Best way to tackle a portfolio type site

I’ve been looking at some of the new 3.0 options and I’m still having some trouble deciding how to go about building a site.

Essentially the site will consist of a Portfolio list page, each with a thumbnail and a title and when clicked through will take you to details of each post and a custom header image for each post page. There is also a blog potion of the site so I’ve decided to build a custom post type to make things easier to update and to keep it separate from the actual blog.

What is the best way to go about this… should I even use custom post types? Should I use the new 3.0 functionality to add custom headers from the admin? Should I use custom fields to pull in all the similar data for each detail page or for the tumbnails?

My first thought was to use page templates for the list and details but after thinking about it I figured the post structure made more sense.

Any advice is appreciated in advance…