howdy all,
I've searched and searched: tutors, internet, shops but i have now officially had information overload.

I'm an artist that needs to document work for a portfolio. It include paintings and installations, which means i need a camera for flat surfaces and 3-D environments. So most situations really, except it'll usually be indoors.

I'm not a pro photographer so i'm looking at low end priced digital SLR's for high quality documentation.

Nikon D40's been vaguely suggested, but the pentax K100D seems to be in the same market. Am I right to understand that 6 megapixels is all you really need for high quality print outs?

Any other suggestions? The cheaper the better really, although i understand higher price generally means higher quality.

Cheers

[Liquid101]

A large part of my day job is doing this (or at least managing the people that do) To do it properly is a fairly complex and very expensive affair - reproducing color accurately is pretty tough and requires careful preperation.

Do you want to reproduce the artworks at the same size as the original or do you just want to create portfolio sized prints?

Are the 3D pieces large? or are they smaller items that could fit on a table top?

Do you have a budget in mind for the whole setup i.e. lights, camera and colour control?

The 3-d installations works in relation to the room so the photos have to be taken as such. This means the pieces are any size but can't be moved. Recording them requires quite a bit of artistic license, which i imagine is where you job comes in.

At the moment it's just portfolio sized images, so maximum A3, but i'd like to have them in larger files for the potential future.

Unfortunately my budget's only about £1000 I know there's a lot of technique in recording artwork in terms of colour and lighting, but i've yet to read into it. Is there a lot of extra equipment i should include into my budget? Should i save up more, or will a cheaper end digital SLR suffice for now?