Do I need to apply more sharpening to a wide Angle lens?

lostsoulal2

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I normally have my camera set so that no in-camera sharpening is applied, in Canon speak I use the 'Neutral' picture style setting and prefer to make any adjustments later.

I was recently using a wide angle lens and noticed that in general my photos appeared a little soft using the Neutral picture style. I saw reading the manual that if I used the 'Landscape' picture style that Canon applied the most in-camera sharpening.
(First column is for sharpening - 4 being a higher amount)



So does this mean that Canon expects that a wide angle lens (Landscapes) will be naturally 'soft' and therefore that more sharpening is required for all my wide angle shots or have I misunderstood?

Thanks
 
I'm not sure what criteria canon apply to these styles. I suppose they assume ( always a bad idea) that people will want their landscape pictures looking sharp. It has nothing to do with lenses. You can do landscapes with any variety of lenses from wide angle to medium telephoto.

lenses have different characteristics. You don't say what lens you were using or at what aperture, it maybe that the lens, under those conditions, needs more sharpening than your standard lens.

I've not noticed my 17-40 being softer than my other lenses.
 
FYI, the lens I was using was a Sigma 12-24mm lens - where I thought it was soft, the settings were at 22mm F8 ISO 400 @ 1/160 distance to subject about 8 metres.

Yes, I agree that Canon could be just making an assumption of preferred sharpness, along with another assumption that most landscapes are taken with a wide angle lens, but concur that you can take a landscape using a variety of lenses as you say.

I had previously been using a 100mm Macro lens which typically is very sharp ex camera and this may have influenced me.... although I am taking the 12-24mm lens back to Sigma for it be checked over as I do believe it to be too soft...... I will put up an example of this in a few minutes.

Thanks
 
One example ex camera - Neutral Style - with no sharpening applied. Taken at 22mm F8 ISO 400 @ 1/160.

1


2 Centre crop 100%



3 Centre left crop 100%

 
Hmm, for f/8 I'd say that is quite soft. I'm sure my 10-20 checks out sharper than that at 100% and it's widely regarded as inferior to the 12-24, so yes, something might be wrong there.
 
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