Photographing Art for Reproduction.

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Unless your art is fairly small, you will not get high enough resolution to give a high quality reproduction of the original.

You will also get some lens fall off problems and lighting problems when shooting larger pieces with alot of small bites of the art with w DSLR. These short comings become a problem when piecing the image back together in PS as those falloffs and uneven lighting will show up.

Any single shot of even a moderate size such as 16x20 will not give you enough info to faithfully reproduce the art to it's original size.
DSLR shots are pretty much only good for websites, brochures, or note cards.

At a minimum, one of the medium format digital cameras will give you good resolution with multiple shots of the original to give you high quality reproductions.
You would get better files using a high end flatbed scanner than any current DSLR.

...but you all are welcome to do whatever you'd like.
 
If you take a minute (actually a lot more than a minute) you will see a technical discussion about cameras, sensors, lighting, lens, stitching, color managements and software. Most are using multiple shots and stitching together.

If your a genuine expert in these areas than don't bother with the discussion or the group.

Doug
 
I really, really appreciate that you are allowing me the option of not particpating. I'm so relieved to know I have choices.:icon11:



Reality is reality. The higher the resolution of the file, the truer the reproduction of the image is going to be. The flatter the lens field, the less lens distortion you are going to have.

Sure, anyone can shoot multiple shots of a piece of art and piece it together and make a print. The quality will not be as good as one taken with larger sensors, and flat field lenses. A 4x5 lens would allow you to have a larger "sweet spot" in the lens before the drop off of the lens starts to intrude into the image. A lens designed specifically for shooting flat art gives you even more usable lens area thus giving you more usable data.

I can shoot a 4x5 foot piece of art in 4 sections, run them thru a lighting equalizer software that evens up any light falloff at the edges and corners and then assemble those 4 sections and have a better final image than any amount of shooting with a DSLR would ever give.

..and if you are really interested in this process ..which I can assume you are because you posted it in the first place.. you need to know about the rest of the fine art reproduction world out there.

So, in the end, it all depends on how good you want your work to be. The best or just good enough.

Enjoy.
 
resolution only goes so far though, if the glass etc isnt up to it, resolution dont make that much difference

some of the latest sensor technology is amazing when matched with the rigth glass etc



some pros recently did a comparisson between a nikon d800 with ziess planar lens and an arca with IQ180 back and did 60*40 prints from both

yea there were minor things in the phase one back that were better, but not as massive as it used to be
 
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