Lens and Sharpening required

[gpc1]

Hi,

I have a quick question about sharpening.
I have been shooting RAW format
Canon 400D and a Sigma 17-70mm f2.8-4 DC
(I will have to post a few pics when I get back tonight as examples.)

I just can’t seem to get pin sharp pictures. Even with a tripod they ALL require a degree of sharpening which I have had to do in Elements6.

Tried at various apertures from 4 – 11 which from reading on the net are the best range for this lens.

Is this normal or do I have a duff lens?
What’s the best way of testing whether your lens is perfect (as perfect as it can be for the price/build quality etc)
My mate has a fuji finepix 9000 and he gets really sharp images, is this because of the in camera processing to jpeg?

Basically, im trying to ascertain whether its me doing something wrong or whether the lens is never going to be what I would like it to be.

Thanks for any help..

Rgds
Gpc

 

[mattyh]

forgive me if i'm wrong, but I thought all RAW images would need a sharpen after they've been taken.

 

[jamesward93]

that is my understanding too.

 

[CT]

If you want sharp images straight out of the camera then shoot jpegs - you'll have some control over the amount of sharpening applied in the menus. Even so many people would advocate disabling all in camera sharpening and dealing with it by hand in processing, as no two images are the same.

If you shoot in RAW format no sharpening is applied in camera anyway, so sharpening is entirely down to you. RAW processing demands a bit more effort from you but the results are well worth it.

I never sharpen in my RAW editor - I always sharpen the output TIFF in my normal image editing software.

 

[gpc1]

Thanks for the comments

So, just to get my head round this

RAW images WILL always need a dgree of sharpening.

Its better to sharpen AFTER you have done any other PP work and converted to your out put format ie TIFF, JPEG etc.

One more thing, and again I have tried to look this up but there doesnt seem to be any concise answer (if you have a link to this it would be great)
there are various output options ie, Jpeg, Tiff, DNG....

What do you use nd why, what are the pros and cons of each.:shrug:

being fairly new to digital photography I have been doing PP in lightroom or elements 6 then saving as jpeg as this is the only one I really recognise. Its also the only one that I now can be opened on mates PC's etc.


Thanksfor this, its a steep learning curve and its made much more palatable by all the help on here

 

[CT]

Thanks for the comments

So, just to get my head round this

RAW images WILL always need a dgree of sharpening.

Yes.

Its better to sharpen AFTER you have done any other PP work and converted to your out put format ie TIFF, JPEG etc.

Yes again. Digital sharpening works by increasing the visible contrast differences in areas of adjoining contrast. It's generally accepted that sharpening should be the last thing you do to an image prior to saving. The reason for this is that if you alter levels contrast etc,. in an already sharpened image you could have an adverse effect on that careful sharpening you did.

One more thing, and again I have tried to look this up but there doesnt seem to be any concise answer (if you have a link to this it would be great)
there are various output options ie, Jpeg, Tiff, DNG....

What do you use nd why, what are the pros and cons of each.:shrug:

jpeg or jpg stands for Joint Photographic Experts Group after the body which established the standard. It's widely used in photographic applications as it's a way of saving an image while compressing the size of it. While you can often choose the amount of compression, there is a drop in image quality although it's not always apparant. The real cruncher though is that every time you save an image in jpeg format, compression is applied again, so the deterioration in the image becomes progressive. It's widely used for publishing images to the web where the size of the image is an issue ... as it is here at TPF. jpegs are widely used for attachments to e-mails for much the same reasons.

DNG stands for Digital Negative Format and it's basically an attempt to establish a common RAW file format across all manufacturers, who all (very annoyingly) use their own RAW file formats.

TIFF files (Tagged Image Format) is a format which saves files without compression so no matter how many times you work on and save the image - it doesn't deteriorate. It also supports 16 bit images so is the format in which to save top quality processed images.

being fairly new to digital photography I have been doing PP in lightroom or elements 6 then saving as jpeg as this is the only one I really recognise. Its also the only one that I now can be opened on mates PC's etc.

Well jpegs and bmp (bitmap) files are supported by Windows so will open jpegs on any PC. Many other file formats (and there are lots) will require that your mate has the software which supports the format to be able to open it.

Thanksfor this, its a steep learning curve and its made much more palatable by all the help on here

No probs - hope that helps somewhat.

 

[gpc1]

Thank you for your clear, concise response. really is much appreciated. I willnow look at how I process and store images, especially the gooduns!

 

[CT]

Thank you for your clear, concise response. really is much appreciated. I willnow look at how I process and store images, especially the gooduns!

LOL. Well that's a whole other can of worms... welcome to work flow.

I'm the last person to advise you because I'm totally disorganised, but whatever you do always save the original RAW file which is smaller than a TIFF and you always have the original data to go back to.

TiFF files are huge, especially if they're uncropped, and soon take up a lot of space sitting on your hard drive.

jpegs are obviously much smaller files to store being compressed.

Some people save all three versions of the file, but you need lots of storage space and don't forget the risk of storing your images on just one drive - always back the images up to another drive or to CDs... or both!