----- Original Message ----- From: "Butch Black" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> My understanding (and I have no site to confirm this) is that all chips are > inherently soft. Pentax chose to be very conservative with its in-camera > sharpening. While this gives a softer image, there is less chance of > sharpening artifacts. As sharpening should be applied according to output > size this is a good approach. The problem is as more digital camera users > opt to take their card to the local 1 hour lab their output will look softer > then the same image taken with a Canon or Nikon DSLR of the same approximate > chip size. Maybe, on Pentax's next DSLR they'll offer more sharpening > options (5 instead of 3) and default a slightly higher sharpening level. > Then the drop off at the lab crowd won't be at a disadvantage. > I'm not sure about the chips being soft. Each sensor in the matrix is a discrete dot, and putting them all together should create an image where one dot equals one pixel. This is true even after the Bayer interpolation, since the only thing interpolation do is to calculate the exact hue and brightness of one pixel, based on data from the neighbouring pixels. My understanding is that images straight off the chip like that will have problems with moiré and aliasing. Apparently, this is avoided by putting a softening filter in front of the CCD in most DSLRs. I know for sure that Kodak don't, and apparently, Nikon has done some experiments with reducing the pre-ccd softening in the D70. That's why I asked the original question, of whether the *istD uses pre-ccd softening only, or if something is added in firmware. To begin with, my questions rose because I think the *istD is _too_ soft. Then I also remembered when Dario Bonazza tested the *istD against the Fuji S2 Pro, he found that the *istD images would endure less sharpening before developing halos. The other day, I took some shots with a FA50/1.4 stopped down to f/8 of a black metal profile against a grey sky, and played around with USM in photoshop CS. I also persuaded Cotty to send me a couple of files from his Canon D60, and I plan to go to Darios site and download some stuff from there as well. So far, my impression is that the USM mask is less effective on slightly soft images. It tends to place the mask a couple of pixels further away from the contrast edge, which results in much more visible halos. If this is correct, I will jump to the conclusion that inherently soft files can't be _made_ sharp in software. Which is a conclusion that reinforce my initial sentiment that the *istD is too soft to begin with. Given that the Nikon D100 (and possibly D70) is built on the same chip, why is Pentax the only "softie"? I just can't believe that Pentax lenses are _that_ much softer than the competition; it's more likely that there's something about the camera... Jostein
