Copy lighting

[pappapratt]

Greetings all.
I am in the process of setting up to copy all those family film photo's that we all have and retouching in Photoshop.

I recently got my hands on the Nikon PF-4 which for those of you familiar with it know, doesn't come with copy lights. I have the Sunpak DX-12R ringlight and am waiting on the NE-1AF module to arrive.

My question is: Will the ringlight provide the correct lighting conditions for copying or do I need to invest in a set of copy lights to avoid reflection from the barrel mounted flash? If dedicated copy lights are necessary, which set is recommended?

Thanks in advance.

[lightwrangler]

The ringlight can be useful in many cases, but not for flat copy work. It is a good tool for small 3D objects, like coins or flowers. For general copy work you will want two lights mounted at 45 degree angles to the sides of photo to be copied. This will give even illumination without reflection.

Flashes set to equal output will work, as will regular photofloods. I sometimes bounce two flashes off of foamcore boards for large items. You should try to overlap the illumination on both sides to give better coverage. You could get started with a pair of very basic photofloods on stands or invest in copy lights. Tungsten copy lights will work quite well as the colour balance is easy to adjust in the camera and fine tune if needed in photoshop (make sure the bulbs are the same). The big drawback with them is heat. A pair of flashes with a photo slave will work just as well mounted on stands or Manfrotto magic arms and be much cooler.

You can make things easier as well by using a copy board on top of your copy surface. A smooth and even piece of wood painted black will suffice. Make it smaller than the stand's copy board. Cover your subject photo with a piece of clean piece of glass. Now when you want to line up your photo in the viewfinder you can simply slide the smaller board around until it is in the right position.

With some images you may pick up the pattern of the paper. In this case spreading the light out over a foamcore board wll help. A poloarizing filter can be used to remove the highlight reflections. In some cases you can polarize the light as well, but this is an advanced copy technique and should be left for another (shorter) message. Use a lenshood to avoid flare from your light sources.

[Ptwig]

pappapratt ..... Why not consider purchasing a good quality flatbed scanner for your family photographs? These days they are sold at very reasonable prices and you wouldn't have to worry about setting up balanced lighting to avoid specular highlights or dead-spots. Colour temperature would also be under control.

Even with the magic of the S2 Pro I believe you'd find it hard to beat the results possible with a flatbed.