Solutions for
Sculptures & Decorative Arts
DT Heritage
Industry-Leading Solutions
Shooting Sculpture & Decorative Arts is especially demanding. Smaller items such as jewelry often challenge depth of field, while large Sculpture & Decorative Arts like large installation art challenge resolution requirements.
Digitizing such collections requires a solution that delivers conservation handling, preservation image quality, production speed, and extensive flexibility – especially for the illumination of the object. DT systems meet all these demands and are ideal for digitizing Sculpture & Decorative Arts.
Image Courtesy of the Minneapolis Museum of Art
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Why Digitization?
Do it once. Do it right.
With the technology, expertise and services offered by DT Heritage, it is possible to create a very high-quality digital mirror of your original assets, creating an immediately accessible digital archive.
Why Digitization?
Conservation Handling
Sculpture & Decorative Arts require careful handling to ensure the process of digitization does not degrade their condition. DT solutions are always designed  to ensure the user remains fully in control of the Sculpture & Decorative Arts, allowing them to use traditional conservation-friendly techniques and methods to ensure their safety.
Preservation Quality
DT solutions exceed FADGI 4-Star, ISO 19264, and Metamorfoze-Strict standards. At the heart of all of our systems are our purpose-built cameras offering up to 150mp of resolution at 16-bits of color depth. Coupled with cultural-heritage LED illumination (high CRI, high CQS, and smooth spectral shape), high-resolution lenses, and ultra-low vibration shutters this results in true Preservation Digital Objects with accurate color, tone, and detail. Many manufacturers claim their equipment attains FADGI 4-star or ISO ISO 19264-1 A-class quality but very few others do.
Our raw processing software, with its class-leading debayering algorithm, extracts pixel-level detail and color accuracy previously only seen in cumbersome multi-shot systems.
Production Speed
When digitizing large collections of Sculptures & Decorative Arts (e.g. ten thousand rings) production speed is critical – both during capture and post-processing. DT solutions are able to deliver unsurpassed speed in both categories.
Capture Stage
Our systems capture nearly instantly (e.g. 1/60th sec) and display almost immediately. In Capture One CH tools such as Focus Mask and Multiple Focus Checking Points can be used to quickly evaluate focus and depth of field, including in our systems which support Scheimpflug movements (rise/fall/tilt/swing). Other tools, like Overlay, are invaluable at allowing precise and consistent composition especially when capturing homogenous collections (e.g. thousands of arrowheads). Fully integrated live view allows an easy preview of the capture in real time. Together, these types of tools can speed up the capture stage exponentially.
Minneapolis Institute of Arts
Post-Processing Stage
Most digitization software looks like it was developed in the 1990s, because most of it was. Capture One Cultural Heritage (CH) is a modern solution built on the venerable and widely used Capture One software. It is designed for cultural heritage workflows, supports all modern operating systems, is frequently updated, and can handle massive numbers of files with ease. Checking focus, zooming in on high resolution images, and scrolling through pages for quality control is lightning fast.
Capture One CH is ideal for object digitization with tools such as Local Adjustments (e.g. dodge/burn without leaving raw), Â LAB Support, Resolution Ruler, Batch Processing, and Raw-Stage Quality Control. These tools enable the automation of tedious post-production tasks that are inherent to the post-processing stage of object digitization.
Extensive Flexibility
The encyclopedic collections of cultural heritage institutions are rarely homogenous. Our systems are versatile, interoperable, and modularly upgradeable to ensure you’re not stuck with a limited tool box. They are also flexible in their use, allowing techniques that are impossible on competing systems.
Interoperable and Modularly Upgradable
Typically our solution for digitizing Sculptures & Decorative Arts comprises of a Phase One XF body and a Phase One digital back. These components are highly interoperable with the rest of our product line. For instance, an institution that purchased a [DT Versa + DT RCam + Phase One IQ4 150] for scanning newspapers would only need to add the Phase One XF to digitize objects and oversized materials.
Big or Small? No problem
Our system includes the lenses, features, resolution, and software required to shoot objects of nearly any size. In more scientific applications we often provide solutions that image down to 1 micron feature sizes (25,000ppi scan) that surpasses microscope-based scanners. On the other end of the spectrum, DT systems have been used to photograph large-scale installation artwork many meters in length and architectural images such as the exterior facade of a renovated museum.
Creative Lighting
Most of the time Cultural Heritage imaging is done with very flat proscriptive lighting, typically two lights mounted 45° from the subject. However,  there are situations where more creative lighting is required, for instance, to accentuate the curves and shape of a sculpture. DTDCH systems can be used with free-standing, easily movable lighting with a variety of modifiers. For better integration with lighting, the Phase One XF includes a Profoto Air wireless module that can directly control the power of any attached Profoto Air light.
Minneapolis Institute of Arts
What we recommended for digitizing Sculptures & Decorative Arts:
The Phase One XF Camera System
Using full-frame Medium Format sensors 2.5 times larger than the ones found in high-end DSLRs, the XF delivers a powerful combination of the highest possible resolution together with large, high dynamic range pixels with exceptional wide angular response.
Celebrating 20 Years of Digitization Excellence - 2003-2023
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