what is a good camera to phograph objects with?

I want to take pictures of different items to create a catalog.

If you're going to be creating a catalog for products you plan to sell, then an SLR is really the way you want to go. Especially if you're planning to shoot extreme close ups. A dedicated macro lens on a tripod will do alot better and give clearer details than any point and shoot. This is because the chips will be full size and the lens elements much better defined. You'll also need to think about a good lighting box to light the objects you shoot as favorably as possible. Professional results require professional equipment, IMHO.

That doesn't mean you have to spend a ton of money either. Since the cost has gone down for them, for nearly the cost of a high end Canon G9 point and shoot, you can invest in a lesser MP DSLR like the XTi or even an XT which will do the trick quite nicely. And what you lose in the "perceived megapixel gap" you will gain by a much better array of lenses available for the Eos Rebel.

Why do I say "perceived megapixel gap?" Because more MP is not necessarily better when it comes to point and shoot cameras. I came across an interesting article today about how more mega pixels is not necessarily a good thing. According to Image Engineering – a company that does testing of digital cameras for photo magazines in Germany – the quality of digital pictures has steadily decreased since the state of the art was six megapixels back in 2004. And because they don’t have a “dog in this hunt,” they put forth a compelling argument for buying new digital cameras with less mega pixels and not more.

The argument is essentially this: CCD chips on point and shoot cameras a smaller and as such, fitting in more pixels causes them to lose light sensivity. Sure, there’s more data on the chip, but the chip can’t absorb the light data and what it ends up with is a picture that has more noise than image quality. In addition, the more megapixels a camera has, the larger the lens it needs to provide the clarity it deserves and prevent diffraction due to a loss of detail with smaller apertures. But since we’re talking portable point and shoots here, those large lenses simply aren’t being made.

Finally, with larger mega pixels comes longer saving time due to their requires huge storage capacity, or more compression if not storing images in RAW format. The result is a noisier image and a dissatisfied camera user who thirsts for high quality and speed but fell into the trap of "more must mean better."

In the end, relying on a smaller MP that can balance all these needs may indeed be a better answer.

Setting your camera to a lower setting doesn't help either. Essentially, the image is reduced to the set quality after it has been processed by the CCD. As such, the light still goes through those pixels, only that after some basic processing steps pixels "thrown out" to make the image to the desired setting and size. This process is called "Choking" and that will cause Artifacting and noise. Additionlly, you'll also loose details of the recorded image.

Some cameras have written into their firmware a process called "binning," which merges the signals of multiple pixels to make larger pixels. Usually at a 4-1 ration. This will essentially turn a 12-megapixel camera into a 3-megapixel camera. And that gives you the opposite problem of too many pixels on the chip ... you now have too few and as such, will run into artifacting instead of noise.

Now I know what some will say ... James, in perfect studio photography the noise issue isn't an issue because of proper lighting, lower ISSO settings, etc. Sure, I can see that. But considering you're going for catalog size photographs, the benefit of more MP won't even assert itself anway, even without the noise issues since MP above 8 mp won't even be seen until you reach enlargements above 8x10.