Photographing Your Drawings (Patreon)

Hello Everyone, I made these infographics to give a very brief and basic idea of how to photograph your drawings. 

My purpose here is not to explain everything about this endeavour, there are entire books on it I am sure, but just to give an actionable field guide. So, whether you are shooting with your phone or a $50,000 Hasselblad DSLR, the advice here will help make your photos better.

The camera I use is a Panasonic Lumix GH5 with a 14-140mm lens. While there are other lenses that are more specifically suited to shooting artwork I find that I have good results with this camera even though I bought it primarily for it's video capabilities. 

I am hesitant to recommend a lighting solution as the lights I use are continuous led (for video) and are on the more expensive side so I don't have direct experience with alternatives. The important things to look for are the temperature of the light and the CRI (color rendering index). A Kelvin rating of 5500-6500 is "daylight" temperature which is best for shooting artwork and the CRI rating should be 90+. This is one low cost lighting kit that would fit this description- as I said before I don't have personal experience with this kit so please research the quality before investing. 

In case you are curious, these are the lights I use, with this soft-box mounted on these C-stands. These are way more than you will need for this task but are great for artificial studio lighting.

Hope this helps you get better photos of the artworks that you pour all of your effort into! Please make any suggestions in the comments.