Photographing Watercolor Paintings

[russelljtdyer]

An artist friend of mine wants to make copies of her watercolor paintings to put on the web. She could just scan them, but some are very large and won't fit on a standard scanner. So, she wants me to photograph them. Like the sucker I am, I said it wouldn't be a problem. So, she brought me about forty paintings to photograph. Before photographing all of them, I need to figure out how to do this well.

There seems to be some inherent difficulties in photographing watercolor paintings. One simple problem is that watercolors cause the paper to warp. So, I need to find some heavy rulers or something lays flat and will not cast a shadow or reflect the flashes. I'll go shopping for them today, unless someone has an alternative suggestion. In the shot below, you can see my set up at this point. You can see that the paper is not laying flat using the plastic rulers and triangles. Of course, when I take the shot, I hold them down, but this causes the image to buckle elsewhere.



The other problem I face is also based on the medium of the subject. If I set the flash too strong or overexpose the picture too much, the colors are washed out. If I set the exposure and the flashes based on the colors, the white background isn't white enough. Below is how I've done so far.




Notice the graying of the white part of the paper, the part without paint. What's also more distressing is that the original RAW image is brighter than this exported JPEG image. I'm not sure how to keep the image luminous in the exported JPEG file.

To show y'all what happens when I increase the brightness of the same image file, I created the image below.



You can see that when I get the white paper right, the colors are washed out. Well, the white is correct in Adobe Lightroom, but the JPEG is still a bit dim.

I'm looking for suggestions on how to resolve these problems. Do I need to adjust my flashes, my camera settings, the paintings, or something else. I'd appreciate any advice on how I can do this. Thanks in advance.

[briansquibb]

Re: Photographing Watercolor Paintings

I would be tempted to use non flash, high f numbers and low iso and obviously long exposure.

[codachrome]

Re: Photographing Watercolor Paintings

What size are they...they might fit in an old enlarger easel,or you could try some steel rulers.
trial and error for the exposure.you should not need a high f stop as theres no depth of field
and with it being didital keep the exposure as short as possible..increassing as and when you need to.
good luck

Coda

[Colin]

Re: Photographing Watercolor Paintings

Just a thought what about a sheet of non reflective glass?

[EOS_Jim]

Re: Photographing Watercolor Paintings

Larger softbox to provide more even light.

you could use long exposures as Brian suggested but you will need to be acareful of the colour of the ambient light so do a custom white balance before hand.

Re the canvases, why can't you tape them down? Pleanty of tapes should be able to hold them without causing damage to the print.

Glass reflects - whether it's non reflective or not. I'd try not go down that route as you will have issues with reflections. non reflective glass isn't really that when you put a bright flash onto it.

Get a bigger softbox (maybe a lastolite Ezybox 24" or the like) - be careful how close to the subject it is too as the closer it is the greater the fall off will be (kind or like depth of field for lighting) the further away the harder the light but also the more even it will be. might be wiorth playing around with the distance of the flash to subject.

Even if you do wash out the colour slightly, so long as it's not over exposed it should be a small tweak in lightroom or camera RAW to bring it back......

Also you will need the camera looking straight down so that the subject is pretty much on the same facal plane. Haning the camera (or lighting) at an angle will affect the depth of field and evenness of the light.

[russelljtdyer]

Using a Bigger Light and a Bigger Diffuser

Thanks for all of the suggestions so far. These are all good ideas. I tried setting the aperture to f/2.8, and then to f/22 with a slower shutter. Both improved the image in one aspect, but I lost elsewhere. As for taping the pictures to the table, I'm reluctant to do that since it may tear or in some other way damage the paper. However, I'll ask the woman who made them if I may try that. As for glass, I'm not sure where I can get anti-glare glass in Milan (I'm still learning the lay of the land here) and I think that might distort the image a bit.

Jim's idea of using a bigger softbox seemed to provide the most improvement over all. It got me to pull out one of my mono-block strobe lights that I use for portraits. So far, I've tried the strobe with just a white umbrella, shooting through the umbrella. I need to set up the softbox, though. I'm not sure why I'm so reluctant to pull out the bigger equipment.

I also lowered the camera to be much closer to the image. By lowering the tripod, the camera doesn't have to extend as far out. That was causing the camera to shake for almost a minute after I made changes to the settings. I also connected a remote shutter release and set the timer to two seconds, then waited for the camera to stop vibrating before triggering it.

In response to one of Jim's other suggestions about making sure the camera is level and all, I used a carpenter's level to make sure the arm of the tripod was level. It wasn't. Eyeing the camera from different positions, I noticed that the camera and lens were not parallel or perpendicular to the painting. Making minute adjustments seems to have helped. Below is the latest shot of the same picture.



The results seem to be better, but I'm still having a fall-off problem as Jim mentioned. In this image, I increased the brightness in Adobe Lightroom, then increased saturation and vibrance just a bit. Using the strobe made it so I didn't have to make many adjustments in Lightroom. Still, there is a dimness to the top left corner of the image. The strobe is positioned to the right middle of the paper. I added a flash by the top left corner. That helped a little. Now that I have a better image and a closer shot--and perhaps more in focus--I can now see where my problem may be. Below is a close-up of the part of the white section of the stucco house by the shadow of the palm tree. I've removed the adjustments I made to the brightness.



You can see in this shot that the problem is with the texture of the paper. There's a shadow to the left of the rises, in the indentations of the paper--not to the right of the of the rises facing the strobe light. The larger diffuser of the white umbrella helped to minimize this, but it's still there. I'll try a softbox next. It may eliminate these last bits. I think that the top left just has a larger accumulation of shadows because of its distance from the strobe, or it just has more texture to it.

[EOS_Jim]

Re: Photographing Watercolor Paintings

The shadow shows that the light is slightly angled. Add a second light to provide a flatter lighting.

However do you not want to see the texture? By flat lighting you will perhaps lose the texture altogether?

Glad I could help a little.

[BT Bob]

Re: Photographing Watercolor Paintings

When I was studying City & Guilds photography, one of the modules involved using a copy stand to photograph a series of black & white photos onto colour slides (pre-digital).

I used 2 tungstgen lights (with tunsten-balanced slide film) and set them up by laying a coin on the base-board and adjusting them until there were no shadows.

The advantage of the "proper" lights (as opposed to flash) is, of course, you can see exactly what effect you're going to have before you press the shutter-release. With digital, this is less of an issue because you can take a picture & see the results immediately (all the better if you can tether the camera to a PC and view on the monitor).

Then, when I'd set up the lights with no shadows, I just laid the print omn the baseboard, lined it up through the viewfinder & then placed a sheet of glass (ordinary, but quite thin - about 3mm if I remember) over the top to keep it flat. No glare or reflections.

In the case of the watercolours you're doing, you could re-balance the lights to produce a very small amount of shadow in order to bring out the texture in the paper, if that's what the artist wants. You could still use tugsten lights - even a pair of desk lamps would do, and do a custom white-balance to keep the colours accurate.

Hope this helps