I have an interesting experience to relate to Dario and others complaining that their *istDs are producing unsharp pictures.
For the last several weeks, I've been shooting the company's Nikon D100 because one of the D1Hs is in the shop. I've got my own D100 that I've been using for studio work for more than a year, but this is the first time I've used the company camera. At edit time, I was noticing that all of the pictures from the company D100 were a little soft and required a noticeable unsharp masking in photoshop to get to the level of crispness I was used to. All of these pictures were taken with some of Nikon's best lenses (20/2.8, 180/2.8N, 300/2.8AFS, 70-200VR) which have been exemplary performers on film. I asked one of my co-workers who had also made use of the D100 if he had had the same experience, and he said that he had. Then, killing time between assignments yesterday, I went through the menus to see how everything was set up. In-camera sharpening was set OFF. I have always had the in-camera sharpening on my D1H and D100 set to "NORMAL" (except for work at 3200 ISO). The difference is noticeable The D100 has the same sensor as the *istD. The pictures coming out of the sensor/anti-aliasing filter/firmware combo on the D100 are little soft without sharpening applied. With the same sensor and more anti-aliasing or less firmware sharpening, it makes sense that the *istD images are likewise a little soft. I'd suggest that perhaps 6MP cameras are inherantly less sharp than 3MP ones, but I haven't heard a lot of griping about the Canon 10D producing soft images (Cotty?). OTOH according to the tests I've seen Canon clearly uses less anti-aliasing or more sharpening and as a result shows more artifacting and such. I haven't messed around enough with the *istD (except with a soft-focus filter!) to learn if the images it produces can be sharpened up in photoshop to look as sharp as the ones the D100 produces. Buying a tamron adaptall 90 macro for cross-camera testing is tempting. I HAVE messed around with the *istD enough to be impressed with the AF speed, in af-s anyway, of the F* 300/4.5 on it. DJE
