1. Buy
35 mm slide film, balanced for tungsten lighting, ASA 64.
2. The film only works with a certain type of tungsten photoflood bulb: ECT 500 watts. There is also a tungsten balanced 250 watt bulb, but it is best to have strong light. Check your lamp to make sure it is rated to accept the heat from 500 watt bulbs.
3. The camera must have a polarized filter. Each lamp must have a polarizer filter also. This eliminates the glare on oil paintings, and makes colors richer. It also prevents drawings on white paper from appearing as though they are on gray paper. Pencil drawings in particular are hard to shoot without polarizing filters. All media are improved in reproduction when using polarizaring filters. If you take your work to a professional, always ask if they use polarization. If they don’t, then go elsewhere—they don’t know what they are doing.
4. The camera must be an SLR (single lens reflex). This means that when you look through the viewfinder, you are also looking directly through the lens. This prevents the problems created by parallax, which occur with cameras that have a separate viewfinder off to one side of the lens. Parallax problems mean that at close range (under 15 feet) you will not be able to line up the camera properly, and your images will all be cut off.