Sarah & Kenneth

[Mike McCarty]

Originally Posted by Sharon Knettell

Mischa,

Another thing you have to consider is the light you are photographing in. If it is indoors, I know with available light, in my south facing studio, my speed and aperture is something like 5.6-11 @ 60 with an f 2.8. This is on a clear day. A slower lens would not give you much wiggle room or depth of field.

One mitigating factor with the new digital SLRs is that you have more of an acceptable range in the ISO (what was once film speed) setting.

Sharon, I'll bet you were shooting either the Kodak "portra" or Fuji 160 speed film. This is as good a film as you can buy, but it is very slow. This is a difficult proposition for shooting indoors with available light. The new digital SLRs, in my opinion, can match this quality in the 400 ISO setting. This gives you a lot more wiggle room in lower light conditions. If your end product is an 8x10 print, as it is for me, you can even push the ISO higher.

Also, in my opinion, the current 6mp SLRs will surpass the quality of any 35mm film. When you factor in the cost savings of film and processing, the ability to edit on the fly, manipulate settings per image instead of per roll, and on and on, it is truly a wonderful life.

[Sharon Knettell]

Mike,

I found when doing my commercial portraiture my prints were life-sized or close to it. The reason for this is so I could place the photo side by side with my canvas a get further back. This method helps immeasurably with form and enables a looser more fluid brush stroke. With a print as small as 8x10 you practically have to be on top of your canvas. Most professional portraiture now and in the past, especially in the high end is life-sized.

Right now I am working on a canvas from life. It is life-sized. my model had to return to college so I took some reference shots. The head print, of just her neck and shoulders is 12x18 alone. I need a slow speed film, exactly the ones you mentioned to be able to get a decently saturated print. A faster film or its equivalent in a digital file just would not do. I have researched this and have been holding off getting a digital for just this reason. I am interested in the Nikon with a 12 megapixel capacity, because the labs who do my printing told me to get the kind of quality I need, I would need at least an 11 megapixel quality. I don't expect Mischa to run out and get this $5000 baby, but he could do with faster lenses.

Any reasonably priced digital camera should be able to give you an 8x10 print, but for professional portrait painting, in my opinion, you need larger reference and a slow lens such as the one on his new Nikon is not going to cut it. It is alright only as a beginning lens but for really upper end portraiture it is, I would dare to say, it is barely adequate.