I'd like to make this a place for discussions about to shoot the best possible pictures under the extreme, alien and hostile circumstance the image hunter-gatherer commonly encounters in museums or archaeological sites. This includes post-processing.
How do you take shots of artefacts in display cases? I try to do it from an angle to minimize the reflections. It also helps to no small degree wearing dark T-shirts or pullovers. Still, the result is just so. But I don't know much about filters, which ones do you use?
Another challenge are graffitos, scratched stone drawings. I plan to make some shots soon but I have no experience to rely on. How can I bring out best the visibility of the markings. I need to play with the light-dark contrast somehow, don't I?
And, do you work with the RAW format?
Stefan (Literary references to the discussed topics are always appreciated.)
Yes, it helps if you have a black or dark shirt and you stand in front of the glass case inside which is the object you're taking a photo of. Try to stand between the light source and the object, if the light reflects badly from the glass. Don't use a flash, obviously. Sometimes if the museum room is very crowded, it needs some waiting in order to get a good photo of the object. But usually that's not the case when speaking of the rare objects we don't already have good photos of, they're in museums not so often crowded by tourists.
Take good pictures from each side, and maybe from top and under if possible. Sometimes it would be good to see what details the museum has given to the item, so picturing the sign of the item is not a bad idea either.
I use Adobe Photoshop, like probably most other people, to edit photographs. I can erase almost all reflections, but sometimes it takes a lot of time and patience. RAW or jpg, doesn't matter so much, when you have the picture in high quality, big resolution that means. If the reflections on the glass are bad, you can try to erase them using levels or curves in Photoshop. Put more contrast to the photo, but not too much. You can even construct the picture of many photos if you have reflections in them in different places, but then you have to be careful not to distort the image, if the photos are taken from slightly different angles.
Photographing graffitos, reliefs and other carvings, the lighting is important. If the light comes from straight front, you can't see almost anything of the carving. The light should come from side, in really small angle, so even the smallest scratches would become visible, when the side lights strikes a shadow in them. Again at processing these images, putting more contrast will usually help.
Some savvy advice in the posts above. You are working in "extreme" conditions, especially the glare. In post, I use PhotoScape which is free online and carries no "bugs." PhotoScape has the best backlighting feature, which I augment with slight contrast and deepening.
best 'o luck,
Alan J. Campbell
member of Legio III Cyrenaica and the Uncouth Barbarians
Author of:
The Demon's Door Bolt (2011)
Forging the Blade (2012)
"It's good to be king. Even when you're dead!"
Old Yuezhi/Pazyrk proverb
Get a good polarizing filter. In photography, you get what you pay for! It will help a lot, but not remove, any reflections. Stand at an angle to the glass so any light bounces away. Blocking the light will help reflections, but as light is often lacking, you want to get as much as you can.
Greets!
Jasper Oorthuys
Webmaster & Editor, Ancient Warfare magazine
Here's a bit of esoteric information for you. There is something called "Brewster's Law" (nothing to do with beer, unfortunately). It goes like this.
"Light reflected from a surface is 'plain polarised' to the greatest degree when the tangent of the angle of incidence is equal to the refractive index of the medium from which the reflection occurs."
So what? (I hear you all cry). Well, at an incident angle of about 60 degrees (I think the actual figure is 57 degrees, but what's 3 degrees between friends?), the tangent is equal to the refractive index (the amount by which light is bent) of the glass/air interface. In other words, if you stand at that angle to the glass of the case and if you use (as Jasper suggested) a polarising filter on your lens, you can eliminate most of the reflections from the glass. Of course, wearing something dark also helps a lot. I've found that this little trick works very well, even if you are using flash. You only really get problems with flash photographs of glass display cases if you stand at 90 degrees (or thereabouts) to the glass surface.
I've added a photo taken in the British Museum last week, where I used this little known aspect of school physics!
![[Image: inaciem-bandeau.png]](http://static-media.com/rome/inaciem-bandeau.png)
