Assembling The Equipment You’ll Need for Accurate Tiling
Obviously, not every painting needs to be shot in tiles, but if you’re going to do it part of the time, your art copy set-up should always be set up to accommodate it. This will also allow for more efficient workflow copying of multiple paintings. But because everyone’s needs are so different,, you may end up building such a set-up yourself. Fortunately, there’s not much to it. One of the keys to efficient art copy (unless you want to use a ZigAlign on every shot) is to have a rig that will keep x/y/z perpendiculars true while allowing for accurate tiling. With an expensive vertical stand, this is a given. But the limited travel of the vertical stands require wide (er) lenses, and offer limited field size. Horizontal copy is superior, but you’re on your own when it comes to the equivalent of a copy stand. First off, you need a space with a flat (preferably horizontal) concrete floor with a wall (prefer ably plumb) at one end and twenty feet plus of clear space for positioning the camera. The first step is to make a rolling easel on the wall.

First, you’ll need an overhead track and wheels to roll the easel on. A variety of heavy-duty door tracks are available for reasonable cost, some with ball bearing wheels. This track needs to be attached to some metal or heavy wood (i.e. 2” angle iron or a 4” x 4”) that must be very straight. This is then either cantilevered off the wall or suspended from the ceiling, keeping in mind that it will need many points of attachment so it doesn’t bend over time. Care must be taken to make the track horizontal. For the easel itself, I use a cut-down fire-code wooden door, as it has a lot of mass and can be drilled and screwed as needed. This door needs to be spaced from the wall by a castor wheel (fig. #2) carefully mounted to it makes the face of the easel plumb throughout the length of the track.

For centering the art, I added an adjustable shelf repurposed from a table saw fence. Once the easel is tracking horizontally and the face is plumb, it’s necessary to make a couple of lines on the face of the easel, one horizontal and one vertical, for framing the camera, centering the art, etc. The intersection of these lines will also be the axis for the lens to start in most cases, so make it a convenient working height, like 60”. Next, some calibrations are necessary for the horizontal and vertical. Note we “temporarily” (i.e. 4 years ago) stapled up two of my wife’s sewing tapes. in the easel’s left-right travel to make our “home base” for the easel to live, i.e. the place we align the camera on, and use for lighting.

Note our slick pointer is at 23” (home base) which is marked in red. From this position, we drop a plumb line (or use a long level) to locate this same position on the floor. Using a secret carefully guarded by the Masons (?) for centuries (a triangle with sides 3 x 4 x 5 units always produces one right angle), we can make an accurate reference line (the blue tape) for the camera’s lens to travel on, exactly square to the easel’s path. While it is not essential, we use a simple track dolly for the camera to facilitate changing image size. This particular dolly is based on skateboard wheels and metal pipes The entire rig can be quickly picked up when we need the space. Nearly as efficient are a wheel accessoriy kit for your tripod. Bogen/Manfrotto makes a nice one, but it tends to jostle the camera. Anyway, with the lens height at 60” and directly over the reference line, we should be able to put the cross-hairs of the camera on the intersection of the lines on the easel, and track in and out without losing (too much) allignment. It is at this point that a Zig Align check should be used to dial things in for good. Or at least until the next time.

But what about the odd painting that demands both vertical AND horizontal tiles, something in the 6’ x 6’ range? Or worse, what about 8’ x 10’?? Yes, we get these with disturbing regularity. For this dark art, see scanning really big paintings and scanning enormous paintings.