Imaging Working Group

Wow, March is already coming to an end! I hope you are all having an excellent Spring wherever you are. 

Here's my question for March: 

What imaging accessory (clamp, light, stand, target, bag, etc.) is your favorite and you'd recommend to others? Pictures, videos, links are welcome!

Here's mine:

My colleague devised this target clamp system with soldering octopus arms that was attached to a tripod, which was extremely useful in imaging wall paintings onsite without contact.

Wow, March is already coming to an end! I hope you are all having an excellent Spring wherever you are. 

Here's my question for March: 

What imaging accessory (clamp, light, stand, target, bag, etc.) is your favorite and you'd recommend to others? Pictures, videos, links are welcome!

Here's mine:

My colleague devised this target clamp system with soldering octopus arms that was attached to a tripod, which was extremely useful in imaging wall paintings onsite without contact.

Thanks for sharing Wendy - this prompted me to share what I built for holding imaging targets upright and close to the paintings we're imaging.

About two years ago we decided to standardise the way we mounted all of our targets. So every target attaches using some kind of magnetic strip. We use the ISA object level targets which are magnetic, but we then attach magnetic tape to all our other Xrite, Munsell, ISA targets etc. The magnets are nice because they are strong, but not too strong, and once placed you can still reposition a target easily. Before this velcro was used, but this was really not ideal, the scratchy surface, hard to reposition, and you had to pull at it so hard to remove it that you would inevitably damage the targets. So now all of our easels are fitted with a strip of magnetic tape along the shelf which is great for imaging in our studio. However for photography outside of the studio, or in situations where we needed to position the target other than on the easel shelf (e.g. for detail photographs, location photographs, raking light photographs where the target needs to be positioned so not to cast a shadow on the work etc) then we still needed a solution. So I made a range of very basic holders, they are just L-shape plastic profiles (they are actually the kind of thing that is stuck to protruding wall corners to protect them from damage) and on one side a hole is drilled to bolt a standard spigot and on the other side we affix magnetic tape. We have them in all different variations, different lengths, sizes, some with magnetic tape on both sides, some with a layer of plastazote on one size.

We also introduced target-holding stands. Each stand (a wheely manfrotto baby stand) has two manfrotto magic arms, one arm with one of these target holders, the other with one of the Calibrite target holders. Which I also really like. We have at least two of these in every studio now.

The other bit of kit, which is very simple, but I could not work without is the 16" Hejnar arca-style rail we mount between our cameras and tripods. We have L-brackets fitted to every camera, and a few of these Hejnar rails, we find this setup keeps the rail precisely parallel to the plane of focus, so you can use the rail. So we make two laser-rangefinder measurements from each end of the rail to the painting, and adjust the tripod head until these two measurements are equal. We find this is a very quick way to align our cameras yaw fairly precisely to a painting.

Andrew

Wow, March is already coming to an end! I hope you are all having an excellent Spring wherever you are. 

Here's my question for March: 

What imaging accessory (clamp, light, stand, target, bag, etc.) is your favorite and you'd recommend to others? Pictures, videos, links are welcome!

Here's mine:

My colleague devised this target clamp system with soldering octopus arms that was attached to a tripod, which was extremely useful in imaging wall paintings onsite without contact.