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Polarising filters to remove glare
Folks
An effective demo on removing glare when photographing paintings in studio.
Denis
An effective demo on removing glare when photographing paintings in studio.
Denis
Comments
This looked too good to be true, but I thought I'd give it a go anyway. I already have a camera + circular polarising filter, so bought a sheet of the linear polarising film on Amazon to go with it.Arrived on Fri.
I've been re-photographing my paintings - all I did was place the film over the front of my lights. The shot on the left is with the circular polarising filter on the camera rotated so the glare is at its worse. The one on the right is the filter rotated a further 90 degrees - no.other changes to the setup. Phelps is right, its like magic.
No more struggling with lighting and reflections and glare when taking photos. I thoroughly recommend this method.
Don’t know what lens you have fitted but the standard Nikon d5000 is 52mm.
Take your camera into the shop and ask for a circular polarising filter that fits.
Denis
I used a CP filter back in the days of film cameras. Photos through car windows, shop windows, water shots and a huge improvement in sky / cloud contrast. Did weddings, christenings, passport pics parties etc. as a side hustle. Had a home darkroom.
Not found any CP filters for my new digital cameras yet.
The CP filter I owned was a rotating pair that could be adjusted to dial in the amount of effect needed.
Any photography with lights was manageable through positioning. Varnished paintings were not involved.
Denis
Below is my camera with the circular polarising filter removed. Dianna - it just screws onto the front of the lens. You just have to make sure you get the right size, as lenses differ in daimeter.
The filter is sitting on what is left of the linear polarising film, which I have cut up and put into a cardboard frame, which is also visible.
These are the lights I use - they sit behind me when I paint. I have 3 of them.
...and my cardboard cutout with the film just sits over the lights. I have 3 cutouts, one for each light.
I gather it is important for the film to cover the light source, and that there to be no leakage of unfiltered light around the edges. This was easy for me as my lights are flat LEDs. If you have bulbs you may need to rig up some other arrangement like a box so the light only passes through the film. Or check out the solution in the video.
Photos need to be taken at night or in a dark room, so that the only light illuminating the painting is that passing through the filter.
The linear filter, plus the circular filter on the camera, means a lot of light is blocked. A tripod is therefore required to get a sharp photo.
Think that's about it.
@GTO there's more good info here https://www.nitpickyartist.com/photographing-art.html
Also the polarization.com guys have the best prices and you can order by the foot with a 17” width.
The circular polarizer needs to fit your lens (it screws onto the lens just like a UV lens protector. It works with digital. In fact you can look through just the polarizer lens after you’ve covered your lights and see the magic.
I did notice (as Roxy pointed out) that any external light or light bouncing off other surfaces will cause glare so you will want to not let any light escape.
And as Roxy says you have to use the timer to delay the taking of the picture or you will get a blurry picture. And use the tripod.
"I’ve been photographing my own work and selling prints for years. It can be a very complicated process if you are going for an accurate reproduction, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be expensive. Here are a few tips:
shoot in a large room with lots of light (if you have access to a school classroom, this works really well) or outside during the day in the shade.
use a camera with optical zoom or removable lenses (you can pick up an older canon rebel for pretty cheap)
use a tripod and shoot at iso 100 and f/8, and then adjust the exposure until you get a well exposed shot (use the 2 second timer setting so you don’t shake the camera)
shoot in RAW format with auto white balance, since you can adjust the white balance later if you need to (don’t shoot in jpeg). Take one shot with a gray card in the image as it will allow the editing software to get the right white balance.
use a polarizing filter. This is actually one of the most important tools as it’s almost impossible to not get any glare without it, especially in the darker areas of the artwork. Take 5 or more photos, each time, rotate the filter a little bit, that way you can choose the one that cuts out the most glare after.
use editing software to crop and adjust the colours. You don’t necessarily need expensive software like Photoshop, though that is what I use.
Those things should give you quite good results.
Extra tips for even better results:
stack all the images you took with the polarizing filter in photoshop and set the layers to “darken”. This will take all the darkest parts of the images and combine them together to get rid of even more glare
repeat the entire process with the painting upside down. Stacking these images on the right side up images (obviously flipped to line up) will get rid of even more glare.
use a colour correcting card like Color Checker to get even more accurate colours. I find blues and greens don’t photograph well, so this helps a lot.
It’s taken me many years to develop a process that gives me accurate results, so hopefully some of these tips can help others 😊"