03-31-2012, 05:39 PM
[quote name='painter' timestamp='1333182176' post='17207']
Hi,
They are mostly oil painting on linen (no glass, no shiny paint) my own work, so will be photographing in my studio, I have available natural light and studio lighting. Have a one person show coming up next year so I need good repros for a gallery catalogue as you can probably tell I'm not a photo geek ( wish i was !! )
'Brightcolours' has kindly suggested a few great lenses, was thinking about the 40mm f2.8 DX micro from Nikon, the nikon DX lens I'm using has too much distortion and the AF is broken. I also have a tripod.
thanks :-)
[/quote]
Hi,
From all the lenses you discusses with Brightcolours, the 40mm Nikon is the one which carries my recommendation. An issue the two of you did not discuss so far is field flatness - I asked Klaus for input on it in a separate thread and his reply is "not so easy to discuss".
When I got into photography (early 80ies) the standard macro lens (50mm - 60mm) on a film camera was what was recommended for copy work. They were typically designed to deliver best performance when having a flat subject of size 24 x 36 cm (about 10 x 15 inch) with little distortion. Since then, due to floating elements these kind of lenses also deliver good performance in an infinity scenario, which they didn't do back then. For a modern APS-C camera the 40mm is in that tradition. Nikon explicitly states "copy photography" http://www.nikonusa.com/Nikon-Products/P...-TechSpecs
As far as body goes the Nikon 5100 with its folding monitor might be the best for your purpose. You might want to use the lens in MF and determine focus using the live view on the monitor (magnified view of a selective portion) to ensure the entire picture is in optimal focus. I think your task is not really suitable for AF - it would be less precise than the live view.
I was about to ask you about a tripod. I hope it is a good quality one with lots of metal and next to no plastic. When using a tripod, you should study the manual of the camera how to get the mirror fired a few seconds before the picture is taken. As a pointer: on many cameras the selftimer does the trick.
Hope that helps.
Best wishes
Joachim
Hi,
They are mostly oil painting on linen (no glass, no shiny paint) my own work, so will be photographing in my studio, I have available natural light and studio lighting. Have a one person show coming up next year so I need good repros for a gallery catalogue as you can probably tell I'm not a photo geek ( wish i was !! )
'Brightcolours' has kindly suggested a few great lenses, was thinking about the 40mm f2.8 DX micro from Nikon, the nikon DX lens I'm using has too much distortion and the AF is broken. I also have a tripod.
thanks :-)
[/quote]
Hi,
From all the lenses you discusses with Brightcolours, the 40mm Nikon is the one which carries my recommendation. An issue the two of you did not discuss so far is field flatness - I asked Klaus for input on it in a separate thread and his reply is "not so easy to discuss".
When I got into photography (early 80ies) the standard macro lens (50mm - 60mm) on a film camera was what was recommended for copy work. They were typically designed to deliver best performance when having a flat subject of size 24 x 36 cm (about 10 x 15 inch) with little distortion. Since then, due to floating elements these kind of lenses also deliver good performance in an infinity scenario, which they didn't do back then. For a modern APS-C camera the 40mm is in that tradition. Nikon explicitly states "copy photography" http://www.nikonusa.com/Nikon-Products/P...-TechSpecs
As far as body goes the Nikon 5100 with its folding monitor might be the best for your purpose. You might want to use the lens in MF and determine focus using the live view on the monitor (magnified view of a selective portion) to ensure the entire picture is in optimal focus. I think your task is not really suitable for AF - it would be less precise than the live view.
I was about to ask you about a tripod. I hope it is a good quality one with lots of metal and next to no plastic. When using a tripod, you should study the manual of the camera how to get the mirror fired a few seconds before the picture is taken. As a pointer: on many cameras the selftimer does the trick.
Hope that helps.
Best wishes
Joachim
enjoy