It's never a good idea to throw away quality at any point of the process but, if you at least capture images with the best quality you can, there is always the option of re-printing them with increased quality as technology evolves. On the other hand, if the captured image has avoidable shortcomings, then you're always going to struggle to overcome them.
Another point is that my Samsung GX-10 with the twin zoom lens kit (i.e. not the expensive lens options!) regularly exceeds the quality I used to get with my Canon T90 and a good range of Canon prime lenses. I suspect that printing is currently my weakest area, although my A4 HP7960 got rave reviews, especially for mono work, when it came out. I think the issue is work-flow rather than hardware... I had a custom profile made for me (for free!) by PermaJet because I use their paper, but my monitor is uncalibrated and, being LCD, is very viewing angle dependant which makes it hard to place tones exactly where you want them to be. And, when reading the above, can you bear in mind that I won "Print Of The Year" for my camera club when using film and the T90... so things have definitely moved onwards and upwards.
The guy that runs the photo-i website, that does, perhaps, the most in-depth reviews of printers, now often says that prints from the current crop of A3 printers exceeds what he used to achieve in the darkroom, and this is how I feel. Is it perfect? No! But is it as good and more repeatable and easily controlled than the wet process? Yes!
Another thing is this... at my current photographic society I can never tell (unless they're really badly done!), whether a print is film or digital, much less what camera or printer has been used to make it.
And what makes a picture stand out? The camera, the printer? Of course not, it's the vision of the photographer. And, to always have the camera under your control when instants matter, is it the resolving power of the lens that tips the scales? No! It's how 'right' it feels for you. Having said that, would I want to take my images at the best possible quality? Of course! And that's where the compromise comes in.
So my advice would be this... use the camera that you enjoy the best - that way I think you'll capture the best images. Use any of the current crop of leading A3 printers and enjoy the results. If you think you could produce better, use a print specialist such as http://www.theprintspace.com/ (who do great C-type [i.e. wet prints] prints from digital files), and see whether they can do better than you.
-------------------- John
Who could suppose that angels move the stars, or be so superstitious as to suppose that because one cannot see one's soul at the end of a microscope, it does not exist?
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