The Framers Forum

Yup, I always shoot Raw and dump them into Lightroom then Photoshop even though I'm getting more and more disillusioned (pissed off) with Adobe and Apple's built in obsolescence and proprietary dictatorship. Had to buy new Macbook Pro (running dumbed down OS Yosemite) and software even though Creative Suite 3 was perfectly functional. Superfluous upgrades anonymous.[/quote]

I totally agree.... I have now got rid of all my Apple products after discovering you never own an Apple product, you are renting over a 2 or 3 period at crazy rates. I use a Nexus phone instead of Apple now and it just keeps getting better and faster (rather than worse and slower) with new firmware rollouts. Dont get me started about Ipads, the sods at Apple killed it, remotely by forcing me to take upgrades they know are not fit for purpose. Ive heard similar stories from people with perfectly good, high specced macbooks...

I use a Nikon D90 (12mp) which if cropped tightly and carefully focused using RAW can easily print very good quality at A3 or A3+

I will shortly buy a 2nd hand D800 (36mp) which are currently around £900 excluding lens.

As previously mentioned the most important thing is the lens, you should not use a standard kit lens or zoom lense. The best is a prime (non zoom) macro lens, you dont need to go Nikon/Canon for these as Tamron etc make lenses that will be good for the job.

The reason for Macro is not to take pictures very close to the artwork, but to take a picture of a flat surface with all of the picture in focus at the same time. Non macro lenses focus everything that is a the same distance from the lense, macro lenses focus on a flat plane.... if you dont have a macro lens use as much depth of field as possible (small aperture), if you must use a zoom lens dont use it wide angle, somewhere in the middle of the range will probably work the best.

I also prefer the following;
Tripod, always
VR if you have it on your camera
Shoot in natural light on cloudy days (sunny days have blue skies, cloudy days are more grey therefore colour balanced)
Include in the shot a piece of calibrated grey board (this will enable you to make colour adjustments later)
Colour calibrate my monitor (2nd hand Eye2i device for £30 from ebay)
Use correct ICC printer profiles for your paper/ink combination