My wife is an artist and does some very good work. She's won the raves of her fellow artists and non-artists alike. We're contemplating selling her artwork, but are remiss to let them go for the low prices that beginning artists sell their stuff for these days. Since I'm a technog-geek and digital packrat, I've been searching for a solution to digitally archive her work and have found the following ways in order from most expensive to least:

1. The Cruse Scanner. While it is impractical to buy one of these, a few shops around here offer these as part of their services. It seems that it's not only impractical to buy one, but also impractical to rent one too. To a painting scanned on one of these puppies would run anywhere from $80-350 depending on size (Hongyun likes to use large canvases, so we'd be hitting that high number pretty often).

2. Large Format Transparency. I've gotten a few quotes for this, anywhere from $50-100 per painting including scanning using an Imacon scanner. I also have a student from the Academy of Art College that says he'd be able to do some in when school starts for a discounted rate so I'm hope for something like $30/each. This would be the cheapest professional option.

3. DIY Viewcamera. Not likely since it's expensive, requires a bit of training and practice, not to mention space. In the long run, though this may be the way to go since it'd be great to be able to take photos for other artists and learn to use the large format cameras.

4. Digicam stiching. This is expensive if I hire someone to do it ($100/painting), but if I do it myself, it works out to be very cheap although time intensive in the long run. I can get the Nikon D50 for about 900-1200 depening on lens kit I want and some lights and reflectors and a backdrop to setup a mini painting photo studio in my dining room (dining table would be moved to the living room of course).

Anyway, after the whole rigamarole, I think what I'll do is get the digicam, setup shop here at home and try one. Then, i'll take the same painting and have it cruse scanned, then to another place to have it photographed via large format camera and compare the results with my digicam stiching/color correction. I bet it'll be about the same at which point, I'll revel in the glory of my new (finally) digital SLR and homebrew studio setup and take even more photos than before.