DSLR Photography Forum

As a result of my genealogy hobby and some historical work at my church (125th Anniversary coming up) I've had to do some photographing of historical documents, paintings, old (framed) photographs, etc.

I haven't been entirely impressed with the results... Lighting is obviously an issue but I'm not sure what I need to do... any tips?

[I'll see if I can find a good example of what I'm talking about]

Here:


There seems to be a hot spot in the centre of this pic... the actual book was evenly coloured (and several shades lighter!) The WB is also off in this one, but this is the kind of thing I'm talking about...

I should point out that I cannot always control my environment... for example, this book was in the local archives and could not be removed (to improve lighting, etc.)

hm... for documents i think a scanner would be ideal...

it's very hard to get the perspective correct if you use a digicam, methinks...

in terms of lighting, onboard flash would defintely show up as a white spot, so natural light or specialised lighting? would be in order.

I guess if you can't control your environment though, then it's up to post processing...

Just tell the, I can't do this because of the restrictions you are putting on me.

if u shoot in raw..u can correct the hotspot by using the vingette correction or whateva its called ..