I want to photograph about 200 acrylic paintings done by a family member who now has dementia. It's meant to be a tribute in the form of a self-published book. She had painted as a hobby her entire life and had won multiple awards over the years, and had some paintings on display in the City Hall at one point.
I bought a Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX10 for this purpose. I have two floodlights that are about 5300 K.
I was following the setup and settings in "How to Photograph Artwork, Step by Step" on the Artists Network website, but the images are black:
Manual mode. RAW format. ISO 125 (lowest it can go), f8, 16000 shutter speed (fastest it can go).
I interpreted this from the guide to mean that I should set the fastest shutter speed possible (but still not clear on how everything links):
The shutter opens for a fraction of a second. The shutter speed is usually expressed as numbers such as 8, 15, 30, 60, 125, 500 and 1000. In this system, 60 means one-sixtieth of a second and 1000 means one-one-thousandth of a second. The faster the shutter speed, the better you’ll be able to freeze motion. If the camera isn’t on a tripod, don’t use a shutter speed below 60, or the motion of your body will result in blurry photos. Even with a tripod, don’t go below 30.
On (Intelligent) Auto the pictures come out fine, and the camera sets itself at 400 ISO, f2.8, and says "125" which might be the shutter speed, but I'm not sure.
Am I missing something or misunderstanding something?
UPDATE: In "P" or Program mode, the camera sets the aperture and shutter speed automatically. At 125 ISO it used f2.8 and a shutter speed of 1/30.
In "A" or Aperture-Priority mode, the camera sets the shutter speed automatically given an aperture setting. At 125 ISO and f8 it used a shutter speed of 1/4.