by John H Siskin
When I started my photography business a few decades ago, my commercial client was Bagdasarian Productions. They made the "Chipmunk" animated cartoons, with Alvin, Theodore and Simon. They were working on a full-length movie about the adventures of the Chipmunks. One of the keys to animation, back in the 1980s, was high-quality painting for backgrounds. Those paintings were done here in Los Angeles and then shipped to Korea for the character animation. My job was to make high-quality copies of the backgrounds so that the background painters would be able to refer to them in order to maintain accurate color and style. Since then I have done copy work for businesses, artists and galleries. Copy work is pretty simple but it must be done very carefully in order to get the best results. I often do copy work in the living room, since I keep my finished work at home.
The basic layout of a copy job is to have the camera back, whether film or sensor, parallel to the original. The lights need to be between 30º and 45º from the plane of the original. In this range they light the original but you don’t see reflections of your lights in the original. You can even shoot through glass! The lights need to be far enough from the original to even out the lighting.
In the example with this article, the lights are about five feet from the center of the original. You need the lights further away from a larger original. The reason for this is that if the distances from the light to the corner of the original and to the center of the original are significantly different you will not be able to even out the light.
The amount of light that makes it to the original goes down as the distance to the original increases. So if the distances to different parts of the original are very different you will not be able to even out the light.
In the example, the difference between the light on the center of the shot and the corner is 1/10th of a stop, pretty small.
This is the one area of digital photography where I still use a light meter. When I set-up a copy job I put the lights an equal distance from the center of the original. I also point the lights at the original. Then I use the light meter to move the lights into the most advantageous position.
As I mentioned above, in this case I was able to get the lights to almost perfectly even. It is very difficult for the eye to see differences of less than 1/3rd stop, so if you can get your lighting even to the 1/3rd stop level your light will be even on the copy. I also use diffusion domes over my lights to make them more even.
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