| Now then. You have something flat. More or less flat. A painting, a drawing, a picture without negative, a postcard or whatever. You want a copy or reproduction of that. This will tell you how to do it. I will start with the optimum configuration, and later tell you how to improvise if you have smaller resources. |
Camera: |
| Depending on your desired final picture you should choose your camera. 35mm is equally okay as any 4x5 or 8x10 LF, if the negative / slide size is enough for your purpose. |
Lens: |
| You should use the best lens available, preferably a macro lens, but at least a prime lens. Zoom lenses have usually more distortions and other disadvantages inacceptable for reproduction work. |
Film: |
| Any daylight film will do with flash, but best results are obtained with lowspeed daylight film without corrections. I use Fuji 100 for both negative and slide material, and in very few cases Velvia. I'm still mad at Kodak for nuking Ektar 25 from their product range. If you don't have flash you might consider tungsten balanced film, or you have to use color correction filters. |
Rigging: |
| Up to formats of around 40x50 cm a copystand will do good service, larger formats tend to get obstructed by the fixing column, you have not enough room for centric full frame reproduction. The copystand will allow for sliding distance adjustments and perfect perpendicular mounting of the camera. This is crucial. The optical axis must under all circumstances be perpendicular to the middle of the object you wish to reproduce, otherwise you add perspective, resulting in distorted pictures. |
Lights: |
| Best lighting is obtained by using studio flash with pilot lights. You need two, with bigger objects sometimes four flash heads, that should be identical or should have at least the same reflector and can be set to the same power. The flash heads should point to the object middle from two sides at an angle of 45 degrees to the perpendicular of the object middle, and should be both at the same power setting. Position your flash meter in ambient light metering mode exactly where the middle of your object will later be and fire one of the flashes. The reading should be something like three stops stopped down from max aperture. Switch this flash head off, and adjust the second one until it reads exactly the same f-stop as the first one. Switch on both and fire again. The meter reading should now be exactly one f-stop more than one flash head alone. This makes for a perfect symmetrical lighting, leaving as little shade as possible and the most even lighting. |
Reflections: |
| If your objects surface is reflective in any way, you are prone to accidental reflections of your camera or ceiling into the picture. Therefore you should use barn doors to make sure that your lights hit only the object and *not* the camera or anything else in the room. It is also a good idea to paint your ceiling in matte black, or at least span a piece of black cloth above the object. Even objects that don't seem to be reflective at first might suffer from reflections in the final picture, and you might not recognize that while shooting. The most important rule in studio lighting is applied here, too: It is far more important where to block light than where to put it. Lights that are too diffused end up with slightly unsharp and less brilliant pictures. |
No Copy Stand: |
| Very bad, you will have to find some other way to fix your camera. Handholding it should be the last resort. You might as well consider fixing your object to a wall and using a tripod, which you will have to do with bigger objects anyway. |
No flash heads: |
| Hmm. You can try with two identical slave devices with threaded light bulb mount. You can as well use halogen floods from your local DIY shop, but you will have to correct with Wratten 80A filters on your lens to compensate for different color balance. |
No handheld meter: |
| Put a Kodak gray card where your object will be later. Use your camera meter to take a reading. Take the gray card full frame, meter with one light off, then the other, and make sure to get exactly identical readings. Switching on both lights must result in exactly one f-stop more. |
No camera: |
| No hope. |
