How to shoot oil paintings?

For a plane object like oil painting, it is very important to choose a lens. Macro lens is the best choice whether it is 135 camera or 120 camera, because the image field of macro lens is the flattest of all photographic lenses, which can ensure the balanced picture quality and small distortion, and is most suitable for shooting plane objects. If you don't have a macro lens, you'd better choose a head display. Although its image field is not flat enough, its distortion and imaging quality are well controlled. However, when shooting with a pan/tilt, it is best to shoot a large oil painting, so that the focal length is farther and the depth of field can be increased. Then by narrowing the aperture, you can take a picture with clear center and edges. For smaller oil paintings, it is difficult to take close shots with your head. Even if the aperture is reduced, the edge quality of the picture is difficult to guarantee. A medium telephoto fixed-focus lens is also acceptable, but the shooting site will be limited, and it is impossible to have a big oil painting without enough space. Although many zoom lenses are equipped with macro function, they are not equivalent to real macro lenses. Uneven and distorted image field is inevitable, which is also the most fatal defect in shooting plane objects, so it is not suitable for remaking oil paintings.

The choice of camera mainly depends on the shooting purpose. If it is only used for taking pictures, the camera of 135 is enough, which is also conducive to reducing costs. If you publish an album, you'd better shoot it with a 6X7 or 6X4.5 120 camera to ensure the high quality of the pictures.

Second, choose a movie:

There is a great difference between oil painting and general scenery. The colors should not be exaggerated, and we should be faithful to the original work to the greatest extent. Therefore, it is the first choice to choose color reversal films with true color reproduction, such as Kodak EPP, Agfa RSX, Fuji 100F. Avoid using exaggerated films, such as Kodak 100VS and Fuji Virvia. If you publish an album, reverse film is the best choice. If you are shooting proofs, you can also consider using color negatives. However, there are fewer color negatives on the market now. Personally, I think it is ideal to choose the negative film of Aikefa, and the color reproduction is more real and not exaggerated.

Third, the shooting points:

1, select light to avoid reflection:

The best light for shooting oil paintings in spare time is bright scattered light, with thin clouds covering the sun, and no obvious projected light can achieve the best effect. If there is no such weather, we have to choose to shoot in the shadow, which has great limitations. Shooting oil paintings in this scattered light can show a good texture, and the reflection caused by uneven brushwork is just right. If the canvas is uneven and produces local reflection, you can adjust the direction. Polarizers are not recommended. First, a moderate amount of weak reflection helps to reflect the texture of oil painting. Second, the use of polarizers may not be conducive to color reproduction, which is contrary to the purpose of shooting oil paintings. The best shooting time is from 10 am to 4 pm, which is beneficial to color reproduction. However, the color temperature will be higher on cloudy days or under shadows, and post-production can be corrected appropriately.

This is very important, and it is also the experience and lesson I got after actually shooting oil paintings. The first time I shot, I put the oil painting on an easel, and the oil painting was almost perpendicular to the ground. After shooting, it was found that the influence of the smaller oil painting was not obvious, and the larger oil painting appeared the phenomenon of bright top and dark bottom and uneven light. What I took at that time was a 100X30cm vertical oil painting, which was mainly caused by the light absorption of the ground and the surrounding environment. The correct placement should be to lower the painting and tilt it upward at a certain angle, about 75 degrees from the ground. Raising the tripod and slightly tilting the camera can basically eliminate the problem of uneven light. According to this principle, when shooting a vertical picture, it is best to put the oil painting horizontally, because the height of the tripod is limited, and the tripod cannot rise to the correct position after being placed vertically, so it is impossible to shoot. Later, I noticed that if the oil painting is placed vertically, for the oil painting with a height of 100cm, the up and down luminosity can exceed half an aperture, and the deviation measured after adjusting the angle is less than 1/3 aperture, which has little effect on the shooting results.

First of all, it should be emphasized that the metering of oil painting is different from that of general scenery. Oil painting is a plane object, so the light we want to measure is mainly the light perpendicular to the picture. I use the Shiguang 308B exposure meter, which has a special attachment-the plane light receiving window, which is specially used to measure the light ratio of plane objects and three-dimensional objects. Some exposure meters do not have such accessories, but the spherical light receiving window can be retracted, such as Shiguang 508 exposure meter. Photometry adopts the method of measuring incident light, which can accurately measure the illumination brightness of the oil painting surface and is not affected by the brightness of the oil painting itself; The brightness of oil paintings varies greatly. Because the metering function attached to the camera is to measure the reflected light, it has little effect on shooting the negative film. Oil paintings that are obviously shallow and deep can be compensated by experience. It is difficult to grasp the appropriate exposure when making a reverse film. As we said before, when shooting oil paintings, we should be faithful to the original works to the maximum extent, which includes both the color and the brightness of the restored oil paintings. Therefore, the exposure meter should be used instead of the internal metering of the camera.