Hey everyone! I had a quick question about what to look for in a camera for its soul purpose to be to gather my own textures.
I am looking at a Nikon D5200 24.2MP with your standard 35mm lens and I wanted to know if that is literally overkill.
Possible other interests for the camera would include:
Taking hi rez images for possible Headshots (for actors), nature, etc
Thanks!
I don’t know much about that specific camera, but just some general advice. A dslr would be your best option, as it gives you interchangable lenses, for instance you can use regular lenses for most shooting and a fisheye for spherical panoramas if you want. Also when shopping for a dslr, make sure you consider noise as well, I’d favor a lower MP if it had noticeably less noise. You will tend to find that past a certain point, the benefit of a higher res sensor will be negated by softening from the lens. As to the lens, a prime is a good choice as they usually have high sharpness while maintaining minimal distortion vignetting and chromatic aberration, again, I don’t know a lot about Nikon lenses specifically.
If your looking to do any kind of portrait photography, most people favor a shallow depth of field to seperate subject and background. In which case you’ll want to consider the sensor size (bigger equals shallower dof), and larger aperture (lower F/number equals shallower dof).
Having said all that, even your entry level dslrs give you pretty good performance, personally I use a Canon 500D and the cheap 50mm prime for most of my texture photos, or at least the ones I can’t scan. I rarely find that it’s my camera or lens that holds me back when doing textures, far more often I find it’s the lighting or reflectivity of what I’m photographing that gives me problems.
Just avoid wild angle lenses for your textures. The more wider, the more distortion you will have, which can be really problematic if you wish to create tilable textures.
Then 35mm isn’t good at all (even if it became a 52mm because you have an APS-C sensor), you should look at longer focal length (135 - 200mm which is corresponding to 90-135mm for your DSLR)
Also, always take care of the noise, use a tripod if possible and take care of the light to avoid hard shadows (cloudy weather is better)
Thank you so much for the tips and advice! It helps a great deal. Such a good community here. 
Nikon gear is always the best choice IMO. I’ve been shooting with Nikon for 25 years and the lenses are the best of the best.
You have had some good advice. Use a lens at the 90 to 110 mm range. It’s better to use a longer lens and shoot from further back to get better depth of field. I highly recommend Nikon’s VR (vibration reduction) lenses which also have a setting for tripods. You can use less light that way also. Since the profiles of all their lenses are in the Photoshop filters and Camera Raw, it’s one click to fix distortion. Add a good Tripod to your list and a remote trigger or use the timer. Don’t handhold texture shots.
If you get into it you will want to look into light boxes and light diffusers. That stuff can be home fabricated cheaply.
Buy the best your budget will allow if you think you’re going to be in to photography. It is addictive.
What budget have you allocated for buying this camera?
Something could be found here: http://thedigitalcamera.net/canon-eos-70d-vs-7d-whats-the-difference-between-them/