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Shooting art with a D800

Jeffg53

Member
I often get roped into taking shot's of artwork for an artist friend. she works in all sorts of media. Sometimes, I use natural light, sometimes studio gear and grey cards for white balance. What I find is that the colour is never completely right. This bothers me more than the artist.

I understand that there are many steps where the colour can deviate from the real thing. I haven't found any decent guides. I use the D800, C1 and then PS.

Any suggestions, please?
 

Jack

Sr. Administrator
Staff member
Color accuracy in art repro is a science unto itself. It is an arena where MFDB's will do better than DSLR's. To get consistent color, you'll want to shoot a passport under the EXACT same lighting AND LENS you will use for shooting the art. Now you can use C1 to build a dedicated profile for that combo of lighting and lens -- use color editor to get the passport colors as close to exact as possible, then save it out as an ICC profile for that camera with that lighting. (This is a non-trivial exercise and may take you several hours to accomplish.) Note that if you just change the power output of the strobe units, your color can change visibly in the final product! In fact, strobe color can drift over time and so you may need to rebuild a profile at regular intervals.
 

phero66

New member
Jack is right, and there is no quick fix. However I shoot art full-time and actually moved away from MFDB to the D800 series because it has enough resolution for 90% of the work I do.

That said, I don't recommend the passport for art repo, there is just not enough colors there for any sort of accurate ICC profile (in terms of art). If you have a little money to invest buy yourself a ColorChecker SG chart (~$300), and then PictoColors InCamera software (PictoColor inCamera Digital Camera ICC Profile Software, also about $300). The software is old, runs 32bit in CS4-CS6 but does a really good job. Its the standard software recommended for Betterlight users (who long held the art repro market). You can find other software solutions, some free, for the ColorChecker SG chart, but so far it gives the best results for the price. In case you are wondering, X-Rite also has a input profiler option in its iProfiler suite, but it is not optimal, there are weird color transitions sometimes and until they fix it I can't recommend it for input ICCs.

If you are serious about pursuing this with strobe you need something with control that manages flash to flash color balance and flash intensity, which surprisingly can vary quite a bit between shots depending on what power level your strobe is at. PCB Einstein strobes are perfect for this, and are very cost effective. Otherwise you are looking at high-end Broncolor. Getting flash to flash consistency is very important for ICC chart creation, without it there isn't much point. Alternately you can build soft-banks of high color rendering florescent bulbs, like the Philips T950 series bulbs.

Doing the above will get you about 90-95% there for most work, but always there will be some adjustments in photoshop based on what you are shooting, etc.

Another useful thing to throw in is light fall-off correction - if you are not already doing it. Often when I see none repro shooters doing artwork they don't realize how much this is affecting the final image. It is really hard to get perfect illumination for all sizes of artwork, so if using continuous light sources you can shoot a large whiteboard, just make sure it is bigger then the frame. Otherwise you can correct for lens fall-off separately with a LCC type opaque plexi card already mentioned here on the forums. You would then have to correct for lighting fall-off separately in photoshop, etc.

I build ICCs for each photo session and lens change. The ICC creation part is actually pretty straightforward but does add to the processing time - ie: have to output chart files certain way, make ICCs, then apply said ICC to artwork files in Raw software, output at standard settings and then make final tweaks in photoshop.

Hope this helps.
 

Jeffg53

Member
Thanks for all of that. It hadn't occurred to me that my Bowens or Visatec lights might be part of the solution. I've already discovered light falloff, to my chagrin. Lots there to keep me going for a while.
 

phero66

New member
You can also test your strobes to find their sweet spot in terms of color stability and flash-to-flash output, sometimes running them full-power is enough to keep them stable. Take a test shot of a white/grey card and use your color readout tool in C1 to see how much it varies between the shots.
 

Leigh

New member
You need to calibrate your system to your output medium.

A shot displayed on an LCD monitor hanging on the wall requires very different processing from a shot displayed in a magazine article.

I suggest making NO adjustments to the acquired image in-camera.
Preferably, take a RAW shot and do all your processing post-exposure.
This gives you the greatest possible latitude in adjusting the shot for the medium.

- Leigh
 

Jeffg53

Member
Thanks Leigh. That's what I've been doing but I still end up wrestling with getting exact colour. Artists can be fussy blighters.
 
One thing you could try after white balancing in C1 is to change your ICC to IQ250 portrait. This helps me a lot. I shoot furniture and colors have to be pretty close.
Just try it.
I've used Color Checker before and haven't been happy with the results.
ACH
 
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