Photographing Prints??

[kab]

G'day All,

I'm hoping someone here has some experience or can point me in the right direction.

As suggested by the title I'd like to photograph a 20 year old A3+ print so I can make some prints for some relatives. Unfortunately, it was a little too large for most commercial places to do for a reasonable price. Anything over A3 becomes costly. I found one place "CPL" in Windsor but that was going to cost ~ $90 for a scan and two prints, whereas just the two A3+ prints was ~ $30. Because of the size, CPL were going to take a photo of this print with a medium format back, and print from that.

I'm wondering if I can get reasonable results by trying to take a photo of the print myself?? I spose I might as well try...if I don't succeed, just bite the bullet and fork out the $90.

I'd be most interested in hearing from people who have tried this and have obtained reasonable results....your techniques, any web links etc....??

I have a D70, tripod, kit lens, 35f2, 70-300, extension tubes and sb800, at my disposal. What would you suggest??

Till next time...
Regards
Keith

[big pix]

Square up on your print with about 200mm..... shoot on RAW, do a bracket of exposures and pick the best one.......pp in photoshop to retouch or improve....... output on A3 printer........ this is very easy, with little or no loss of quality......... Remember shoot in a bright shaded area at about f11 or f16, and take your image out of the frame and glass if any......

[Onyx]

Take with the 35 f/2 - potentially least optical distortion and highest sharpness possible. Shoot as big pix suggested. Plenty of indirect soft natural light. Beware if the old photo has a glossy finish.

[big pix]

Take with the 35 f/2 - potentially least optical distortion and highest sharpness possible. Shoot as big pix suggested. Plenty of indirect soft natural light. Beware if the old photo has a glossy finish.

to use a short lens will give you image distortion, say 35 f2, is very hard to square up on the image, to shoot with a long lens will reduce image distortion in camera as you are dealing with a flat surface........

[Matt. K]

Stick it against a wall outside in the shade. Put the camera on a tripod and square it up to the image. Shoot at f/8. The D70 does a brilliant job at this kind of thing and you will be impressed with the results. Maybe do a WB preset in order to get accurate colours.

[Aussie Dave]

Hi Keith
It is very possible with the D70. I have taken a shot of an old photo of my Mum & I, taken in 1972, so you can imagine the print quality wasn't that great.

I stuck it on the back of a chair, put my Sigma 70-300 APO on the D70, put the camera onto a tripod and switched the lens to macro-mode. I obtained focus (making sure the print was as flat as possible and shot at 200mm, f8 (using the timer to avoid "any" possibility of camera shake - except from the mirror, of course). You will not want to use the SPeedlight. I found it ruined every shot I used it on (and I tried several angles and settings). Using the tripod & timer/remote, you can use very slow shutter speeds, if required, so you can keep using a medium aperture setting (like f8-11). There is no need to use flash.

Once I took a few shots at slightly different settings, I uploaded to PC and picked the best looking one. Did some slight PP to the image and it came out (IMO) better than the original. Obviously, back in the early 70's, the photo labs didn't have PSCS2 to play with

This photo was a 6x4 (or thereabouts), but the same principle will apply for your A3 print. You will just need to setup the camera a bit further away (and won't need to use macro).

Good luck with your "experimentation". Sorry, that seems to be Word Of The Day today

[MCWB]

Sorry, that seems to be Word Of The Day today

Made my day, thanks!

[kab]

Thanks for the responses...

Ya's gave me enough confidence to have a go. So I took a bunch of shots and this was my best attempt. I am very happy with it considering the state of the original. I did some minor PP to improve the contrast but that's about it. And No, I didn't touch the colours, thats the way they were.

I ended up taking the shot with the kit lens at 52mm, 1.6sec @ f16 on a tripod, with the image flat on the ground. I tried other combos but this looked best. I had the camera directly hooked upto the laptop which worked great. Not only did I not have to touch the camera once the shot was composed, but I was able to af and shoot from the laptop and view the shots immediately on a 15inch screen.

I'm getting 2 15x10 prints done, so I can't wait to see what they look like. IMHO, the image on screen looks better then the original.

Whatcha's think??



Till next time...
Regards
Keith

[Aussie Dave]

I suggest you buy them a TV for Christmas.....7 kids....WOW

It looks pretty good to me. As long as you're happy with it, that's all that matters

It must have been a benefit to be able to view the shots on the laptop (on the fly).

[digitor]

Excellent result! I would give consideration to correcting the perspective distortion though. Should be fairly easy to judge by the green columns (I guess they're on a backdrop) on either side. You'll then have a shot "better than original". Well done!

Cheers

[big pix]

Perspective correction can be done using the crop tool in PSCS and PSCS2, just select the whole image with crop tool and tick the perspective box at top of frame and move the top corners of the selected area to line up with the columns, go to image and select crop........Edit: a nice job.....

[tasadam]

Looks like you've done it, so this info is perhaps a bit late.

I have a heap of oil paintings to photograph and now have the linear polarizing film, bought it over the internet.
But now I am camera-less, it's still in for repair. Shutter jammed up.
And my brother is looking at the option of getting them all scanned instead of photographed.
Looks like he will find that's too expensive, so I didn't buy the polarizing film in vain - will still have a shoot to do.
Waiting to hear if he wants me to buy a Kodak Colour-Separation guide and a Step-Wedge (greyscale) for the printers...

[Matt. K]

I love those old group/family pics. Try fixing the perspective....select all/edit/transform/perspective. Play around a little and you'll get the idea. Good job.

[Onyx]

Holy crap they are so smooth and devoid of any noise (I mean that in a bad way), it truly makes a Canon look less plastic.
They look like a posed family at Madame Tussauds - if you're printing them out big, inject some life into them by adding random specks and noise with PS.

[kab]

Thanks for the tips & feedback. That perspective correction tool in PS is great and is suprisingly easy to use.

I was pretty lucky with lighting when I took this shot, as it was late afternoon and there was some nice diffused overcast light entering my living room. I spose thats what made me take em then and there.

I'm trying out a different lab, (CPL in windsor) for the 10x15 prints. Anyone tried em?? If these come out OK, then I might try going bigger after I've implemented some of your suggestions

Till next time...
Regards
Keith