Here is the one i'm thinking of, 85mm f/1.0 Repro-Nikkor.
That
is an intriguing lens. Not at all what I'm looking for, of course, but still a very interesting diversion. I'll have to keep my eyes out for one in the wild. Thanks!
When I do copy work, usually for 3d painting/torn canvas stuff and some sculpture, I use one of these if I'm shooting on small format: http://www.hartblei.de/en/sr120m.htm
I've stumbled across those before, but always figured that, if I ever really wanted to go that route, it might make more sense to skip them and go straight to medium format...which is, alas, probably not a realistic move. Still, their 40/80/120 trio of lenses would be
very nice to have...if I had an extra $12K laying around....
Otherwise, scanning back with a large format for the best quality in repro.
True, but you might be surprised at what you can do with 135 format. I can comfortably do 12x18@300ppi in a single frame, which is plenty of resolution for most of the stuff I do. The rare exception I can reasonably accommodate with stitching.
And...it's been a long, hard slog, but I get superlative color accuracy.
TrumpetPower,
Love the setup, interesting looking target for calibration.
It's my own creation. The majority of the patches are just printed from an iPF8100, but there's a ColorChecker in there with paints matched at Home Depot (and the spectral characteristics are the same as the original), plus another 24 patches of various "interesting" paints, plus a light trap, plus some PTFE. And a dozen pieces of wood. I have some ideas of what to do for the next version, but this is probably already better than anything on the market.
I miss my studio space...
And I wish mine were bigger! It started life as a garage. A previous owner converted it into something vaguely resembling an extension of the living room. I've run copper pipe around the perimeter of the tops of the walls and made drapes I can hang from them. I can go from a normal-looking generic empty room with white walls and (fake) hardwood floors to a white box to a black box to anything between.
...but it's only 10' x 20', with slightly more than 8' ceilings. I've got a big opening to the living room that I can use if I need more working distance, but that gets awkward to work in....
You didn't say this outright but you must have decided that the lens profiles that adjust for distortions are not adequate. Or is it good enough for only certain art work? Does, say, Lightroom use Adobe profiles that change the Canon 50 f2.5 much at all? ...and did DxO have any different profiles that were better, worse?
DNG color management is a cruel and unusual joke. I have the scars -- deep scars -- to prove it. And correct color trumps even the worst distortion you're going to get in a decent lens, by a wide margin.
My workflow corrects both for light falloff (and uneven illumination, should I screw up the setup) and for color. I don't touch geometry; with the 50 CM, there's no need.
I use
Raw Photo Processor for raw conversion;
Argyll CMS for color management;
EquaLight for equalizing illumination; and Photoshop for whatever else (minimal sharpening, cropping, stitching, that sort of thing).
Elle Stone pointed me to a technique for nailing exposure in-camera and then perfectly nailing both exposure and white balance in post. I followed up that message with some refinements I've made to her workflow...but, alas, the text got stripped and only the screenshots remain. Anyway, the straight-out-of-RPP images I get are already very, very close to correct. I then equalize illumination with EquaLight. The first shot (after getting everything set up, of course) is the target, which I then feed to Argyll to generate a profile. For the artwork itself, I apply the profile in RPP before outputting it, and then equalize that with EquaLight. Then it's off to Photoshop for sharpening and cropping, and then back to Argyll for conversion to the printer's profile, and back again to Photoshop to actually print.
Interesting warning on the shift and merge tactic. I was planning to try that to allow me to pitch local artists for this service. I have the 90 and 45TSE's. I do wish the 45 was sharper. A friend of mine has the 50 macro so will have to try the 45TSE side by side with the 50 -- pointed at the same material -- for comparison.
If you're going to do a panorama shift with the TS-Es, you'll need to figure out a way to keep the lens fixed and shift the camera behind it. And, even still, you don't get all that much extra out of it.
What I meant was to leave the camera alone, and to slide the artwork on the table (or, in my case, floor).
There's definitely a big pent-up demand for quality giclée work, even here in the Phoenix metro area. The catch is that artists care primarily about color reproduction, and nobody outside of the national museums knows how to do quality color reproduction. If you can get to the point where it takes several long seconds of close scrutiny by the artist before spotting a part of the image where the colors aren't quite a perfect match, you might have some success.
Cheers,
b&