Camera for over-sized prints?

I just recently got published by a fine art print company and they need very high resolution photos of my paintings. I found a few photographers…

1 of which has a Canon 5d Mark III
Another has a Canon 5d Mark I
And another with a Canon 7d

I also have access to a Nikon d3100

They want my images at 30x30 inch @ 300 dpi. What do you recommend?

900 sq ins at 90000 per square inch That is a lot of pixels! I think that is a medium format job, even a full frame DSLR would not be capable of a 81Mp file.

Any cameras the photographer will use will have a 3:2 aspect ratio, so you will be chopping off part of any image to make it square.

For the most resolution at this time, the Nikon D800E is the best if your end result will be nearly 3 foot square images.

Until the Nikon D3x was introduced, we leased Hasselblad H3D cameras with high resolution digital backs when our goal was to make huge images. Now we use the D800E

The 7D has a cropped sensor so will not be able to do what a camera like the Nikon D800 or Canon 5D, Mark III

I can see you are concerned about the cameras the photographers have. What you most need to know is their technique when photographing your work. Usually publishers make there own photographs of fine art, using specialized lighting setups and a large format camera.

I suggest that you have each of the potential photographers shoot the same painting in RAW.

Then submit those resulting files to the publisher and THEY will tell you which photographer comes closest to what they need before they start making their colour separations.

Recently, the publishers I have worked with, ask for a DNG of the original file that they can colour correct at the print shop to match the ICC profiles of their offset printers.

As an artist, I'm sure you don't want to spend much time reading about the process from camera to high quality printing (offset), but I will give you one suggestion anyway.

"CMYK 2.0" by Rick McCleary

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/essays/cmyk2.shtml

Too assure that the pigments of your paintings are matched properly, the photographer needs to use a device like an Xrite Colorchecker Passport.

I use it when shooting fashion, because as you probably know, some colours just to not replicate well. The Colorchecker Passport helps reduce those problems.

Here is how that works

http://www.xritephoto.com/ph_learning.aspx?action=webinarsarchive&eventid=972&eventdateid=4761