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General discussion

Help! Which camera for art (ID) student?

Oct 31, 2005 11:45PM PST

My daughter is an Industrial Design major and says she NEEDS a good digital camera. Resolution/detail is important. Mostly used (I think) to record her work and create materials for review-- any suggestions? 6-8 megapixs? Any feedback helpful, looking to keep it as inexpensive as possible. Thanks!

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Industrial Design
Nov 1, 2005 6:06AM PST

That could cover many things:

So I am going to assume she will be photographing small models (table top photography) and documents, as well as some large objects.

Table top photography calls for more control of depth of field and consequently more control of exposure.
This means she should have a camera with some manual controls as well as the standard automatic controls.

Having large amounts of megapixels is overkill here.

Canon has the most complete line of low cost cameras with manual controls:

Canon 520 - 4meg - 4X zoom - focus down to 2 inches - $200
Canon 610 - 5meg - 4X zoom - focus down to 0.5 inches - $275
Canon 620 - 7meg - 4X zoom - focus down to 0.5 inches - $375


The 610 and 620 also has a swivel LCD screen.

For table top photography and documents - a tripod is necessary. You can find a good tripod for low cost.

Here is a link to a free short course in photography.
It has a nice section on ''close-up photography'':

http://www.shortcourses.com/using/index.htm

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Industrial Design
Nov 2, 2005 7:39AM PST

Thanks, very helpful.

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If you are an art student
Nov 2, 2005 11:35AM PST

I would avoid a digital camera. No matter how expensive, they will not give the color accurracy of a film camera. Most art degrees use a Hasselblad with 50mm film. It is expensive but art requires the best.