Correct Bantha.
And for stills, Poly count can be as high as needed for the detail.

For animations however, I prefer to keep polycount under a very tight control.

And I allways render under Bb's sphere, with IDL and gamma corection.

I fully agree that you need High Poly figures for close up stills.

I completely disagree that you need 70.000 Poly's for a average figure render that is 5" high on a modern monitor. That is a typical sales argument from a vendor that ran out of arguments.

Do I use a double deck 90 passenger bus to take my single kid to school?
I could yes. :-):-):-)

I prefer my good old bike. :-)

Some prefer to model everything in the object.
Ohters (like me) prefer displacement maps.

My rendered eyes do not care, ony the visible result counts.
And what do I see?
A rendered output.

Poser 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, P8 and PPro2010, P9 and PP2012, P10 and PP2014 Game Dev
"Do not drive faster then your angel can fly"!