:thumbsup: :thumbsup: Wow Tim, for a guy who is sorta "new to portraiture," this is unbelieveably beautiful work. Your reflected lights are delicious...and I predict that this will be a prize winner!

Tim,
Breathtaking Portrait! I love the bird too!

Now....how DID you clear up that problem with your digital camera? I bought one of those Nikon 995's when they went on sale...and I am so frustrated with it. My pictures always have that grainy, shiny look to them. I have been playing around with all the bells and whistles on this thing but haven't hit the right combination yet. I do know it is not the camera, it is my lack of camera "expertise" that is the problem. I tried setting up the lighting as Karin suggested, but it's more than that. I just can't seem to see any details clearly. Is it the jpg format?

Marta, seeing the details clearly on your digital photos would depend on whether the camera captures a high or low number of "megapixels." I understand that any digital camera over about 3 megapixels will produce a good 8 x 10. (My digital camera is 3.4 megapixels and I've been very happy with the detail on an 8 x 10.) Also check what setting you have the camera on. My Minolta S304 has several settings of progressively higher detail.

Digital cameras...I'm still learning on mine. The last close-up was shot at "jpeg" size...pretty small. I only had to downsize it a little bit and post it. They tell me if you want to fix color crop etc you should save as "tif", fix it and then save anew as jpeg, then resize per the format. Is this correct?

Well, thank you all for the nice remarks. Tim

I think there's a thread somewhere on this forum about digital cameras and maybe we should continue this discussion there. In the mean time, just FYI, the jpg file format can mean a very large high quality file or a very small, compressed, low quality file, it all depends on the settings used. I use the largest jpg format on my camera and it works fine. The TIF files are too big for a not-even-noticeable quality difference. But that's on my camera. Yours might be very different. Try all the different file size settings on yours offers and compare the results (image quality, size in MB or KB of the resulting data file, etc.)

Hope that helps somewhat!

There's some file format information in this post of mine: http://forum.portraitartist.com/show...id=897#post897

And yes, if the conversation gets too much more into digital cameras, it should go in the proper section.

Tim, if by "breaking apart" you mean the pixelation seen in the lines of the floor and a bit in her eyelid area, it looks like something that is the result of sharpening the image. A certain amount of that is unavoidable. Unsharp mask gives more controls of this and is actually always preferable over simple sharpen.

It is gorgeous, Tim. The subject matter reminds me of Morgan Weistling's paintings.

Tim,

When photographing an oil painting, especially one with any varnish, you must have NO light approaching the painting from the direction of the camera. If all of your light is hitting the painting from the side, glare will be minimized. The greater the angle, the better, however if photographing the painting framed, this angle will be limited by shadows cast by the frame. Good luck! Love your composition.

This was painted sight size mostly from life. Here's an in progress shot early on in the effort.

Thanks
 

Thanks for all the kind advice and nice remarks. I'll try again. I'll post some details of finished hands etc.