Photographing art

[zingmatter]

Hi

My late grandfather was a water colour artist who produced a sizable body of work that I'd like to catalogue and perhaps privately publish a selection of his paintings. I know that scanning is likely to be the best option but most paintings are bigger than my scanner, and I don't have the budget to go out and buy (or hire) a massive scanner (assuming such things even exist).

So what I want to do is photograph the paintings. I don't have any studio equipment either (so options that don't involve complex falsh systems would be useful). So, using a tripod, perhaps some natural light (which is better for watercolours anyway I suspect), and my Sony a200 (I told you I was on a budget), can anyone recommend and/or has experience of how best to go about getting half decent photos of paintings I 'd be really interested to hear about it.

Thanks

[AndyStevens]

I've done some of my dad's acrylics for his records and I used diffused light through a net curtain, tripod mounted camera and Av mode, f/16. They looked pretty good once tweaked a bit (Levels/Curves, the usual stuff).

Cheers
Andy

[GeoffWessex]

I do a monthly shoot at an art gallery, getting pictures for their publicity and archives. There's no natural lighting in the place! The first time I went I took along three (continuous) lamps (aka hotlamps) and thought I'd have to do a lot of work with white balance during and after the shoot. The disadvantages of this - or any other kind of lighting - on anything other than a totally non-reflective watercolour, are vast. Oil and Acrylic are difficult, and you also have to be very careful if the picture is behind glass. It's ok to have plenty of light, but any lighting shows up very badly as reflections. I can only think that nothing would match a huge window, on a dull weather day! Flash would cause the same problems. Gradually I reduced the lighting until, in the end, I found the best thing was to go with AWB and as long an exposure as was required. So now I just take camera and tripod.

Some canvases and other bits of work have been huge, so then I resort to panoramic techniques, to avoid any distortions. If I were professional I'd be getting about $400 for each job - as it is it's semi-charity and they give me $25 for my troubles. Hardly worth it.

[zingmatter]

Thanks to both of you, that was very helpful. A small number images will be (shiney) oils so options like a long exposure in flat light sounds very sensible. Luckily nearly all images are not on the wall (only a few behind glass, yikes) but are loose so can use natural light by doing this in a bright conservatory.