Through my recent participation at the Whittier Art Gallery, I have gained better appreciation for the challenges of photographing 2D art (paintings, primarily) to be featured in artist websites and other online galleries. When capturing someone else’s (or even your own) art, we are no longer interpreting, but rather we want to capture as accurate as possible a representation of what the artist created. We are primarily concerned with two difficulties, perspective (as in, capturing the piece squarely), and color accuracy. We will deal with color in the next installment.

First, one must ensure that the plane of the camera and the plane of the 2 dimensional piece (canvas, etc.) are parallel. Don’t stand to the side, underneath or above the piece, but rather, ensure the edges of the piece’s frame line up (are parallel) to the edges of your viewfinder. This is relatively easy, and can become easier through the use of a tripod to incrementally adjust camera height and angle, and then fix it, with the added advantage that a tripod makes for a steadier, non-blurry photograph.

The next step is to select a lens and focal length that will keep the 2D piece’s edges not only plum, but also straight. The difficulty here comes when one discovers how most lenses, especially those in the consumer range, create either barrel or pincushion distortion. This next image, shot at a wide angle, shows barrel distortion.

Barrel distortion, captured at 24mm with 24-70 f2.8

The next two samples, shot with a lens that suffers from quite a bit of distortion, show the pincushion effect. While this effect can be removed with software, it’s best to minimize it as you capture the photo.

Pincushion distortion, captured at 50mm with 24-120 f4

Pincushion distortion, captured at 70mm with 24-120 f4

This next image tries a different, prime 50mm lens. Unfortunately, it displays quite a bit of barrel distortion.

Pincushion distortion, captured at 50mm with 50 f1.4

In comparison, look at how this next lens does at the same 50mm focal length: much better, but with a tad more pin cushion effect than we would like.

Pincushion distortion, captured at 50mm with 24-70 f2.8

Fortunately, at 70mm, it gives us an acceptable result.

Minimal pincushion distortion, captured at 70mm with 24-70 f2.8

Some take-aways from these samples:

• Play around with different focal lengths on your particular lens until you minimize barrel or pin cushion distortion.
• It’s difficult to generalize, but stay away from the long or wide end of your lens: usually the optimum point is somewhere in between.

The shot we picked above isn’t perfect, and part of it’s imperfection is that I didn’t properly make all the edges square. Fortunately, there’s an easy way to correct this in software, as shown here.

With perspective correction

Then, we crop and re-size for the web, and we are ready for display in the online portfolio.

With cropping and resizing

A common query on Internet forums asks how fast of a lens and how high of an ISO one needs to capture family candids without the use of flash. May folks deem the latter intimidating (to family members), awkward and for the most part impractical, so I thought it would be interesting to show how flash would compare against wide open fast glass with high ISO in a lighting environment where one could possibly entertain such a comparison.

Since I did this handheld, the compositions won’t match exactly, but they will still be close enough to compare. See how you think things turned out here in this family play-night scene.

Nikon D700 @ ISO 3200 with 24-70 @f2.8

Nikon D700 @ ISO 800 with 24-70 @f8
SB-900 (TTL) bounced from camera right

Nikon D700 @ ISO 3200 with 24-70 @f2.8

Nikon D700 @ ISO 500 with 24-70 @f5.6
SB-900 (TTL) bounced from camera right

As you can see, these are quick grabs, the types of family, slice-of-life photos people want to catch without too much complication. The flash lighting isn’t optimal, but with a quick bounce, the flash doesn’t wash out and flatten out the scene, as direct flash would do. Notice also that when the flash becomes the predominant (main) light, shadow locations generally shift from the right side of faces to the left.

This is all a matter of personal taste; there’s no right or wrong here. The ambient lighting has a warmer, quieter feel to it, so it’s definitely capturing the moment more naturally. In this case, though, I prefer lighting the broad side of the face with flash, as opposed to the relatively harsher shadows that the ambient (lamp at camera left) light created. And this brings up a good point: when you shoot with ambient, you can’t slide or move the light around (not simply anyway). You are more or less at the mercy of the ambient light you have and will constrain your shooting angles accordingly. Depending on the situation, fewer options for shots may be available to you.

For full disclosure, I’ll also point out that for the ambient lighting shots I had to perform white balance correction to mitigate overly red/orange skin tones, and I also lifted the shadows a bit to lessen some of the harshness I noticed.

At any rate, there you have it: fast glass with high ISO vs. flash. You decide which you like best and which works for you.

A couple of years ago I captured series of flower photos as they bloomed in spring. One of my favorite shots came from a Calla Lily patch in my backyard.

This spring, while testing my 24-70 f2.8, I decided to revisit that same spot and see what turned up. I wasn’t disappointed.