If I were you, unless I had the cash to hire a professional photographer
that knows how to use lights and backdrops, and you also have the space to
set up a photography studio I would stick to a midrange digital SLR on an
inexpensive tripod. You can always use a piece of plain fabric from a craft
store as a background for small objects. Unless your banners are truly
huge, then I am guessing that the lens that comes with the camera will work
okay. If you can't capture them with the lens that comes with the camera
you could buy a wide angle one. The remainder of this email I wrote this a
few months ago in response to another query, but the ideas seem relevant
here too.
I would avoid the smaller point-and-shoot cameras if you are wanting the
flexibility to produce publishable-quality images in a range of settings.
Those smaller cameras have small, poor-quality, lenses that will not
produce superb images, especially if you need to shoot in less-than-ideal
lighting situations. Buyers often erroneously focus on the megapixels of a
camera rather than the lens. Both are important, of course, but usually the
bottleneck for great images is the lens, not the megapixels. A tiny lens on
a camera the size of a pack of playing cards is not going to let in enough
light to be really useful. If you buy a bigger camera with a better lens it
will let in the light that you need.
I am not a professional photographer, but I have read the books on how to
take photographs of art and artifacts. What I use personally in my work as
an art historian is an entry-level digital SLR camera. When I chose a
camera for myself I wanted to be able to take pictures of art in a
wide-range of settings, from outdoors in a public park to the interior of a
dimly-lit cathedral to the unevenly lit stacks of a research library. Thus,
I determined that a camera for me should have, at the minimum:
* A large enough lens that I could take clear pictures in moderate indoor
light with no tripod and no flash.
* A fully-automatic mode that makes the camera work like a point-and-shoot.
* A mode that is automatic except for manual control of the aperture, which
I find useful for shooting 2D images in low light with no flash.
* A setting to adjust for incandescent lighting.
* A setting to adjust for fluorescent lighting.
The entry-level DSLRs met those needs the best for me, and this type of
camera costs $550-$650 today. The one I bought is a Canon Digital Rebel,
which at the time was the most affordable camera of this quality, and I have
been very happy with it. Nikon makes a similar camera, which I believe is
the D40.
http://www.amazon.com/Canon-Digital-Camera
-18-55mm-3-5-5-6/dp/B0012YA85A/ref=dp_ob_title_ce
<http://www.amazon.com/Canon-Digital-Camera-18-55mm-3-5-5-6/dp/B0012YA85A/ref=dp_ob_title_ce>
http://www.amazon.com/Nikon-Digital-18-55mm-3-5-5-6G-Zoom-Nikkor/dp/B000KJQ1DG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1269004991&sr=8-1
Travis
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==================================
Travis Nygard
[log in to unmask]
http://www.travisnygard.com
http://arthistorynewsletter.com/
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