Studio Flash Lighting Setup For Oil Paintings?

Two_In

Two_In

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Andrew
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Equipment: Nikon D3200, 60mm lens, polarising filter, x2 Lencarta Smartflash, tripod, wall mounted easel. Garage studio.

I've recently bought two lights for photographing oil paintings.

So far I've managed to setup the lights and take photographs. More by intuition than anything else, I'm a studio flash novice. The results have been a big improvement on what I was doing before. But I've only been able to get a usable photo by angling the lights away from the painting. I'm also putting the photograph through a lot of post-production.

The problem I have is apparent in the (roughly setup) photo below. I can't both light the painting perfectly and not get light catching the canvas/paint texture. It would be good if I could just take the photo and there it is.

Here using F/8 and 1/125. Other settings below.

My polarising filter spins, but spinning makes no discernible difference (that I can see). Would a better quality filter make all the difference? Any other advice would be gratefully received?

Thanks

Btw. This is just an old canvas with a tear in it. I knocked the painting up for testing. I should add a few more colours...

$_57.JPG

$_57.PNG
 
where are you placing your lights and what modifiers do you have?
 
If there are no highlights/shadows then there will be no texture; and your oil paintings will look like lithographs. If that is actually your goal, probably the easiest way to go about it is to turn a smallish room into a light tent (light the walls/ceiling and not the painting).
 
I have soft boxes and I'm placing the lights to the side and behind the camera, depending on the size of the painting. Approximately at 45 degrees to the painting for the example enclosed. otherwise I'm facing the lights away from the painting so that there's no direct light. I'm trying also to have the lights level with the painting.

I'm try ing to get the lights as far apart from the painting also - limited as in a garage.
 
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Garry Edwards said:
If you put "oil paintings" into the search box you'll get this https://www.talkphotography.co.uk/threads/lighting-for-photographing-artwork.688382/#post-8419255 (and several other useful threads)
The choice of camera is pretty much irrelevant, and yours will be fine.
A polariser isn't helpful here, and a better one won't help.

It's all about the angles, and about having the right size and quality of softbox.
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Thanks, that post is a bit rambling, but I'll try and follow it.
 
The 'standard' copy method is to get the focal plane of the sensor parallel to the artwork, then place equal-strength lights at 45 degrees from center of the artwork. That way the reflections from each side will cancel each other out. If you're just eyeballing things, it might be easier with continuous lights rather than flash.

Oil paintings have both texture and sheen, so that throws in wrinkles to the 'standard' method, but the method should still hold.

From the example, it looks like the light on the left might be something like 40 or 35 degrees, or perhaps a little stronger or closer than the light on the right. Tough to get right with strobes, especially with texture in the artwork.
 
Two_In said:
I have soft boxes and I'm placing the lights to the side and behind the camera, depending on the size of the painting. Approximately at 45 degrees to the painting for the example enclosed. otherwise I'm facing the lights away from the painting so that there's no direct light. I'm trying also to have the lights level with the painting.

I'm try ing to get the lights as far apart from the painting also - limited as in a garage.
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Direct light is generally best.
Nearly all threads end up rambling, that's just the nature of forums, but you should be able to sort the wheat from the chaff
The closer the lights are (assuming that they're at the correct angle) then the larger and softer the reflections will be. The further away they are, the more clearly defined the shadows will be, or in other words the more visible the brush strokes and other surface irregularities will be.
drsilver said:
The 'standard' copy method is to get the focal plane of the sensor parallel to the artwork, then place equal-strength lights at 45 degrees from center of the artwork. That way the reflections from each side will cancel each other out. If you're just eyeballing things, it might be easier with continuous lights rather than flash.

Oil paintings have both texture and sheen, so that throws in wrinkles to the 'standard' method, but the method should still hold.

From the example, it looks like the light on the left might be something like 40 or 35 degrees, or perhaps a little stronger or closer than the light on the right. Tough to get right with strobes, especially with texture in the artwork.
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Yes, and although it's always valid to experiment, this is the method that most people use, most of the time, to get consistent and realistic results.
 
drsilver said:
If you're just eyeballing things, it might be easier with continuous lights rather than flash.
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I just noticed that I can use the glare from the modelling lamps shining on the painting, to position the lights. But still getting pinpricks of light from the 'artefacts' actually in the paint surface. I took the polarising filter off.
 
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The modelling lamps are a big help, but you can't rely on them totally because they're in a different place to the flash tubes.

The "pinpricks of light" are specular reflections (reflections of the light source) and are inevitable, but they can be controlled. As already mentioned, move them much closer to make them larger and less intense, but by doing so you will also lose fine detail such as brush strokes - you just have to decide on the type of lighting effect you want - everything is possible with lighting.

Another option would be to have an extra light directly facing the painting, square to it, with a large softbox. This would act as a fill light, which again would mitigate the bright specular highlights, but again would produce a fairly flat result. If your paintings have a deep frame then this would be a good idea anyway, to mitigate the strong shadows caused by the frame being lit at a fairly sharp angle.

And if you want to do that but don't have a third light then you can do it as a separate exposure, and then just blend it in in PP.
 
It's a balance, the surface of oil paintings are 3 dimensional, and flat soft lighting gives a 2 dimensional look

When you do the 45 degree thing, you get a really 3 dimensional look

You may need to blend bit of both

Careful with really close lighting as getting even illumination is much harder than with distant lights
 
I disagree. I shoot this kind of painting a lot, if it's making this glare problem it's normally for me ibecause the light is too close and not enough of an angle away to the side (so more than 45 degrees going away from you). The usual problem is I'm not in a space large enough to spread the lights out! You can also aim each light towards the opposite end of the painting so the two lights criss cross their light for a less direct angle. Having a soft box straight on 'for fill' will just create more glare from the reflection of that light.
 
This from someone who admits to finding strobes a steep learning curve, but given the subject might this not be a good time to think about contniuous lights and WYSIWYG?
 
SamR Photo said:
I disagree. I shoot this kind of painting a lot, if it's making this glare problem it's normally for me ibecause the light is too close and not enough of an angle away to the side (so more than 45 degrees going away from you). The usual problem is I'm not in a space large enough to spread the lights out! You can also aim each light towards the opposite end of the painting so the two lights criss cross their light for a less direct angle.
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The angle really does need to be 45 degrees or very close to that, and this is one of those lighting situations where enough space is essential to put the lights exactly where they need to be, so if there isn't enough space then the shots need to be created somewhere where there is enough space.
SamR Photo said:
Having a soft box straight on 'for fill' will just create more glare from the reflection of that light.
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The square-on fill light only creates unwanted specular reflections (or glare as you call it) if it's too bright, At a low level, if just mitigates the effect of the cross-lighting as required, and it also has the benefit, if the artwork is framed, of reducing the otherwise fairly harsh shadows that can be caused by the frame
dweeble said:
This from someone who admits to finding strobes a steep learning curve, but given the subject might this not be a good time to think about contniuous lights and WYSIWYG?
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You'd think so, but using continuous lights just creates another problem, caused by the less-than-perfect color rendition index of discontinuous spectrum lights, which produces false colours. I would have thought that getting accurate colour reproduction is important when photographing artwork.
 
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