Hello, I have a question that may be slightly off-topic. If it is inappropriate, feel free to remove.
I have recently been talking to my father-in-law who is a traditional media artist. He mostly does acrylic painting and has shown in galleries and sold originals. The problem is that money is VERY tight and he has never made prints of his work before. I started looking around and it looks like it will cost $65 to have someone make a transparency with a large format camera and then $125 for another person to scan it in and clean it up... and then they want to charge me $10 for a CD with the scan on it. So, that comes out to around $200 just to get the image in electronic form without actually making any prints. If he has 15 paintings he wants to start off with (he has been doing this for 40+ years and has a lot of high quality work), then that runs out to a startup cost of around $3k which is fairly prohibitive.
So now my situation. I am a semi-serious amateur photographer who has used 35mm and digital SLR cameras. I have been curious about large format, but haven't really had a strong reason to switch since I have a fair amount invested in my current gear and like to take the camera hiking, etc. Looking at the costs above though, I am wondering how hard it would be to do the digitization myself. If I could get the gear significantly cheaper than $3k it would be worthwhile, but I don't want to get a bunch of stuff and then find out I can't get high enough quality shots and wind up paying someone anyway.
So, what I'm looking for is some advice from people who have experience taking large format photographs of paintings. What is the minimum (cheapest) camera type that would be appropriate for this? It doesn't need flexibility or a lot of features; I just need to be able to do one type of shot well. How hard is it to get good shots of a painting? Is this something that will take me years to master or will my 35mm experience serve me well? I just need a really sharp focus on a flat surface. Also, what format would be most appropriate for this? I'm assuming that a larger format would allow me to get away with a cheaper scanner. After reading around on this site, I'm thinking 8x10 would be best because it seems to be the largest size with cheap and available gear. Would an 8x10 transparency and a high-end consumer scanner (<$1000) be sufficient to make good quality large prints?
Any advice would be appreciated. Am I better off trying to do this myself or just paying up for the professionals? Quality is important. As a hobbyist, the idea of starting into large format photography is very exciting and I'm sure I would continue to work with it and try other types of shots. I just can't justify the costs of getting a whole new camera system on the basis of a hobby interest.
Thanks,
Samuel
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