best lighting kit for shooting paintings - art

[police state]

A friend of mine is an artist who paints; among other things, large landscape pieces. She wants to photograph her own works in order to put them on her website. Can any of you you photography people give some advice on the best type of lighting kit to buy for shooting such things in an indoor environment (small gallery, not the best lighting...)?

Is this any good?

PROFESSIONAL CONTINUOUS LIGHTING KIT incl CARRY CASE

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/PROFESSIONAL-CO

[te51cle]

Avoiding patchy lighting/the hot spots you might get from direct flash is a good idea so that kit looks possible, but how large is large ? 4 feet ? 8 feet ?

The most important thing is that the light should be evenly diffused in spread and in colour temperature. As long as the light source(s) has the same colour temperature e.g. daylight or all tungsten bulbs or all the same type of fluorescent tubes but not a mix of any of them then it should be possible to put a camera on a tripod and sort out the white balance at time of shooting to get results that will look fine on a web page.

[RobDickinson]

I find natural light at about 45degrees to the side of the painting best, tripod and f5-f9 but IMO I havnt had that good a result.

[andybuk99]

You dont want diffused light it will take all the life out of the painting/drawing. When I copy paintings I use 2 flash heads just with their reflectors on, these are placed equally either side of the paintings at 45 degree angles. If you get specular highlights off of oil paintings polarising filters will be needed on flash heads and lens. I then position a macbeth colour card by the painting for calibration purposes and away we go.

If she is serious about her work selling dont skimp on crappy equipment, get a photographer who has the right equipment to do the copies.