APS-C for Fine Art?

[Paul_Roark]

Is aps-c format sufficient for "fine art" pro work?

I have been doing black and white photography since I was a kid growing up with a darkroom.  I've used 4x5, but mostly used a Rollei SL66 for my adult work.  I backpacked into the California High Sierras for years carrying 25 lbs. of gear.  I sell B&W prints through Gallery Los Olivos, in Los Olivos, California.

I'm delighted to report that the little Fujifilm x100v aps-c frame size camera has succeeded in producing pro-quality, 22x28 (to 36)" fine art quality prints from my recent European trip.  While I had to give up telephoto shots, they were a small portion of what sold.  Very wide, multi-image panoramas up 5 feet wide work well.

A critical part of the formula is Topaz's AI Gigapixel software.

So, 25 pounds to 1 pound (0.45 kilograms), carried almost unnoticeably on the belt, has made my travel photography much more enjoyable.

Paul
www.PaulRoark.com

[nemophoto]

I really don't see any reasons why not. It depends more upon how large you want to work/print. I did art shows for about six years and sold not only prints/canvases but also my book. Some of my best-selling prints were shot years ago with an Olympus E10! That was only a 4MP camera, and to get any speed of write to the cards, was usually shot in JPEG (unsharpened) rather than .ORF. I routinely sold canvas prints (originally up-ressed in Genuine Fractals, though now Topaz Gigapixel does a better job) that were 20x24. The same was done with the original Canon 1D (4MP).

So, if shooting APS-C is your desire, go for it. The sensors are SO much better today than nearly 20 years ago.

[langier]

For my fine art work, even the m43 is steller. This month I sold an image taken with an m43 as a 60x40 canvas print and even had to crop the image slightly to fit the format.

Much of my fine-are sales in the past twenty years are from older digital images from cameras in the 6-12 mp range. A project nearing completion for a public space will be composed of DX and M43 files and will be produced quite large.

In the end, it's about the total well-crafted image, not the tools used to create it though sometimes that helps.

For a lot of my fine art photography today, I'm using a 2020 vintage iPhone. It's liberating to use and with some playing with the images on the phone, has led to a large body of photos that that is paying me many dividends.

It's not so much the tools but the craftsman behind it that's the most critical component of fine art or any photography.