> > OK, from what little I've shot with the *istD I'll say that it appeared to > me a little less sharp than the images I get from my identically-sensored > Nikon D100. OTOH, it is known that Pentax uses less in-camera electronic > sharpening, so this alone may be the difference. I find that I do not > have to unsharp mask my Nikon D100 and D1H shots in photoshop to get the > level of sharpness that I am looking for, whereas I do with the *istD. > This suggests that maybe Pentax was at least a little too conservative > for most users.
But, again, this assumes that there will be no manipulation of the image post-exposure. If you are doing *any* image retouching other than just a simple crop (things like level adjustment, as well as image resizing) then you want to perform the sharpening as the last step, not as the first. Rather than being conservative, perhaps Pentax just assume a different workflow that's going to involve at east minimal post-exposure processing. Mind you, all this hypothetical argument is pretty much negated by the fact that you can't get a decent image from the camera using the Pentax RAW converter. From what many folks here say PhotoShop CS does a much better job, but I don't have a copy of that.
