DJE wrote: > 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
I don't doubt that a moment. However, my problem is not dealing with menu settings. I have no problem in setting sharpness, adding USM and the like. My problem is about true information stored in the file. Sorry again, I was misleading you when using the word sharpness, while I should have used FTM, I think. If you have a good degree of resolution and enough contrast, you can adjust sharpness at your leisure (according to subject, lighting, taste, and God only knows what else). If you have say 1 pixel info laying in a 6 MP file, it will look soft and undetailed whichever USM you'll apply (in-camera, or on PC). In other words: are you sure you have 6MP info in any 6MP file? I think different combinations of lenses/anti-alias filters/sensors/software can give very different FTM levels, even with 6MP sensors. > 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. As I wrote, I now mainly suspect the anti-alias filter. It is also possible there are more than one type of filter in front of *ist D's sensors sold (and that's the meaning of my survey, just a faint hope to figure out that). Or it is also possible that the Sony sensor cannot do more than that, and Nikon is hiding that better than Pentax. In any case, using good (suited?) lenses can help in getting the most out of the camera performance (whichever it is), and now I'm more and more selective in using lenses, as well as stabilizing the camera with monopods and the like... My concert pictures aren't that bad in that respect, even seen full size, with some help of the 70-200 Sigma EX. > 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?). I cannot understand a reason for that. Roughly speaking, 6MP sensors have to capture twice the information 3 MP sensors can get (which means 41% more on a linear basis). > OTOH according to the tests I've seen Canon > clearly uses less anti-aliasing This is strictly on topic, and makes a lot of difference. > or more sharpening This is off-topic. I'm not interested in discussing post-processing here. You can apply 1000 times the sharpening Canon applies in-camera, if you want. However, if you have no info, you get no info. It's a simple GIGO (Garbage In/Garbage Out). > and as a result shows more artifacting and such. OK, how to get the best rendition of given data can vary. Dario Bonazza
