Have you ever been frustrated by the letter- or legal-sized image area on your desktop scanner? Last month, I designed a website for a local business using dozens and dozens of pieces of their generously-sized original artwork. This stuff was huge! (Each piece of artwork was approximately 24-by-36 inches.) Needless to say, using my desktop scanner was out of the question. And without access to a large format scanner, I had to get creative…

After a bit of thinking about the dilemma, I figured it was time to put my Canon Digital Rebel to work. I waited for an overcast day and pulled up the shades on the south-facing wall of windows in my studio. I set the artwork up on a makeshift copy stand at an 80 degree angle to catch the light. Then I screwed my ($1 garage sale refugee) tripod into the Rebel and shot a few test images.

I wasn’t happy with the results when the first images were brought into the computer. The natural lighting almost got it there, but everything was too dark. Then the proverbial light bulb went off in my head. A quick scramble about the ranch turned up a suitable pair of lamps to supplement the lighting.

After a few more test shots I had the lighting worked out. Then it came time for the sheer drudgery of production photography … it took the good part of the day to get the entire job done, all while crouching to avoid casting shadows from the natural light.

All-in-all, the job turned out quite well. But if I had access to the right technology, it would have gone a whole lot faster…

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[tags]scanner,digitizing,artwork,large format,canon digital rebel[/tags]