When creating ref photos for texture usage you need a big sensor and good lens. The cheapest way is to buy the best possible compact camera (like Canon G11 or Canon S5IS but these are not so stunning with sensor size and lens) but you'll get enough good effects. Sensor will take all the detail from the surface in proper res (10mpx is about 4000x2500px so it's a big photo but the sensor is enough small to create some artifacts - because of light mostly - that can be removed by resizing down the image and few photo fix tricks) and lens will give you abbility to crop the surface properly - wide angle lenses (<20mm) can create barrel distortion effect:
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Lenses with poor parameters (high aperture values to get best sharpness and depth of field) will limit you to some exposition settings that requires great sun light so when taking photos in dark places you won't get the shaprness you wanted to. So, the best idea is to get something like ~17-70mm (for textures and ref photos of architecture - very universal) and 70-300 (for zoom shots when the distance is long). With the first ~17-70 lens is no problem (Canon, Nikon and Sigma covers that types of lenses) but it's hard to find a good and cheap zoom lens. Cheap zoom lenses got a lot of annoying issues like aberration:
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...or vignetting:
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The best idea is to take some cheap used SLR that works perfect and attach a good lens to it.
My config is: Canon 55D + Carl Zeiss Jena DDR 36mm + Sigma 17-70mm + Sigma 10-20mm. Now I'm looking for a good zoom lens and it's damn hard. Good luck 
Nice post was very enlightening.
Is this any good? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 830113189R
I'm a complete noob on cameras... Sorry if I am coming across as annoying when I ask you to hold my hand when shopping for one 
What kind of lense would you slap on that? One of the ones you have?
Yes, it's not bad. 3648 x 2736 is enough to catch the detail but I'm not sure with the results:
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A lot of artifacts 
Yes, it's not bad. 3648 x 2736 is enough to catch the detail but I'm not sure with the results:[Blocked Image: http://img.photographyblog.com/reviews/nikon_coolpix_l100/sample_images/nikon_coolpix_l100_01.jpg]
A lot of artifacts
It was so amazing texture and also in the image. You will also use for get sharp skin. But You have done nice job. I liked dude. I wish that You will wash the image background and chose best image for it. I hope that You will do it as soon as well.
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