As far a MM go, i couldnt tell you. But you can get as small as a 1round liner, which is just one super thin needle point. In my stock of needles, the smalles size i use is a 3RL bullet point. Which is pretty damn small, and allows me to do REALLY small, detailed work in the outline of a piece. I have over 1,000 needles of all different configurations, and the 3RL is the most typical needle used for detailed work. But if your tryin to get SUPER detailed, then you can special order the 1RL needles.
And also i'd like to add something to my previous post -- As far as tattooing myself goes, what really makes it hard to do intricate work on myself is the fact that i cant stretch my own skin if im tattooing my arm. That's a really big factor when doing good work, because if you have the skin stretched nice n tight when you lay down a line, if its a little less than straight, all you have to do is let go of the skin, and the line you just did bunches up a bit, and you cant see any mistake that you may have just made - plus it makes the line appear thicker aswell. Same technique for shading and coloring. If you stretch the skin it covers more surface area, and then when you snap the skin back to normal, the color bunches up and appears to be more solid. Ive gotten pretty good at tattooing unstretched skin though, so i guess that means im getting decent at tatooing in general, lol. If you can do a good looking piece of ink without stretching the skin out, then imagine what a piece done by the same person would look like if he's tattooing somebody other than himself.
--Here's just an instance of the difference between being able to stretch the skin out and not. Here's a tat i did on myself when i was still learning. Ive since fully colored it in rather than leaving it just shaded :
-And here's a piece i did on a buddy of mine. The coloring is abot 10x more solid, and the lines look way way cleaner.
Its night and day. But i can pretty much tattoo anything nowadays man. Wether the skin is stretched or not, i can make it work and look professional. It's just a matter of taking your time. Here's a few pics of the tats ive done on myself. I need to take some updated pics of my sleeve, because its starting to come together now, but this was pretty much where i learned to tattoo, because i dont like practice skin, and i wasn;t allowed to tattoo anybody for 3 months, so i had to practice on myself, lol.
--The majority of those were done by me on myself. I threw a couple pics of other tats i did on other people when i first began, just because thats all the flash i have on my iphone. I was forced to take a digicam and put all my flash on the camera, and then make a flashbook and delete the pictures, but ive already done about 112 tattoos since ive finished my apprenticeship. and most of the work is much better than this stuff. BUT, i did just buy myself another kit so i can still tattoo at home (shhh, i could actually lose my chair at the shop for that shit), so every time i do a tat, if your interested to see how i progress, ill post a pic up on RIU (TC, ill make sure i do it in my own Journal from now on, lmao).
---Sorry for jackin your thread TC, lol, it was inevitable, hehe.
But yeah Dragon, your gonna have to look more at the Artist's flashbook if you wanna know if its possible to do the detail your looking for. Go into your local tattoo shop and take a look at all of the past work hes done, and see for yourself if you think he can do it. Make sure you talk to him and voice your concerns before you get it done, and im sure that youll be able to find what your lookin for man. It's pretty easy to do some seriously small work, so unless your lookin for a picasso painting to fit on the head of a pin, then im pretty sure your in good shape,
-K1