Optimal lens for shooting artwork for publishing........

bronzeo · Mar 26, 2014

I have a Canon 650 D. I use it to create files to print artwork from. My needed focusing length is from about 5 to 10 feet. My flat art usually runs from 12 inches to 48 inches across I'm wanting to go to a lens best averagely suited for this. I probably will need AF because I'm looking at using a CamRanger to fine focus the previews form me. Distortion and focusing is a priority. I have the Canon 18x135 mm ef-s that I have been using doing fairly well, but would like the best affordable results.

480sparky · Mar 26, 2014

Macro.

Gavjenks · Mar 26, 2014

Although macro lenses do tend to usually have the lowest distortion for a given focal length, I don't think that's the right choice here personally (unless you got the 180 macro, but you're not going to because it's stupidly expensive). I think for this purpose, it's much more important to get a LONG lens and not worry about distortion so much. Why? Because perspective is more your enemy here than distortion is. And the best way to flatten perspective (lines from all parts of the artwork as close to parallel as possible) is with long lenses standing really far away. most macro lenses, at least affordable ones, aren't long at all.

To see what I mean, imagine an artwork 2 stories tall by 2 stories wide. Now imagine taking a photo of it with a 14mm lens a few feet away. The lines will be straight, sure, but the objects in the artwork toward its edges will be tiny and the center huge. That's not what you want. You want every square inch of the painting taking up as close to the same number of pixels as possible. To do this you'd stand way back and use a longer lens. You can't do this as well with a typical 50mm or 100mm macro lens as you can with a 200mm or 300mm or your 135 you already have.

Also, you have multiple things already protecting you from distortion anyway, making it low priority to worry about:
1) Small aperture (f/8 or f/11) protects you from field curvature
2) The fact that long lenses usually have low distortion anyway
3) Lens profiles built into things like lightroom or photoshop that correct known distortion for you (for barrel or pincushion, etc., and vignetting)

Whereas you don't have ANY protections against perspective changing the look of your artwork, except simply standing far away.

So I think you'd get better results and spend a lot less money by just using a long lens.

My suggestion if you want to spend $0 and get perfectly good results is:
1) Wait for a dry, very cloudy day (almost perfectly even lighting without having to spend any money)
2) Take whatever your longest lens you already own is
3) Prop the art up against a southern facing wall outside in the open, as level as possible, on something like dry cinder blocks with a soft cloth over them to prevent damage
4) Walk back until it fits in your frame
5) Put the camera on a tripod there and line the camera up so it's about halfway up the height of the art, or so that the line from the camera to artwork middle is as close to a 90 degree angle to the surface of the art as possible.
6) Don't use auto, just carefully focus with live view zoomed in all the way until you have perfect focus guaranteed by your eye.
7) Crank the aperture to f/12 or so (depends on lens and your camera's sensor size to be optimal, but this is a general good guess/starting point).
8) Shoot.

Once you have the setup all done, it should go quickly for several pieces. Only having to raise or lower the camera a bit, mostly, depending on different size art.

Edit: if you can't bring them outdoors, then you'll want to get two huuuuge softboxes or perhaps umbrellas (ideally close to the size of the art) with speedlights or monolights and put them both 45 degrees to the artwork as close to it as you can get without getting in the way of the shot. This will cost significantly more than the sun and clouds, but will be very even (and generally useful things to have for other stuff anyway)