Warren and Lucia Prosperi have some unique requirements of a camera.  Warren's paintings are huge murals in a classic style of historic events.  He needs to use photographs of re-enactors to capture what no one else can see- those accidental, synergistic moments that can only be captured by putting people together and observing them. 
 

Warren will create a scene from a drama- but the drama that was an actual historic event, and Lucia will photograph it.  From the many photographs of the scene re-enactment, Warren will piece together that moment in time that speaks to the significance, and the emotions, of the people who made history.  It's a cliche, to say this, but the Prosperi's work truly makes History come alive, as nothing else can. 
 

Warren must be able to capture at a high burst speed.  He needs detail, but not detail like a conventional photographer- he needs nuance, color, tone and shading.  He needs to view the subjects at life-size, and he's often working with low artificial light conditions. He also needs extreme depth of field, to include all the subjects within sharp focus. 
 

Because of the high resolution, sensor size (the sensor, smaller than a digital back, allows greater depth of field for a given aperture) and high-ISO performance (he used ISO 800 to 1000 for this shoot), as well as a fast shoot rate, also, because they already were working with Nikons, the Prosperis used a Nikon D3X.  "We realized because we were asking the camera to have extremely good depth of field, while stopping action, standing twenty feet away, and having good detail so Warren could make life-size prints, that we were pressing the limits of any camera.  We were impressed with the Nikon D3x because although at life-size the information is a bit soft, it still gives Warren the source material for what he needs to make his painting."
 

Here are some shots of the day.