June 13, 2022 — It was image capture day today. That means I drove 2 ½ hours to Sacramento to Sacramento Giclee where Josh King does his magic with his scanback camera. Just love his work. The scanback digital capture is an impressive piece of technology and produces an incredible high resolution file. It is the next best image capture I have experienced. The best being the $150K Cruise scanner that scanned 60 of my first paintings when I was represented by Art de Soul in Irvine. What a beast! The thing was the size of a king size bed and had its own air-conditioned digs.
For image capture day, here’s an except from http://www.formatrix.co.uk/index.php?page=art-scanback-capture on the scanback capture.
Art Scanback Capture
Where the original work is not suited to drum scanning (due to size, substrate, stability, flexibility, surface texture etc) we can capture very high quality image files using a studio based large format digital scanback camera system.
This set-up allows a high degree of control over the capture process.
The system is basically similar to a conventional copy camera set up. In this case the camera is a large format Sinar X monorail, coupled with the highest quality Rodenstock lens. The 16 HID lamps used are housed in two custom built 7’ lamp housings. The workflow incorporates some clever software that takes into account the smallest of brightness variations due to any fall off in illumination across the artwork, or as a result of the optical characteristics of the lens.
Using a vertical clamp/easel arrangement, we are able to securely mount very large, often quite fragile, art originals in perfect alignment with the camera. As the technology is essentially a hybrid of camera and high end scanner, we are able to produce captures of higher resolution and quality than those produced by digital cameras (even those costing in excess of £35,000).
For larger original / reproduction sizes we can produce 16 bit files up to 1 Gb in size (more than double the size of an 80 megapixel medium format digital camera).
Capturing glossy or metallic surfaces
Where necessary the lighting system can be cross polarised to minimise reflections from glossy surfaces.
The system also allows for special lighting techniques to be employed in order to reproduce metallic media such as simulated gold or silver effects. Where surface texture is an integral element to the original image we are able to arrange the mounting angle of the art and the direction of lighting so that a realistic bas-relief effect is achieved in the capture. The resulting effect produces stronger shadows in one direction, as if the art were illuminated from a light source coming from an upper corner, for example.
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