And for comparison, a shot taken in pretty much the same way (maybe less zoomed in) of something real.

When I get closer to photograph details of my paintings I don't seem to have the fuzziness problem.

I didn't photograph this as close-in as it seems. I filled the viewfinder with the one head, shown earlier. I zoomed in all the way and walked in to about three feet from the painting. All these examples are just a small subsection of the overall shot so you can see the detail.

(By the way, this was painted on the rough canvas I used to use before I discovered Claessen's!)

Seems like my full-painting shots are much fuzzier than shots of real people or painting shots taken close up.

Any suggestions?

Michele,

It does appear to be a "focus" issue, as Mike has suggested. This is something I cannot do on my digital camera, but on my SLR you can lock the focus, recompose the shot, then take the picture. I'm wondering if this is a feature on the next-generation 5+ megapixel cameras described by Morgan Weistling in the "Considering Buying a Digital Camera" thread. It should definitely be an option on an auto-focus camera; you could set up a color bar or a grey card, focus on that "absolute" edge, recompose and shoot.

I'm curious because I use the same setup you've described, and have the same focus issues.

Here is an actual pixel detail from one of my portfolio pics. I shot the painting with my 3.34 Olympus - what you see is 300 pixels per inch in a JPG saved at 95%:

And another, same setup except this painting is smaller in size than the other. You will notice that it is slightly sharper:

It's so hard to compare your photos to mine, Michael, because of the unknown differences in the edge sharpness of the paintings.

How far from the paintings were you when you took these shots?

Yours do seem to be less grainy, also, than the one I posted that shows the problem I'm having. (The shot showing the painting with the whole head of the boy.)

Mari, I like your idea of focusing on the edge of a grey card first. (If I tape it off to the side of the painting I won't have to let go of the shutter to remove the card before pressing the shutter the rest of the way.)

Or maybe I'll just see if my camera will let me do manual focus. I used to do that all the time on my film cameras but I don't know if my digital has that capability.

Michele,

I'm no expert, but the blurriness you show looks more like what I get when I have a little movement than when I am out of focus. When I have movement, one characteristic I see is at the edge between a dark and a light value, I get a line of pixels lighter than either region. It is possible you have a little residual vibration affecting your camera?

I use the Best Shot Selector function, take a bunch of pictures, and throw away the 90% that are less sharp.

Michele:

I was about 6 feet shooting on a tripod with the remote for my camera, so it was very still. You are right, it is hard to compare without seeing both originals and then both pictures.

I will try to ZIP up a one of my portfolio TIFs today and send it to you.

Please post any "eureka" moments in your research, Michelle and Michael. I'm trying to decipher the same issues in my digital reproduction attempts, and I'm thinking that the only way for me to make it happen is to be able to manually lock the camera's "autofocus".

In fact, I'm dying to post some recent paintings (had a great growth spurt in Peggy Baumgaertner's Sarasota workshop) from life sessions, but can't get an accurate reproduction to post.

Camera-shake is not the issue; like Michelle, I also set up the camera on a tripod, hang the painting on an outdoor fence in full sun, and use the camera's "auto-timer" feature (it doesn't accept a cable-release).

I'll shoot some 35mm slides and prints tomorrow for comparison's-sake.

Clarification
 

Michele and Michael,

You posted the details. Can you now post the entire image (you would have to reduce the file size) so we can see what percentage of the entire image that the detail is?

If you want to see a detail of a painting I shot usinga 4x5 camera and then scanning it on a linocolor scanner, as well as the full painting you can go to another string at http://forum.portraitartist.com/show...0&pagenumber=1

To the best of my knowledge (very spotty when it comes to digital cameras) one would need about a 12 megapixel ccd to get this kind of accuracy. Those babies go for $5000+.