

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JamieB

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Jamie
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Hi all, heres my questions we have been taking photo's of my friends oil paintings and we can get the detail but the colour seems to be a bit iffy,
we are using standard lights and not much natural light is around.

Here are the settings we are using at present:

iso 2500 26mm 1/60 f6.3

And here is the photo.

CAMELRAW2b.jpg


Any ideas how we can improve? lighting (what type?), Filters (what type?), Macro lens? etc.

Many thanks
Jamie
 
When you say standard light so you mean tungsten? I'd definitely do a custom white balance first.
 
Just had a little play with the WB any better?

 
CGeezer said:
Just had a little play with the WB any better?

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Click to expand...

that looks cool to me...got the sky and kept the ground tones right without over emphasising any particular tonality
 
EXIF doesn't match what you posted though :thinking:

Manual exposure, 1/20 sec, f/8, ISO 2500
 
you need to know what lights you have and set the WLB you can do this in different ways are you shooting RAW also you get =better colour with low ISO
Here is one I did Oh reduced to the limit of 800pix
How big is the painting? I do this for artist and I scan them in if too big I stitch then ,...
4823807957_d8841a2153_o.jpg
 
That looks pretty close to the original painting though the painting is a little less greener.
The lights were normal household lamps with 100w bulbs. The shot was taken raw (NEF). The painting is about 20" by 24". Would getting a couple of tall lamps and some halogen bulbs improve the quality?
How do you set the WLB?
It's all trial and error at the moment. If I can get the basics sorted, lights, polarization, lenses etc I should be able to get decent results without playing around in photoshop too much. Do you have any idea what the best setting on the Nikon D5000 should be for this sort of work? Also any tips on lenses and polarization.
 
Hi all,

Just to let you know i managed to succeed in getting the images very close to the origionals, feel free to look at the website for how barker should look lol.

terryjones-art.co.uk

Also i am now on a photography course so hopefully i'll be able to show you all some of my own photography soon.
 
As already said getting the white balance correct is the secret to faithful rendition. I'd also use a polarizer to combat any reflections that you can get with oils, don't have that problem with watercolour ;) Nice paintings by the way.
 
Something else to bear in mind, when you are photographing a static subject, use a tripod and either a remote shutter or the timer release. That way you can keep your ISO much lower without worrying about the shutter speed causing motion blur.
 
Thank you both for the advice, we do seem to be having problems with photographing sketches that are on white paper, the centre third is white but we get shadows on the side thirds for some reason.

Glad you like the paintings. :)
 
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