Shooting oil paintings

[Nill Toulme]

I'm shooting some oils for an artist friend. I'm having trouble with some small reflections/specular highlight sort of things.

I'm using two monolights at about 45 degrees off axis. When I tried them direct the reflections were ferocious. So I'm bouncing them, but I'm still getting just a bit of reflection here and there. Since I'm already bouncing I'm guessing that using my softboxes won't help. What about a polarizer?

Other suggestions?

Example — the bit of fuzziness in the upper left of this one. The two top left windows should look more like the ones right below them.

Nill
~~
www.toulme.net

 

[Asher Kelman]

Hi Nill,

Yes this can be a real PIA!

Have you tried two large soft boxes close either side at 45 degrees with no other lights on?

Asher

 

[Ken Tanaka]

Nil,
It sounds like you're getting specular highlights from the paint's texture on the canvas?

Try a slightly different setup with your two lights. Fit them with umbrellas (or white reflectors of some type) and place them so that they're firing PARALLEL to the plane of the painting (not at 45 deg). The lamps should point away from the painting and into the umbrellas.

 

[Asher Kelman]

Good idea Ken!

Nill I hope you will give us feedback!

Asher

 

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

Since I'm already bouncing I'm guessing that using my softboxes won't help. What about a polarizer?

Other suggestions?

Hi Nil,

As you know the only real solution is to work with polarized light and a polarizing filter, but there is a lower cost compromise that might work. First of all I second Ken's suggestion of moving the lights more to the sides. That will make the chance of full surface reflections from the raised paint (thicker brush strokes or from pallette knife) smaller, but there will still be (smaller) specular reflections. The use of softboxes will help a bit in reducing the brightness of the specular reflections, it reduces the paint structure shadows, and the lighting will be more even throughout the surface (more even than with a bounced flash).

Suggestion; Try shooting the painting in 2 shots, one with only one light, and one with only the other light (don't forget to adjust the exposure, but avoid highlight clipping). Now make a montage by blending/averaging the two exposures together. This will allow to put some color back in the specular highlights, and thus retain the 3D structure in the paint without totally blowing out the highlight colors.

Whether that works depends on the paint structure, and the lighting setup to begin with, but it might give a little more manipulation room, and allows to try some different blends based on highlight tone.

Of course you can also try to blend a regular 2 light exposure with an underexposed (and pushed) one to bring back highlight color. Even a HDR recording might help in taming the highlights. Experimentation is in order ..., although it's hard to beat large polarized lights.

Bart

 

[Michael Fontana]

Nil

one possibility is to use polarising filters on the softboxes - they have to be polarised in the same direction - and a polarising filter on the lens. The latter one might be in a angle of 90 degr. to the light, and will avoid then every reflection.

I have this setup with 4 softboxes - 2 on every side, and 45 x 45 cm each - but very often I prefer to keep some amount of reflex, so the lens polfilter is not at 90 degs, but something like 60 degrees. You best try it out, but the lights polfilters have to be all in the same direction.

 

[Nill Toulme]

Thanks all.

Nill
~~
www.toulme.net

 

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

I have this setup with 4 softboxes - 2 on every side, and 45 x 45 cm each - but very often I prefer to keep some amount of reflex, so the lens polfilter is not at 90 degs, but something like 60 degrees. You best try it out, but the lights polfilters have to be all in the same direction.

If you don't want to use the camera off-tripod to check, it's easy to check alignment with a small mirror in front of your lens.

Do you have a good source for these large Pola sheets?

Bart

 

[Michael Fontana]

I made some small marks on the softbox pola filters; it' s easy to align them:

just hold' em one on top of the other one on a light table: if they are well aligned, light comes through, if one of the softbox one's is at 90 degr, you see black, only.

The cam's pola filter on top of the softbox ones has to show black.

I bought them some 10 years ago; the softboxes ones are from Hama, but °Lee Filters° might sell them as well.