Photographing old maps

[480sparky39 38]

Don't use the Brightness slider in your editing software. Use Curves or Levels instead.

Mainly shoot in auto because Ive never found the perfect setting for my prints or maps.

Manual mode would be best, but may take some time to master.

 

[photo1x1.com]

Could anyone recommend some camera settings that I can try?

Hi there,
I´m afraid nobody can really help you in this regard because we don´t know what your light is like. It could be brigther or darker, and every light has a different color and when you have mixed lights like from the window on the left and another different light from the right, you won´t ever get a really good white balance.
As the others have said - this image is definitely NOT overexposed - the histogram proves that, so the problem seems to be your monitor:

What I would do:

• get outdoors to a wind-safe place
  
• use a white bed sheet and build yourself some kind of tent (if you have four people to hold it above the map that would be the fastest solution)
• set your camera to shoot raw images - so you can easily change white balance and other things afterwards.
• Place a white piece of paper or a grey card on the map for the first image
  
• Place your camera in an exact 90° angle to the map (the image of your map is slightly skewed)
• take the shot
• Post the raw file here so that we can help you with white balance, etc.

 

[photo1x1.com]

If you don´t know what the histogram is: it is nothing more than a graph that shows the relative distribution of the brightness in your image. The very left shows how much of your image is totally black and the very right shows how much of your image is 100% white. Your image doesn´t have any white at all it seems. But since your paper IS white, there is no sign of overexposing at all.
If your graph moved more to the right, it would mean that your image gets brighter. If you would use manual mode (like sparky) suggested, you can use the histogram to correctly expose the image.

 

[Designer]

Hello everyone, Trying to get a little help in photographing some antique maps. I use a Canon t3 rebel Eos with window lighting and sometimes can lights. My pictures seem to always come out tinted blue/green or they are so overexposed I cant even edit them with out them looking way overexposed. Ive tried ALL my white balance settings and nothing works, even tried the Gray card and that was no help. I cannot go out and spend 100s on lights. Wanting any advice on camera settings or anything, Thank you

How many of these maps do you have to do? If it's just this one, somebody here can do the editing for you. All you need to do is set your personal profile to allow editing, and ask.

If you have several yet to do, then follow the recommendations that have already been suggested.

If you have a file with your gray card in the shot, that will help get the colors right.

 

[jcdeboever]

I think these are fine. If it were me, I would focus on getting the proper level and angle. Place the camera on a tripod and try to have it perfectly squared with the document. Some tripods have multiple bubble levels on them, one on ball head, one for vertical, and one for horizontal. Level the surface the document is on and line all the bubbles up in the middle (tripod), and shoot. Then if your lens has some distortion, there is lens correction software to address this.

 

[adamhiram]

It looks like you already got the 2 most important things right - even lighting and minimal lens/perspective distortion. The rest can. Be corrected pretty easily in post.

1. Fix the white balance by using the white balance eye dropper tool on the white border. This will make it pure white, so you will most likely want to warm it up a little, since the paper is likely slightly off-white.
2. Correct the exposure, since it is likely a little underexposed. A good starting point might bre to increase the exposure until you start seeing some white clipping, then pull back a little for a more natural lookcba fix the little bit.
3. Lastly, You can correct the perspective distortion using the transform tool. I wouldn't recommend this for extreme distortion, but the examples you posted looked pretty minimal and easily fixable.

As for getting it right in camera, your settings aren't bad at all. A small aperture is desired, but f/18 may be pushing it; f11 or f/8 should be adequate while giving a little more sharpness. You can get white balance close, but will probably still need to tweak it in post to get it more accurate. You can fix the exposure by either increasing exposure compensation slightly in one of the automatic modes, or increasing ISO or decreasing shutter speed in manual mode.

I hope this helps!

 

[adamhiram]

Here is a simple edit using the steps above.

<Image removed pending OP's 'Permission to Edit' flag being set>

 

[Designer]

Here is a simple edit using the steps above.

1. She has not specifically allowed editing.

2. She has already said that the paper is not white.

 

[Derrel]

Here is a simple edit using the steps above.

Looks like pure white paper, and the colors look nice, but the antique paper look has been pretty much eliminated,and replaced by the look of a sheet of pure white, new typing paper white. I thought that the OP's first two uploaded images looked just a little bit under-exposed, yet the paper had what I expected to be an antique look to it, and overall, the colors of the map sectrions and areas and the inking and the paper base all looked pretty good, so as stated above by several people, the issue might actually be on the OP's computer monitor end of things.

 

[adamhiram]

1. She has not specifically allowed editing.

My bad - I didn't see "not OK to edit" and just assumed...

2. She has already said that the paper is not white.

The Philadelphia map is white not brown, so when I take pics they will look brown or green blue tint.

I agree that the antiqued look seems much more appropriate, but OP did explicitly say it was white. Personally, I'd just take a test shot with a gray card and keep the aged look.

 

[Designer]

OP; we can show you a slightly different edit if you will allow it.