I am purchasing a Canon 550d primarily to document my fiance's artwork for archival purposes. I would like to know what lens or lenses you would recommend in order to minimise distortion.
I will be photographing the work indoors, using artificial light (thanks for the suggestions about lighting and other technical matters). The artwork is primarily 2D, up to 3 meters long on its longest size.
We were considering buying a the kit EF-S 18-135mm IS lens as a versatile lens, however I suspect the ~$300 could be better spent on a more specialised lens. While this is around the current limit of our budget, an initial purchase of this magnitude could be followed by later, more expensive lenses.
We have no existing system of SLR lenses.
Answer
When photographing artworks for sale, I use Canon's 24-70 f/2.8, which is way out of your budget; However, the reasion I do this is that with a compatible camera body, it stores a lens profile in the image produced that can correct for distortions during post-processing. A list of currently supported lenses is available from the Adobe website
You don't need a lens that expensive though; If you use the RAW mode on your camera and use Adobe Lightroom, then you can correct most distortions by hand, if a lens profile is not available. In which case, I'd probably look to recommend a lens that is going to be flexible and allow you to work in tight situations, such as in the artist's studio. You won't be needing a particularly wide aperture/narrow depth of field for this (otherwise the 50 f/1.8 is one of the best value for money Canon lenses), but you might need some fairly wide angles for some of the larger pieces, if you are in confined spaces, in which case, I'd probably err towards the 18-135 that you're already considering - it might mean a little more work getting the post-processing sorted, but it is a good all range for use as a general purpose lens.
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