What I think is happening is that my camera is having an easier time focusing on the sharp-edged high contrast shapes in the leaf painting than in the softer edged, lower contrast shapes of my portraits.
Perhaps it is giving me an "in focus" signal when it's just doing its best guess.
Next time I'll try using a card taped to the side of the painting to use for setting the focus.
Perhaps it's also to do with overall light levels. When I photographed the leaf painting it was a bright day. That may account for the less grainy appearance than what I see in some of my portrait photos.
So many variables!
I do agree with you, Marvin, on the benefits of shooting 4 x 5's. I take my paintings downtown and have a professional color lab shoot 4 x 5 transparencies of all my paintings.
It's just that then I don't have a clean high res digital file in order to print 8 x 10's for my portfolio. I'm stuck with what I can get with my own digital camera. Doing a very high res digital scan at that color lab is much more expensive and so far I've avoided doing that for all but my favorite pieces.
The search for the perfect solution goes on...
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