Lens For Larger Paintings

[Two_In]

I have a 60mm Macro lens for photographing oil paintings. Is good, but in my garage studio I can only photograph paintings up to about 76cms/30 inches accross, because I can't get any further back. Could I solve this by buying another lens? My body is a Nikon D3200.

Thanks,

 

[Box Brownie]

Purely FWIW

On your crop body the FoV of your 60mm is closer to that of a 90mm on a full frame body.

Therefore perhaps 30mm (macro?) though with wide angle lenses beware of pincushion or barrel distortion....which I surmise will be minimal on your current 60mm macro lens OR rent a full frame body (will your 60mm fit a full frame body?) and see if that does the job???

NB as far as I am aware, a lens with a very flat & zero distortion is referred to as "rectilinear", most often(?) seen on lenses intended for architectural photography. And surely for photography of artworks you must have a distortion free lens!

HTH perhaps

 

[Two_In]

How do I rent a full frame body?

 

[artyman]

Move the painting to somewhere else in the house where you can get further back, or take two shots in vertical format and stitch in software, just frame up each side with the picture and make sure you are parallel to the painting. I think I used a similar technique on one of my paintings some years back, one of the widest I've ever done.
http://www.artyman.byethost18.com/aysgarth.html

 

[Box Brownie]

How do I rent a full frame body?

Lenses for Hire

Hire cameras, lenses and other photographic equipment

www.lensesforhire.co.uk

They have bodies for rental as well as lenses....under Nikon they list the D5 and Z6 and Z7 all are full frame bodies

 

[riddell]

Having shot hundreds of paintings the solution really is just to get further back. I usually use a 105 on FF, and I've shot paintings about 10 foot across. Remember the bigger you go the more difficult it can be to get even lighting.

And don't use a wider lens, way too much distortion.

 

[DemiLion]

NB as far as I am aware, a lens with a very flat & zero distortion is referred to as "rectilinear", most often(?) seen on lenses intended for architectural photography. And surely for photography of artworks you must have a distortion free lens!

A rectilinear lens is any lens that renders straight lines. Usually taken to mean 'not a fisheye'. The quality of the distortion isn't relevant.

 

[DemiLion]

I have a 60mm Macro lens for photographing oil paintings. Is good, but in my garage studio I can only photograph paintings up to about 76cms/30 inches accross, because I can't get any further back. Could I solve this by buying another lens? My body is a Nikon D3200.

Thanks,

You need to get a bigger room.

 

[4wd]

The stitching multiple shots idea sounds worth trying,

 

[riddell]

The stitching multiple shots idea sounds worth trying,

Why? Its not easy to get a perfect image and its time consuming.

Surely its easier to take a single, perfect image, than have to take several in which the lighting and focus point is really critical between them, and then put them through an additional processing step, which almost always fails to be be perfect and then requires further additional editing.

 

[Nod]

I have a 60mm Macro lens for photographing oil paintings. Is good, but in my garage studio I can only photograph paintings up to about 76cms/30 inches accross, because I can't get any further back. Could I solve this by buying another lens? My body is a Nikon D3200.

Thanks,

Do you also still have a kit 18-55 lens? If so, see what focal length you need to get the whole large painting in the frame then try to find a lens that'll give you that coverage at you working distance. FWIW, if you do have the kit lens, why not use that? Or, if you don't, they're pretty cheap and will do the job (probably - if you can get far enough away from the painting.)

 

[dweeble]

If you get a wider lens and find distortion, Capture Nx-D has pretty good distortion correction tools. darktable too, you need to check they have a profile for the lens you buy.