Barbara Ruth Loc: St.Pete Beach, FL

When photographing documents how far from the subject should the camera be? Is it better to have the camera further away and then zoom in?

jim quist Loc: Missouri

Fill the frame with whichever lens you are using. No need to be at a disrance

therwol Loc: USA

Better to scan documents than photograph them. This is assuming you have a scanner that can scan the size of the documents. As to your question, you would have to experiment with composition and distance. The camera should be parallel to the documents so that they're entirely in focus from top to bottom or side to side. A zoom lens may have a lot of distortion, and the focus may vary across the document. A macro lens would typically have less distortion and more uniform focus, even if you are not super close. You have nothing to lose by experimenting, but you may need a Plan B if you don't get the results you need. Make sure the lighting is even. Make sure the camera is steady. A copy stand would be helpful. Or just use a scanner and forget about it.

larryepage Loc: North Texas area

Unless you are using a macro lens with a flat field of focus, being too close can make it difficult to get your entire document in sharply focused. You may get better results by backing off a little bit.

lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

Best to use a scanner or prime lens at least or a Macro (flat field close focusing prime) lens. If using a camera for copying, have two or four lights at each side at 45 degrees.

Barbara Ruth Loc: St.Pete Beach, FL

THANK YOU. Documents are large old photo albums. I will experiment

Thomas902 Loc: Washington DC

Barbara like larryepage said... A micro lens is a wise choice... You'll benefit from a "flat field" when you fill the frame.
Otherwise acuity will fall off on the edges... Consider using flash at 45 degrees either side to eliminate glare off the surface and to assure no lens/camera induced blur... Tripods are excellent for precise framing...

Be certain to set White Balance to match illumination (example: 5500K for flash etc.)
It would be wise to practice some first... your technique will improve with time... Trust me here...

Believe the Olympus 60mm f/2.8 micro might be excellent option on your Olympus Mark lll
It certainly would be up to this task.

Cheers! Thomas

therwol Loc: USA

You seem to know something about her equipment. But does she have something like the flash setup you suggest? Tripod? Macro lens? Familiarity with white balance? She's talking about using a Zoom lens, so I wonder how far she can take it without spending some money. But as far as using a lens that may not be ideal, It never hurts to try. The results may be acceptable.

Retina Loc: Near Charleston,SC

When I photograph my family's paintings, which are flat like documents, a little distance is good for not only more uniform focus but for a more linear reproduction from edge to edge. I agree scanning is often best but but I have a hard time finding a scanner wider and longer than letter size paper, and there is the occasional document or old photograph I would rather not subject to the bright light a scanner produces. There are scanners that can roll a long document through, but i prefer a platen glass. There are also smart phone applications that stretch and skew the dimensions to perfect rectangles and even correct for exposure variations across the document. I have had great luck copying sheet music that way (always in compliance with copyright laws, of course.)

billnikon Loc: Pennsylvania/Ohio/Florida/Maui/Oregon/Vermont

When I had my studio we had a copy stand lite by two lights at a 45 degree angle to the copy material. We used a 60 mm macro lens and just moved the camera on the stand until we filled the frame. Pay attention to make sure you lens in perpendicular to the page you are copying otherwise one side may be in focus and the other side will not be, stopping down helps but be aware of your lens position.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

Distance is less important that understanding the characteristics of your lens, and which lens will provide the best images.

I am most familiar with Nikon gear. A macro lens like a Nikkor 60mm F2.8 is very well corrected for field curvature - one of the reasons why lenses are often sharper in the center than the edges. It will have very little distortion and good sharpness corner to corner when used at F8.

A lens like the Nikkor 24-70 F2.8 VR has modest (3%) simple barrel distortion at 24mm, minor (1.62%) simple pincushion distortion at 70mm, and nearly zero distortion at 30mm.

Wider lenses, or zooms that start at very short focal lengths, will likely have worst performance at the wider end with regard to sharpness, vignetting and pincushion/barrel distortion. Sharpness may actually be better in the center of the image at 30mm than the Macro, but edges and corners are probably similar, when used at F5.6.

It is not the end of the world if your lens has simple pincushion or barrel distortion, or vignetting - these flaws can easily be corrected by loading a lens profile - provided you are using software that uses lens profiles.

If you want to see test data that will help inform your decision, take a look at https://www.opticallimits.com/ which has a pretty extensive listing of test data for most of the popular lenses.

Looking at optical limits for some lens candidates - the Zuiko 25mm F1.8 and the Zuiko ED 12-45mm F4 Pro seem to tick all the boxes. I believe your M III features an auto correction feature that fixes these distortions in the camera, even to the raw file if I understand correctly, and it even corrects if you have the camera less than perfectly parallel to the plane of the document - as long as it is not too far off - I've never explored this feature in a M4/3 camera.

Lighting will be a challenge. I used to have a lightly frosted glass (like a ground glass) which I would place directly on the document that would allow the image below it to be clearly seen, yet minimize reflections. I used a couple of "hot" photo flood lights, set my color temperature to whatever the lights required. and placed them 45° off either side.

On the other hand, are the pages from your album easily removeable? Can you use a flatbed scanner to do this? It would be far easier to set up and the workflow could be faster.

Cheese

Are you trying to digitize the photos in the album for archival purposes? if so a scanner would get you decent images; a photo using a photo stand and macro lens would be more time consuming but provide better images.

If you are simply making copies of the entire pages in an album to share with family, or post on the web, you may simply want to take a picture with a cell phone. Most of us have photographed checks for deposit to a bank using cell phones. The image quality should be sufficient for email or web posting.

Retina Loc: Near Charleston,SC

Like BillNikon, I did a ton of copy stand work. We used the 55mm Micro-NIKKOR. Using TTL meter was a big plus since you didn't have to adjust the exposure when extending the lens well beyond its stated focal length for close shots which lowers the f value. The results were always extremely sharp and undistorted. I should have mentioned I compromise and use more distance now since all I have for copying is a pre-Ai 105/2.5 Nikkor, or sometimes a 50 mm non-macro. Eventually I will find a good macro. I once read where reversing a regular lens, like the 50mm normal, provides a flatter field for closeup work. At least that sometimes written about in the 70's. Do anyone know whether that is true?

Architect1776 Loc: In my mind

Hip Coyote

My first thought is what document for what purpose? A historic (to you) to display or a multi page doc for recall and retention? If it is for display then the folks above have more expertise than me. If it is a multi page doc for use later or filing, a scanner that will do multiple pages in pdf format, not jpeg, is the answer. If it’s just a doc that you want to keep for your records, and don’t need a lot, there are apps avail that will serve in a pinch.