Which camera?

[Michele Rushworth]

The Nikon D70 uses G lenses.

Marvin, I got the kit lens and will ask Santa for the longer one for Xmas. They're down to $180 now.

[Sharon Knettell]

I do big paintings in pastel and oil. Though most of my work is done from live models now, I, like everybody else became interested in digital photography.

Some of the comments on my work (the ones I can print) are about the fluidity of my brush strokes. What I did was to adapt the idea of sight-sized painting, and placing my print next to the easel, instead of my subject. I had my prints blown up to a very large size to almost and in some cases as big as the painting. I could then see the photograph from a distance of about 12', a usual working distance. This helped me keep my brush strokes looser. The problem with digital prints is, if they are to be blown up to a useful size for me, they would have been too grainy. The only camera that I know of that would be suitable for this purpose would be the Nikon/Kodak 1400. If there are digitals other than that that can enlarge to a 5' or 6' with minimal grain what would they be?

[Marvin Mattelson]

Hi Sharon, minimal grain is relative. How sharp do your photos blow up to six or seven feet? If you're working that large you're stepping back to make your evaluations. You surely don't need to, or want to, see every hair.

My Nikon D70 blows up pretty well. I zoom in on critical areas for more precise detail. I use a tripod and keep the camera in the same position so everything matches up.

Kodak makes the DCS SLR/n and the DCS SLR/c. It's the same body but the /n uses Nikon lenses while the /c uses Canon. The Canon one is on sale for $1000 less as a special offer now. These are both 14 mp. Canon just came out with a EOS-1Ds Mark II (16.7 mp) but will cost thousands more. Nikon is coming out with a D2X (12.4 mp) which would be my choice. There is more to resolution and clarity besides megapixels. I'm thoroughly impressed with Nikon. God is in he details.

Bottom line is you need to go to a store that sells whatever camera your interested in. Bring a compatible memory card and shoot something in the store with each camera. Then have the different samples printed out and see for yourself which works the best, or if any do at all!

Also go to dpreview.com and check out their camera tests.

[Michele Rushworth]

Thanks to Sharon for explaining this method of hers a year or two ago (blowing up the reference so you are painting "sight size") I have been doing this too.

Until a month ago I was doing it with photos shot with my puny old 3.4 megapixel Minolta. The results were quite acceptable, though, especially since (as Marvin mentioned) I also zoom in for face and hand shots and incorporate those more finely detailed closeup photos within my "sight size" reference in Photoshop before printing.

The largest image blowup I have made this way was 36 x 48" but with my new Nikon D70 I'm sure I'll have no problem getting the level of detail I need for much larger size paintings if I want to do them.

And no, I don't have a printer that will produce output that large. I "tile" the output, printing one 8x10 section of the painting at a time and taping them together on a piece of large foam core. Works great, especially since for most of the painting I'm standing across the room and don't want to get caught up in every buttonhole or shoelace bit of detail.