sharpness

[grrwoofwoofgrowl]

Been clicking away with new camera for last few days. When I look at the pics on PC they look fine. Using the software with camera (digital photo professional) photos can be tweaked and made to look even better by adjusting the "sharpness".

Is it accepted that adjusting sharpness is part of it, or is it down to lense quality, limitations etc?

[APB]

Originally Posted by grrwoofwoofgrowl

Been clicking away with new camera for last few days. When I look at the pics on PC they look fine. Using the software with camera (digital photo professional) photos can be tweaked and made to look even better by adjusting the "sharpness".

Is it accepted that adjusting sharpness is part of it, or is it down to lense quality, limitations etc?

Surely depends on the image and what you're trying to achieve. I never really tweak sharpeness... I tend to play with the colours more, make them more vibrant.

[Mercia Blackcat]

I find altering the sharpness tends to spoil the quality of the photo by adding noise.

Depends on lens quality measured in lines/mm that can be recorded but also how well focused the scene is and camera shake I suppose which could be very slight.

To avoid camera shake the slowest shutter speed that should be used is a reciprocal of the focal length of the lens so if you are using a 300 mm telephoto you need at least a 1/300th of a second or faster shutter speed.

For a 50 mm len then around 1/50th or 1/60th although they can be hand held at slower speeds.

If in doubt, take the shot anyway.

Although with image stabilisation it's not as much a problem these days as it used to be.

Optical image stabilisation works better than electronic image stabilisation.

[smoker]

Soft images can be caused by all sorts of things, eg motion blur, focus, optical quality, atmospheric conditions, aperture. More expensive lenses will be sharper, but do you really want to lay out all that money when you can just sharpen it in Photoshop? Sharpening is a common adjustment - especially in the stuff I do - but it boils down to what you want from your photos IMHO.

[scraff]

If you are shooting JPEGS it's likely the camera has already applied sharpening to them, many good points above, the most important is the part of the image you are looking at is in focus, if it isn't no amount of sharpening is going to help.

[Roger]

I take nearly everything RAW and use DPP.

I am not sure what its its like with your camera but with my 400D and the "standard" picture style (as set in the camera), DPP will apply a +3 sharpening anyway. I rarely find the need to go above that and indeed I sometimes "soften" the images back to "0"

It is all down to personal preference and the particular photo you have taken though. You are the "artist".

[smoker]

Originally Posted by scraff

if it isn't no amount of sharpening is going to help.

Spot on. You can't sharpen an out of focus image into focus. Deconvolution can correct for focus, but it introduces artifacts.