Currently, professionals in the conservation area acquire fluorescence images of paintings using one or more UV discharge lamps (also indicated as Wood lamps, fluorescent lights or blacklights) as illumination sources, a photo camera with a high sensitivity film as detector, and long exposure times.

However, this system has several limits:
The photographic acquisition and reproduction of fluorescence images does not allow a quantitatively correct radiometric or photometric evaluation, nor a correct colorimetric reproduction, nor meaningful and reliable further data processing and analysis.

This is due to the limited data set that the system is able to reveal, and to several irreproducibility factors in phase of acquisition, developing, and printing of the photographs. Summarizing this method only gives qualitative indications.