What camera you use is of less importance, IMO, than the lens and lighting. Any good mid level and up camera body will produce the photos you want. Possibly a full frame DSLR would be better for your proposed results.

Decide on a camera and then the proper lens for that system. I would not get a lens that is soft at the edges or anywhere near wide angle. If you have the room, a bit longer prime lens (minimum 50mm) will provide the least distortion.

Proper lighting goes hand in hand with the right lens for what you are wanting to do. You need to learn lighting to properly if you are reproducing art.

Are you shooting your art pieces flat on the floor or table or are you shooting them hanging on a wall? You'll need a proper setup to have your camera parallel to the art. Easier to do that shooting down, a bit harder shooting to a wall because you can be level but not necessarily parallel to the wall. A tripod that allows for your type of setup along with light stands, modifiers, etc. will make your shooting easier and replicable. Your set up can be as complicated or simple as your tolerance to the quality of your finished product.

Not a good idea at all to use a wide lens, as they are nowhere near adequately corrected for copy work. Nor will a single flash work due to reflections. You will need a macro lens or other lens that is sharp and has no CA, and does not suffer from barrel distortion like WA lenses. Two diffused light sources at 45 degree angles might be enough if they are large enough to cover the larger canvases evenly, in a completely dark room without other light sources. $1000 is really not enough to do this job correctly IMO. They will clearly be reproductions that do not faithfully resemble the originals.

A $1,000 limit may be a tall order for a decent copy setup. You budge, beside a good camera body and lens has to include some specific lighting requirements, a good quality polarizing filter and some polarizing filter for 2 light sources.

You don't need highly specialized camera/lens gear for short runs of prints for casual sales but if you get into high volume lithographic production, the standards and accompanying requirements may entail higher quality and thereby calling for far more costly equipment.


I would suggest a full frame body and a macro lens in either a 60mm or 100mm focal length. These lenses deliver good quality at closer and moderately close distances so these will accommodate the size range you specified.

Lighting is extremely important for even exposure, control of any glare or reflection that could result from the paints, varnishes or other finishes that you apply to your paintings. Cross-polarized lighting is important not only for reflection or glare control but to obtain proper contrast and color saturation.

You can probably use LED lighting units or electronic flash. LEDs are probably less expensive and you can see exactly what you are doing- flash gear with modeling lamps would be more costly.

You can make a fixed setup with 2 lights, each placed at 45 degrees to the camera/subject axis. Each light is equipped with a plastic polarizing screen oriented according to the markings provided on the cardboard frames that retain the filters. A good optical glass CPL filter is placed on the lens. As you rotate the filter you will see the negation of glare and the increase in color saturation. You can meter the light at all 4 corners of each painting to ensure that it is even and make a few bracketed exposure of each painting.

If you create palette knife or bas relief work, you can use only one of the lights to retain the surface texture- that is called interpretative copying.

As others have alluded to, you will need some gray cards and color checking targets to keep things calibrated.


You can research the used market for the camera and lens gear. A crop-sensor can work but if you equip yourself with a better body, this may be more economical going forward. I'm sure you can fie a good used macro lens. Check with B&H, KEH, Adorama and some of the other reputable dealers.

In my commercial business, I do quite a bit of art reproduction for artists, galleries, dealers, museums, and folks who assess, authenticate and evaluate artwork. The aforementioned setup it the system I use. It may seem very complex but once you have it set up, even out the lighting and standardize your and exposure, it becomes easy and routine to record all of you work as you produce it.

Theses system works well on works of various mediums- oils, acrylics, watercolors, tempera, pen and ink, pencil sketches, etchings, etc.

I will attach a basic lighting diagram, a shot of the polarizing screen that is employed over the lights and a typical painting I have copied. This one is about 60x80 inches, hanging in a museum and could not be removed from the frame. The diagram of the copy stand and a large format camera is just to give you a basic idea of the setup. A digital camera mounted on a sturdy tripod and a mechanism to hold your paintings on the wall will work well- just keep the camera exactly parallel to the wall, level, and centered to he painting.

I wish I had better news for your budgetary questions. I have used Nikon and Canon gear for this kind of work. There are other good brands as well but perhaps it will be more likely to find some good used gear in theses makes. The polarized lighting filter material is available from Roscoe photographic and stages lighting suppliers (Google them for a dealer near you). Excellent CPL filters are made by Hoya, Zeiss, and B+W.

E. L Shapiro has good advice good advice for lighting.

I have copied paintings. It is a challenge.

1.You need to have the sensor plane exactly parallel to the plane of the painting. I have used a copy stand for smaller works and an easel that would allow the painting to hang vertically.

2. Have your monitor and printer color calibrated. Also use a color checker.

3. I would use continuous lighting of good color quality. Although the lights are super hot photographic incandescent lights are the gold standard for color quality. LED will, however, usually be fine.

4. Use a macro lens. These have a flat field - Very little barrel or pincushion distortion. A lot of macro photographers like long focal lengths. You may want some of the shorter focal length particularly if the paintings are large or your room is small. In FF focal lengths 50 -100mm will be were you want to be. Nikon has a variety of focal lengths for macro lenses. The 40mm (DX) and 60mm (for DX and FX) might be good choices.

5. Consider how large you need make your reproductions - the standard will be 300 dpi where works will be looked at closely. If the work will be seen only at a distance you can use less than this. ( perhaps as low as 100 dpi) This will determine how many megapixels you need.

6. Should your need more than 20 to 24 mp. You have some further choices. These are
a. purchase a 40 -50mp camera ($$$)
b. use stitching software - be sure the software will allow the use of images where the camera or image moves parallel to the sensor plane.
c. consider using an Olympus camera that has the high resolution mode (80MP raw). This mode requires a stationary subject. My Pen F does this. The 30 and 60mm m.zuiko macro lenses are excellent.

7. if you use a high megapixel camera building vibrations may be an issue. Use a heavy tripod on the ground floor, if possible.

This will be difficult to do on your budget. You may be able to get a used PenF and used 30mm m.zuiko for $1000. (Another 20MP Olympus could be OK too if you can get it cheap enough.)

Consider renting to see if you like a setup before buying.