Photographing paintings

[dashinvaine]

Not entirely sure I'm in the right chategory with this question, but anyway... I recently replaced my Nikon coolpix s1 (5.1 megapixels whatever they are) with a Nicon coolpix L16, 7.1 megapixels. Unlike the old one, i'ts got a zoom lense that pops out and face recognizing gismo. The problem is it doesn't seem to be very good at taking photos of paintings. It's alright for close-ip details, but step away to get the whole image in and areas go badly out of focus. Attached is an example. There's quite fine work in the princess's face but it will not show in a fill image. Because of the small size the face isn't recognized from the required distance, and anyway, I'd rather have the whole thing in focus. (Macro mode doesn't seem to help much.)

I wonder if there is a way of sorting out this problem.

[Gilead]

I'm not familiar with that particular camera, but there should be a "settings" option on the menu somewhere. You should have a choice of like 100 shots at a low resolution 50 shots at medium and 12 shots at super high resolution. Or something like that. Your camera is probably currently defaulted to a low resolution so that you can take lots of pictures. If you choose a higher resolution you should get a better copy of your painting.
Nice work by the way.

[anthro-trees]

The only thing I can tell you is to call around to the photography stores and learn who does scans or photographs of paintings and then ask them what cameras, scanner, software, they use. Or just pay them to do it for you.

:-)

[zanpakatou]

Try dumping your camera in manual focus. Most of the new point and shoots have that by now.