Light Flare – Reflections when coping oil paintings

M
Posted By
Mr._Jan_Doddy
Jul 29, 2004
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960
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I’m having a problem with light flare/reflections using hot lights to copy a clients oil painting for her website and ad pieces. I’ve done tons of copy work for clients using slide film without any problems over the past 14 years. This is the first for this situation.

Here’s what I did – 3 hot lights, all at 45 deg angles to the painting, 2 on the sides had diffusion panels in front of them and one overhead, and made the images. Post, I adjusted the levels and tried some sharpening with no real luck. I also tried hue/saturation on just blue and cyan to see if it would tone it down.

Any suggestions would be a great help.

P.S. I’m new at this forum, so if someone can tell me how to attach the image, I will.

Thanks,

Jan

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Burton_Ogden
Jul 29, 2004
Jan,

You can’t use discrete light sources when copying reflective subjects without showing reflected images of the light sources (catchlights or highlights.) You need to use completely diffuse lighting. Outside on a cloudy day or, if no clouds, then in open shade.

Some people have constructed special diffuse lighting chambers for copying reflective subjects which is a more controllable technique that avoids exposing the subject to outside weather conditions. Outside on a cloudy day has a rain hazard. And when copying an art object in open shade lighting, there is always the danger on an occasional bird poop.

— Burton —
FN
Fred_Nirque
Jul 29, 2004
Here is a totally sure-fire way, but involves some additional purchase & setup:

Get some polarizing gels to cover your lights (which should be undiffused and placed at 45 degrees and equidistant on each side only to the work). Be sure to orient the gel the same on each light. Put a polarizing filter on the camera lens and rotate that until the reflections are gone (when the lens polarizer orientation is 100% opposed to the light sources’ polarizers). Placing a bright silver coin on the artwork is helpful to determine this – things are set right when the coin goes virtually black.

Colour saturation and contrast will be maximized as well using this technique (as opposed to the diffuse light technique), though the penalty (from experience) is about 3 stops in light loss.

The technique is fully explained in Kodak publication M-1 "Copying and Duplicating in Black-and-White and Color" pp53-54. If you can buy, beg or borrow a copy it is invaluable when copying photographically. Although the information relates to film/paper based copying (my copy – "11-85-Minor Revision" – is effectively pre-digital), the physics still apply.

A look through this book may lead to a better appreciation of a lot of the complexities we had to deal with pre-Photoshop as well.

I still use this setup for nearly all my copy work (Ambrotypes, Daguerreotypes & daylight proofs excepted)- it may not be needed all the time, but it removes one variable from the equation.

Fred.
D
Dee
Jul 29, 2004
Hiya,

When I use to paint … I always took photos of my art outside … in both sunny weather and cloudy .. without flash. They always came out really great.

HTH,
Dee

wrote in message
I’m having a problem with light flare/reflections using hot lights to copy
a clients oil painting for her website and ad pieces. I’ve done tons of copy work for clients using slide film without any problems over the past 14 years. This is the first for this situation.
Here’s what I did – 3 hot lights, all at 45 deg angles to the painting, 2
on the sides had diffusion panels in front of them and one overhead, and made the images. Post, I adjusted the levels and tried some sharpening with no real luck. I also tried hue/saturation on just blue and cyan to see if it would tone it down.
Any suggestions would be a great help.

P.S. I’m new at this forum, so if someone can tell me how to attach the
image, I will.
Thanks,

Jan
JC
Jan_C._Doddy
Jul 29, 2004
Burton and Fred, thanks for getting back to me. I was quite surprised to see how digital really amplified this situation as opposed to slides.

Burton, your suggestions are well taken and something I have thought about – this is the first time it is really needed.

Fred, I will look into the polarizing gels as I have the polarizer for the lens. I may need to look into HMI lighting, here we go again – $$$$! Two other questions; where do I begin to look for this mysterious "Kodak" publication, and second, you talk of "my copy 11-85 Minor Revision", can you elaborate? Is this something available for purchase?

Thanks both for your responses.

Jan
FN
Fred_Nirque
Jul 29, 2004
Jan,

Amazon.com have a limited supply (8 copies used & new). It is out of print now, and was revised in 1996 with a few pages relating to digital, but a quick look at the description indicates that this is substantially the same book as I have.

It is now titled "Copying and Duplicating: Photographic and Digital Imaging Techniques" and retails at $29.95, which is good value as mine cost $24.95 in 1986.

The "Minor Revision" I referred to is noted on the back cover of the book as a revision to the original publication, that’s all. I only included this reference to give as much identification as possible as I suspected that the book was no longer produced now that Kodak seems hell-bent on withdrawing from photography.

Fred.
KL
Katherine_Lawson
Jul 30, 2004
Hi Jan, I always do what Burton said. Normally I hang the paintings on a north wall of the house on a sunny day. I make prints of paintings for local artists, and you can’t tell my prints from the original paintings as far as color goes.

This way of doing things is simple and it didn’t require making any new purchases.
RK
Rob_Keijzer
Jul 30, 2004
Normally I hang the paintings on a north wall of the house

Good way to do it Katherine. But I assume you’re also on the northern hemisphere, otherwise you still get direct sunlight on it.

In addition to all that is mentioned, I use those white foam ceiling tiles, on one side covered in alu-foil.

Rob
EK
ed_kamhi
Jul 30, 2004
Hi. Here is a "quick and dirty" way I have used in the past for webwork when moving the pictures outdoors was not an option.

I shot the picture slightly from the side. I adjusted the lights so that there would be no glare. The resulting image is a trapezoid. I then straightened the image using Edit|Transform|Perspective.

Would that work for you?

Ed
KL
Katherine_Lawson
Jul 31, 2004
Hi Rob, yeah, I’m in Maine, in the US. I never thought about things being different in the southern hemisphere. I guess that’s one of the reasons I always wanted to go there, because so many times I’ve wondered just how many things were different that I’ve always taken for granted were the same! (Besides the seasons and a few other things that I did know about).

Thanks for that info, because I never knew that.
BO
Burton_Ogden
Jul 31, 2004
Ed,

I shot the picture slightly from the side…

With a textured oil painting that won’t work because there is no direction in which there aren’t some small reflective surfaces distributed across the painting surface.

This situation is analogous to those old textured photo prints that can’t be scanned well because the texture always picks up some points of reflection from the scanner’s light. Photographing them under diffuse light is also the best solution.

— Burton —
FN
Fred_Nirque
Aug 1, 2004
Diffuse light does not remove reflections from the surface, it only spreads them out to be less obvious, the net effect of which is to reduce contrast, colour saturation and possibly definition.

The only way to remove surface reflections and enhance or maintain contrast, colour saturation and definition is to use the contra-polarizing method I referred to earlier. If, as Jan has said he does, one already has the copy lights and camera polarizer, it is a seriously inexpensive and easy thing to set up, with only the polarizing gels for the lights and a dark room needed (the polarized lights must be the only effective source of illumination to achieve the effect properly).

This method will also completely remove texturing from papers as well as the "silvering" often found in older B&W prints (without having to rub vaseline or glycerine all over the surface!).

Fred.
JC
Jan_C._Doddy
Aug 2, 2004
Thanks all for your input.

At this point, I think I will be going with Fred’s suggestions because of some of the obvious reasons; I work with some of my clients in the evening, weather, and time of year – this will be very hard to do in the winter (SE Pa).

Fred, I will look up and purchase that book you suggested – thanks again.

Also Fred, have you ever worked with HMI lights? For now, I’m working with 4800 deg. 500 watt lamps and as you mentioned – the filters will cause me to loose 2~3 stops. Right now I’m at 1/8 sec at F-8.0.

I will let you know the results as soon as I get the polarizer gels and try everything out.

Jan
CL
Chuck_Lambert
Aug 2, 2004
Another approach is to shoot under direct sunlight and then use your existing polarizer to control the specular reflections that seem to be your main problem.

Actually, you might want to ask the artist if she would like them to appear at all. If you totally kill the specular highlights, you lose some of the impasto* appearance. Maybe the artist wants to minimize it or maybe she doesn’t. This is an aesthetic choice she should make and then you should implement. You could show her three versions of the same image with differing amounts of "glare" taken out.

Shooting under direct sun would provide excellent color. You would also be able to position the canvas to either emphasize or reduce the texture caused by the impasto painting. You’d still be able to use your polarizer to knock down the specular highlights.

And you wouldn’t have to buy anything new!

* Impasto is a painting technique where the paint is applied so thick it become three-dimensional.

Chuck Lambert
FN
Fred_Nirque
Aug 3, 2004
I’ve never used those particular lights, Jan.

My work involves copying old B&W/sepia photographs on a copy stand setup. I built my own light housings (two) which are 3 feet long x 12in high x 12in deep containing 5 150W pearl household globes each. They are mounted at 45° 3 feet from the board with the polarizing gel sheets in a frame flush with the front. I did this to provide the most even spread of light along each side of the copy board so as to avoid hot-spots and light fall-off.

As I never copy using colour film, the low colour temperature of the globes is unimportant, in fact it acts as a sort of mild yellow filter which helps reduce the yellow staining often present in these photographs, and their low heat generation makes for a more pleasant work place. As the entire setup is permanent in a dedicated light-tight and black-painted copy room, exposure time is not important and worries about extraneous light or movement affecting the outcome are non-existent.

I use a 4×5 camera chassis with a Nikon 120mm AM ED Macro f5.6 large-format lens, and exposure times ranging from 10sec at f16 through 3 minutes at f8 depending on magnification, film type and extra filtration used.

All of this aside, I think that in your case you will find that results using the contra-polarizing method will more than justify the work in setting it up. If you are going to be doing much location copying, you might find several large black flats (poly sheets or collapsible black "reflectors") will be helpful in controlling extraneous light from behind the camera/lights setup.

Good luck,

Fred.

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