THE REPRODUCTION OF FINE ART (Part 2)

In the second part of this series Mike McNamee looks at some more of the fine detail required in the reproduction of fine art images for the limited edition prints market.

Coping with Reflections

You sometimes have to look hard to check that reflections are not interfering with your carefully crafted image. The author had a catalogue shot to show his students for many years. A very sophisticated table layout, complete with immaculate cutlery, cut glass, floral arrangements etc was adorned with an inverted image, in every single spoon, of the photographer decked out in Bermuda shorts and open toed sandals - it rather spoiled the ambience of the shot!

The following tips are useful

1. Use a black, non-reflective shield to hide the camera, with a hole for the lens aperture.

2. Use either a long cable release or the self-timer to make the exposure so that you can stand to one side.

3. Kill the room lights and blind any windows.

4. Consider using crossed polarisers on lighting and lenses. If the light is linearly polarised in one plane and the camera lens is linear polarized in the extinction plane, no reflections will show. This is particularly useful for impasto work in which it is impossible to position the lighting to avoid reflections. The technique is so good that you can photograph things that are under water or oil for scientific work, although this is not a requirement for artwork!

Colour Calibration Aids

Exposure should be judged with a competent incident light meter or by camera-based metering off a grey card. Follow the usual rules of ensuring that you do not burn out highlights in a transparency or digital image. The image is best shot with a calibration aid in place. Typically a Kodak Q13 Step Wedge and Colour scale are employed, as there are no issues of reflection. The Macbeth Color Checker or the Color Checker DC are also excellent.

Focussing and Vibration

Control If the artwork has a very diffuse structure you may have to place a thin paper target on it to assist focussing. Note that zoom lenses with push-pull zooming are notorious for moving during the course of shooting with the artwork-flat orientation. Tape up the controls if needs be.

Don't move around during the exposure, most especially if you are on a suspended floor. Avoid fixing equipment to walls, floors and ceilings that are "live". For example a wall tied to the roof trusses will move when wind is active on the roof and is termed live. People who dwell alongside railway lines also have to take care; we recall photographers who used to time their darkroom exposures to avoid the trains - fat chance of that with today's timekeeping! Use a cable release and lock your mirror up if you can. If your camera is an older one the chances are that the mirror will move up on first depression when the self-timer is used. Doing this ensures that the mirror bounce has subsided when the actual exposure is made. The cable release is even better if it is electronic and long so you can move away as well as activating the shutter with no mechanical force at all. A coloured shirt may reflect into your reproduction.

Optics

The choice of optics depends upon the fitting of the camera and maybe what is available in the studio. Zoom lenses should be avoided if possible and the best choice is a dedicated, flat field Macro Optic. They usually have focal lengths of 55, 60, 90, 105 or 200mm in 35mm format. Digital cameras, which factor up the focal length can cause you to rapidly run out of height on a copy stand. The down side of copying from very close is the additional distortion if the axes are not perfectly aligned.

The Nikkor 55mm f:2.8 macro lens is archetypal in its class. Optimised for flat field copying at A4 sizes, it is still listed by Nikon although it is becoming a rarity. It costs around £435 new, £275 used. Second hand it is classed as medium rare (owners do not like to part with them!) When we looked, Cambrian had one and the Jessops chain had 9 available. The AF 105mm Nikkor costs around £700. All of these older optics fit to the latest Nikon and Fuji Digital SLR's and the loss of some electronic functions should not impede artwork reproduction. Similar optics are available in the Canon ranges and obviously the Kodak digital models, based on specific lens marques, can take advantage of the optics available. Do check before you purchase though.

Output - putting ink to paper

The choice of output is wider than ever. As has already been discussed pigment based inks are almost mandatory for fine art reproduction and there does not appear to be anything on the horizon to change this. Given that we are looking to inkjet output, the paper has a large influence. The Fine Art Trade Guild demands that accredited prints and printers should have Blue Wool rating of at least 6 and that the paper should be an acid free, archival quality of at least 250gsm. You can check the detail on their web site at http://www.fineart.co.uk/qualifs/printstd.htm. The conditions are quite onerous but so are the prices that can be charged for accredited prints. You are not obliged of course to follow FATG standards but they do provide a point of reference. An interesting feature of the standards is that colour fidelity never gets a mention, perhaps reflecting the background of the Guild and its artists. As photographers who daily confront the problems sending materials for reproduction we are perhaps ahead of them in that sphere.

The Epson 2100 and 7600 printers stand out as clear contenders for your choice of output. The 7600 is specifically targeted at the photography and fine art market. It can accept a variety of paper, roll, sheet and board media and lists 23 media inking choices in its print drop down. Epson have been careful to accommodate the need to output on papers other than their own and the new printers perform admirably with Permajet, Hahnemule, Somerset, Lyson and Cranes materials (there are others but we have only personally tested those in the list). There is an almost limitless choice of paper, ink and settings combinations and some of these issues are discussed in the various paper reviews we have conducted lately.

A choice that has to be made is between the Matte Black ink and the Photo Black. They are quite different, the Photo Black is a dye and the Matte Black is a pigment. Within any ink set it is not normally the black which fades first and so the lifetimes for black and white prints made with Epson Ultrachrome inks are rated as more than 100 years. The values for longevity vary according to where you look. The lowest rating is for Somerset velvet at 57 years for colour using Matte Back ink. The Epson Premium Glossy has the highest rating at 85 years. They average around 75 years and variations in display conditions mean that they are probably all around the same for practical purposes. People never display original watercolours in bright sunlight and digital prints should be afforded the same care unless you are willing to enjoy them now and repent at leisure! Independent testing by FOGRA for Epson rated all the combinations (Photo Black on "photo" papers and Matte Black on "art" papers) at Blue Wool 6-7 thus meeting FATG standards. If you chose to use other ink sets (and there are many) check on the manufacturers web site for the fade testing.

We will not in this article be talking about colour management and profiles for fine art printing. The issues are more or less the same as other photographic activities except that there is usually a need to match colours of original and print. This is difficult and artists are very sensitive to their colours. Comparisons (favourable and otherwise) are very easy to make when you have an original and a reproduction before you. If you are printing for a client you need to convince them at the outset which colours are likely to be out of gamut and how much compromise is going to have to be made in bringing the overall colours to an optimum match. Calibrated equipment and the use of quality controls are an important element in this quest.

To RIP or Not To RIP

Left to their own devices, Epson printers will use the built-in look up tables or, if you choose to do so, a bespoke profile specific to your printer-paper combination. The next level of control is afforded by the use of a raster image processor (RIP). These come in various guises and prices from around the £350 mark to many thousands of pounds.

We chose to look at the Shiraz RIP from AIT International. This has a good reputation amongst photographers as being easy to use and efficient. You get some idea where your hard-earned cash goes when you open the box - no less than 4 CD's and a printed manual. The subject is a little big for coverage in this feature so we will come back to RIPs in a later issue; however, here are the basics. They offer control over the linearisation of the inks, which improves both the overall colour precision and also helps to maintain good neutral colours. Shiraz also allows nesting, which is the arranging of different images together on the width of your roll so as to optimise your paper usage. Once set up, the host computer can be allowed to get on with printing without any further intervention from the photographer. A batch of prints from a wedding for example could be nested for any number of different images and image sizes.

Particularly for fine art repro, the RIP also allows the user to adjust the inking levels. The total ink limit on an inkjet is almost always higher than conventional printing but by loading the maximum ink onto the paper the highest fade resistance is achieved. Too much ink will cause cockling of a paper and the inking level must be matched to the substrate saturation level.

Finally RIPs also have the ability to process EPS (Encapsulated Postscript) files typically used in page layout programs. Without a RIP such an image may appear as a box on the page, an 8-bit TIFF proxy image or, in the worst case, a bunch of gobbledegook!

In Conclusion

Hopefully you have gathered that there is a lot more to Fine Art Reproduction that first meets the eye. Regard this as both a challenge and a business opportunity, any investment in time and money is quite likely to provide a return. Your other business activities can also benefit. Whilst the word Gicleé became debased by the influx of non-archival printing technologies, it is now set to regain some of its mystique and we hear from our American cousins that wedding clients over there are starting to enquire if Gicleé prints are available as part of the package. The moral is obvious - high quality, high technology prints can attract a substantial premium in price so give it some serious thought. In the tough trading environment of the day, investments will be better able to gather a return if they are multi-use.

The SWPP 2008 Convention was an outstanding success,
we have 174 days to get ready for the 2009 convention - which starts on January 14, 2009

Photo Quote: There are no rules and regulations for perfect composition. If there Were we would be able to put all the information into a computer and Would come out with a masterpiece. We know that's impossible. You have To compose by the seat of your pants. - Arnold Newman