Drawing from a long tradition of "straight" photography and printmaking, I certify each of my original photographs as 100% "natural"- with no artificial Photoshop colors or sweeteners added! The extremely low-resolution images made for the web only hint at the radiant detail of physical, full-resolution prints. Printed on the best available papers using the finest available dye-pigment inks, these prints will provide generations of viewing pleasure. For the technically curious, these photographs were made with a Canon, two Olympus models, a “breakthough” Sony DSC-R1 with Zeiss (Hasselblad) lens – and my just-acquired Sony Alpha 580 – again with a large APS-C sensor Zeiss 24-120mm (in 35mm terms) zoom. digital cameras with a large sensor and superb Zeiss (Hasselblad) lens. I have also recently upgraded my printer from a superb Epson R1800 to the even better R-1900. As someone who appreciates ad demands the very best print quality, I remain a major fan of Epson. This Japanese company pioneered the use of colour-fast dye-pigment inks in home and professional printers. And the improved Ultra Chrome inkset in its latest line of wide-format printers offer superior tonal gradations and longevity in colour printing. Even though the ink is expensive (about $3,000 a gallon!) it looks like I will be able to “hold the line” on my modest print prices going into the summer of 2011. For your own photography, you certainly don’t have to spend a small (or large) fortune chasing megapixels. One of my best 11x14 prints ever remains the "Young Grandfathers". It was the fourth digital exposure I ever made, on a foggy Sunday morning near Heron Rocks… with the 4 megapixel Canon G2. A brace of Olympus cameras bumped this to 8. The DSC-R1 featured a much larger 10.1 megapixel sensor. Sensor size – not megapixel horsepower – is the thing to watch for. Too many megahoopsels shoehorned onto a tine “Four-Thirds” sensor virtually guarantees expensive noise (grain) in your images. To learn more about what went into my latest camera purchasing decision, you can order and download a copy of my ebook here.   The Cliff Notes version goes like this: The  APS-C CMOS sensor offers more than 12-times the surface area of the miniature sensors commonly used in the innovative and terribly tiny Four-Thirds cameras. As digitalreview.ca points out, the larger physical pixel size provided by bigger image sensors leads to improvement in general image quality and lower image noise levels particularly. [digitalreview.ca] For beautiful prints, a sturdy tripod and low ISO are much more important and the camera's megapixel count. "Mine is bigger than yours" is not the point! As visitors to my "Studio in the Copse" know, the proof is in the print. (At least up to 13x19.) Thank you for stopping by my website. I hope to see you at my Hornby market table next summer. Will Thomas