The Framers Forum

Has anyone got any tips on the best way of photographing finished framing jobs.
Am just starting out putting a web site together and need some decent pictures of work we have done so far but seem to get a lot of reflection/shadow tried various times of day different rooms lighting etc. I have a basic bridge camera and tripod, could also use ipad/iphone
Many thanks in advance
Paul


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I don't have any special equipment as I haven't got any interest in photography, so I just use a compact automatic camera. I lay the picture flat on a table so that there's a plain ceiling above and no reflections from around the room. I photograph the picture from on-high, making sure my own reflection isn't in the glass. This results in the picture being a trapezoid shape, but I then correct the shape using Photoshop so that the picture looks straight-on.

Easiest way - take the photo before you fit the glass...

If it's only the odd one now and again you want to photograph, loosely assemble without the glass, take your photo and then finish properly.

I like Rainbow's solution.

But if you don't have any photoshop skills or specialist lighting, then try to remember to photograph the frame without glass, before final assembly. The fiddly part is to position the camera so as to keep the sides of the frame parallel, though.

JohnMcafee wrote: The fiddly part is to position the camera so as to keep the sides of the frame parallel, though.

So you need to place the picture as far away as possible and zoom in on it.

If you're taking photos of glazed pictures, I have a pretty good setup. You need to have the illumination at shallower than 45 degrees to avoid reflections, and you need it to come from both sides, and you need to shoot through something black.

Having recently done a fair chunk of research into getting this done as cheaply as possible, I have just bought a DSLR camera. Added to it I have a wireless flash trigger - a Yongnuo 603, about £30 - and two flash guns - Yongnuo 560ii, about £50 each. Yongnuo are a Chinese brand and come from eBay or Amazon and are cheap yet highly regarded in the online camera forum world. Also two tripods and white umbrellas for diffusing the flash, about £40 total from Amazon. And then a large black sheet that I poke the lens of the camera through. The black sheet has to be big enough to cover everything within 45 degrees of the picture, both left-right and up-down. With judicious use of Photoshop (or Gimp, which is free) you don't need to worry about getting everything absolutely parallel. You're going to want to edit and crop the photo anyway, it's easier to straighten it up on the computer than in real life!

Thanks James

That seems easy enough

But on reflection I will stick to Rainbow's method

Peter

I do as Rainbow and preferably without the glass. My digital camera came out of the ark and does not give the best results, it's only 2.1 megapixels, so I guess you can tell that it's not up to much. I will get something more modern sometime!

Phew, at last I've posted something useful!

I lay the finished frame down on the ground and I stand over it and take the photo without the flash.
Sometimes I use software for lens correction if the frame looks bowed and to add a background / shadow etc.
If the day is too bright I don't bother as my reflection will be too obvious.

Pete, I often take photographs of things that are already framed, that I didn't frame and I will not unframe. Otherwise, yes, without the glass is obviously the easiest!

Going back to JohnMcafee's point about getting the sides parallel, I think I misunderstood him. I was thinking that if you use a camera on wide angle zoom you end up with distortion around the edges of the picture, so a straight edge begins to look curved. So if you have a zoom camera, don't use it on wide angle zoom.

If I didn't need to photograph glazed pictures I would just use my iPhone 6S which takes superb pictures. The only thing it won't do is to activate remote flashguns, hence my need for a DSLR. On the iPhone there's also a very good free app called VSCO. This is a very high-powered photo editing app. It allows you to straighten up those edges, amend exposure and contrast, crop etc. etc. I find it very useful indeed.

The photos I take of frames aren't really publication standard but for best results with basic amateur kit....

Get the lens as parallel to the plane of the picture as possible. Use a tripod if you can.

Don't get too close. Focal length 50mm or greater and zoom in. Too close and straight lines will bend.

Diffused daylight is the best lighting if you don't have a lighting rig.