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• 163 Appendix Digitizing the Artwork larry j. hyde The 57 pieces of artwork reproduced in this book were digitized from 2 media formats: the original artwork itself, or in cases where the original works were not available, a collection of 35 mm transparencies that Compton himself photographed. Only 24 of Compton’s original 57 Fire in the Sea paintings are preserved within a known collection. However, the artist photographed all of the paintings with both print and slide film. His primary motive in documenting his work in this way may have simply been for organizational or filing purposes. For example, he attached prints to individual files containing specific information about the subject of each photograph. Compton’s purpose in using slide film is less evident. But it is hard to imagine that his intentions were motivated by anything more than a compulsion toward redundant documentation based on the casual manner in which he captured the images. Compton gave little regard, for example, to angular perspective or lighting. Even so, these slides allowed for preservation of an amazing body of work that would have been impossible for the artist to foresee. Compton’s original artwork was rephotographed for this project using a Nikon D3 D-SLR coupled with a Nikon 28–70mm f/2.8 AF-S lens. The camera, mounted on a tripod with a fully adjustable head, was oriented for horizontal/landscape framing. Tilting the camera down allowed the lens barrel to be perpendicular to floor and the camera sensor to parallel both the floor and the painting resting on it. A spirit level placed alternately on the camera’s rear LCD panel and floor allowed precise parallel alignment between canvas and camera sensor. Proper parallel alignment in this way required a means to flatten the canvas, which in most cases was warped to some degree. Taping the back corners of each canvas to the rubberized side of a large and heavy piece of sectional carpet made this correction. A focal length of 70 mm was used for all exposures. This moderate telephoto setting allowed a comfortable working distance between canvas and camera while preserving an accurate image perspective and minimizing spatial distortion. Increasing the size or number of pixels any given subject represents in an image can improve its digital resolution. This principle was used to maximize resolution by adjusting composition of the canvas in the camera’s viewfinder so that horizontal margins of the canvas were aligned with the respective margins of the viewfinder. Precise alignment and maximum use of sensor pixels in this way are possible only with a camera viewfinder that allows 100% frame coverage. A simple yet effective lighting technique was used. Experiments with multiple strobes and configurations in a nonreflective darkroom proved less successful than exposing comparable images to natural light. As a result, available light in the shade of a building under midday, overcast skies was used exclusively. Incident light measurements from a Sekonic L-608 light meter determined camera shutter speed. The aperture remained fixed at f5.6. A flat subject negated depth-of-field considerations, which allowed the luxury of a midrange aperture setting where lens performance is generally optimized. ISO, or light sensitivity, of the camera remained fixed at 200, the lowest available setting on a Nikon D3. There is an inverse relationship between ISO and image quality: as ISO decreases, image quality increases. ISO setting McKee_Book 1.indb 163 10/15/13 12:49 PM 164 • appendix requirements are determined by the amount of available light, and the abundant available light used during this project allowed a consistently low ISO. This assisted the creation of highly accurate files. With fixed aperture and ISO settings, shutter speeds ranged in value from 1/100 to 1/150 second. Minor variations in ambient light levels (±1/3 stop) produced by shifting cloud cover required frequent light measurements and shutter speed adjustments. Color accuracy was assisted by use of a WhiBal® gray card inserted in a vacant area of each composition and photographed along with the canvas. In this way, individualized postcapture color calibration was achieved through Adobe Photoshop CS4 and its white balance tool. Digital photographs of Compton’s original artwork were captured as “raw” files in Nikon’s proprietary NEF format. These 16-bit files are uncompressed and retain 100% of the original image data. Although substantially larger than compressed files, the raw alternative provides a substantial benefit in postcapture editing . This advantage is directly related to image size, or...

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