P712

Well so far I have had the P712 for about 2 weeks. I have shot at everthing from flowers to moon shots. So far I cain't say that I am over joyed with the sharpness of the pictures. They are good but not as good as I was expecting. My other camera is an older Nikon coolpix 3500 and I expected the P712 to surpass the Nikon. I am happy with most of the features but I just need to get a little better sharpness out of it. Can someone tell me some setting or something that might help this situation? I have it set on the highest resolution and the sharpness at the highest setting. If I need to do something else please help me out here. If I don't come up with something soon I will return the camera and try something else.
Thanks,
Carl

I don't think there is anything to do other sharpen with a photo editing program. I have the same problem with my P850.
--
.: Justin :.

P850, CX6330

I tried to find some shots that you may have posted for us to see but I could not see any. Care to show us some of your shots so we can see the extent of the damage?

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Ananda
http://www.flickr.com/photos/32554587@N00/
http://picasaweb.google.com/AnandaSim

I have never posted a photo. Do I need to resize them first and how are they posted?
Thanks,
Carl

Open an account with Photobucket. It is free. A lot of forum member use it including myself. (photobucket.com)

Then down load your pictures to Photobucket. It will resize for you automatically.

Copy the URL Link of your pictures (at the bottom of your pictures) and paste in here.

Then click on the the "Preview" button below. You should see your pictures.
Then click on "Post" to post it.

chiue
880, 7590, 6440

Well here are a few pictures. They look a little soft to me. Also the light circle that shows up on the cupboard door in picture 2, what would cause that? I'm not talking about the flash reflection. These were taken in the auto mode.

Carl Pettit said:

Well so far I have had the P712 for about 2 weeks. I have shot at
everthing from flowers to moon shots. So far I cain't say that I am
over joyed with the sharpness of the pictures. They are good but
not as good as I was expecting. My other camera is an older Nikon
coolpix 3500 and I expected the P712 to surpass the Nikon. I am
happy with most of the features but I just need to get a little
better sharpness out of it. Can someone tell me some setting or
something that might help this situation? I have it set on the
highest resolution and the sharpness at the highest setting. If I
need to do something else please help me out here. If I don't come
up with something soon I will return the camera and try something
else.
Thanks,
Carl

Click to expand...

I think this is the most common first impression one get when moving from Nikon/Canon to Kodak. Nikon/Canon do a lot of sharpening in camera. And one of the reason I prefer Kodak is if you focus right, you'll get sharp object where you want it, and the rest are a bit blur (shallow depth of field?? sorry, I'm no educated photographer). So with Kodak you'll get a more 3D-like, life-like photos, whereas with Nikon/Canon you'll get sharp yet flat ones.

Sorry, I'm Indonesian, it's hard to express my thoughts in English...

regards,
-Jr-

Actually for the 1st and 2nd one with the lady, I don't think it was all that bad. Infact given the lighting condition I think it is acceptable. It look pretty sharp to me.

Did you leave the auto focus on multi-zone (the default). You might want to try changing the setting to Centre Zone. This will give you a more precise focus.

chiue
880, 7590, 6440

All the pictures look fine to me. You can always do PP on the photo to sharpen it as per your test.

The white circle you are talking about in the second picture may be some dust particles came into way of the camera lense. I can'y guess anything else for that.

--
Ronak

The photos of the lady are "regular". The photos of the dog is not a good demo - seems to be the edge of the fridge is being focussed, the dog and the rug are out of focus.

The lady's photo -

1. is on Auto? that means the camera is not using minimum JPEG compression? Her blouse / shirt doesn't appear to showing much fabric texture.

2. The colour saturation and tones are mild, not bright - some brands set them to be more aggresive on auto.

3. You're using the electronic flash - some cams are again, not as good on electronic flash as in outside light.

4. Your aperture is wide open at f/2.8 - your lens zoom is at 11.4mm - I don't know the calc ratio for 35mm equivalent. However, looks like your depth of field is shallow - her eyes are sharp, the door is blur and the books are not sharp - that's getting bounce back of flash light from the shiny white kitchen wall tiles and the shiny bench top. That shine is causing specular reflection - that white halo you mention. I would guess the overall bounce from scene is blurring the sharpness of the photo.

I think a different environment would give you different sharpness, Auto is not the sharpest this camera can do. The electronic flash and surroundings here make the photo very neutral and cold - not warm.

If you feel you don't want to tweak settings but bought the camera only to shoot Auto and nothing but that, then this scene and these shots convey the idea that this camera is not the best for that purpose - however, I don't know which camera will do better for this scene.

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Ananda
http://www.flickr.com/photos/32554587@N00/
http://picasaweb.google.com/AnandaSim

If auto mode don't give the best sharpness just how would you suggest I shoot this picture? PASM? Should I focus more on the Fstop for this to be sharper or what? If so what do you recommend?
Thanks,
Carl

Hi Carl,

For some background, my experience with digitals has been with the Olympus 750uz and the Kodak P880. My first digital was a simpler Nikon 775. I had shot two film SLRs before digital.

The Auto mode on the Kodak P880 (being a close relative of your P712) is designed for casual point and shoot users. The settings are optimised for a good chance of a fair photo. However, it won't produce the best quality photo - that's not the aim - because a best quality photo requires patient human judgement, with some assistance by the camera.

On my camera, if you choose PAS, you take take control of some settings. That's good, but they don't "stay" - you have to use the C mode so that your favourite settings do stay.

One important setting for sharpness is JPEG compression - I always use FINE quality otherwise known as lowest in-camera compression.

Next, lighting of the scene has to be good. Light can come from behind your shoulder, from the side, from in front of you and from above you. The main aim is that light must fall "nicely" on the subject - if lighting is not "good", colours will not come out, things will look shimmery or fuzzy - regardless of whatever camera I use.

Focussing is of course important. My old film cameras were manual focus - I had only myself to blame if the focus was wrong. These days, cameras autofocus by themselves. This becomes a problem unless you have bright scenes - indoors and in darker scenes, the auto mechanism may grab the wrong focus point or not at all. Additionally in darker scenes, the aperture will be forced to go large - meaning if you zoom in or go up close, the Depth of Field of most lenses wil not be enough to make everything in the picture sharp.

In other words, the "Auto" mode on these more expensive cameras just designed to give you a fair quality shot given that the human will not set anything except to point the camera.

Going away from "Auto" to a mode that is partly manual allows the human to control the camera so that, given enough skill and patience, there is a chance that the photo will be the best the camera sharpness, colour will be. However, simply switching to PAS doesn't reward you with any success immediate success - you have to patiently skill up for each photo before you are rewarded - one beginner who has skilled up a lot goes by the nickname of JPfromOH - if he sees this posting, I am pretty sure he will contribute some tips.

Now, of course each camera brand and model wants to make a camera that is fantastic just at "Auto" without any manual or semi-manual control. To this aim, they are achieving good results with those camera phones and pocket 3x zoom cameras using all kinds of technology.

The point of these quick and easy cameras is to give a good result anytime, not the best result but a good result as often as possible. In the opposite direction, the aim of the P series and the long 10x zooms from the other brands is more to allow the user to take more manual control to get the best.

--



Ananda
http://www.flickr.com/photos/32554587@N00/
http://picasaweb.google.com/AnandaSim

AnandaSim said:

Hi Carl,

Going away from "Auto" to a mode that is partly manual allows the
human to control the camera so that, given enough skill and
patience, there is a chance that the photo will be the best the
camera sharpness, colour will be. However, simply switching to PAS
doesn't reward you with any success immediate success - you have to
patiently skill up for each photo before you are rewarded - one
beginner who has skilled up a lot goes by the nickname of JPfromOH

• if he sees this posting, I am pretty sure he will contribute some

tips.

Click to expand...

Almost missed this reference to your's truly....I am not familiar with the P712....I have the P850 and P880......the closest comparison "I think" is P850 to P712......

As a disclaimer.....I have learned a lot over the past 9 months but I am still a beginner......so what I say may be totally wrong.....

I too was very disappointed with the P850 and indoor flash pics (your samples are flash with the P712).....your samples also appear to be zoomed somewhat (I did not look at the Exif data)...the P850 had real difficulty in low light situations (zooming makes this worse) and I also feel the P850 indoor flash pics are "soft" (not what you want to hear I am sure)...I know that the P850 does not have "low light AutoFocus Assist Lamp" but I am not sure about the P712.....I personally feel it is a dis-service for "P"erformance series cameras to NOT have an assist lamp (maybe the assist lamp wouldn't have helped with your pics???)...the P880 does have an assist lamp and here is a link to some crude sample P880 flash pics:

http://www.kodakgallery.com/jpfromoh/main/p880_indoor_flash?

I am now using the P880 for indoor flash pics.....

I also think the "circle" you see is from dust in the air....and the flash reflects off of the dust....darker backgrounds accentuates this according to Mike from Kodak....

Not sure if this reply helps or hurts...perhaps someone that actually owns the P712 can add more details and actual hands on experience......

John....

Ananda, you have written some very good advice (again), I have copied your text into my "custom" digicam manual, for future reference, thanks!

AnandaSim said:

One important setting for sharpness is JPEG compression - I always
use FINE quality otherwise known as lowest in-camera compression.

Click to expand...

I have a question regarding Compression and Sharpness, which are separate settings. Sharpness visibly affects the output quality of the photo. But how does Compression affect output quality? It obviously affects file size, so something is happening here. Does Compression quality only matter when you get to a postprocessing stage? Right now my P850 is set to Standard JPG quality. What advantage would Fine JPG quality offer me if just printing 4x6 images?

Thanks in advance.
--
JT
P850

Compression works in digital images by disgarding parts of the image that the normal eye can't see or discern (theoretically). The algorithim employed by the camera will look for patterns or bits of information that are reptitive or can typically be replaced. An example is that the algorithim might store certain color information (i.e. shadows or blends) at a lower resolution than the photo itself. The more compression employed, the more aggressive the algorithim is at doing this. I'm not sure of the exact algorithims employed by the Kodak, but the Fine setting is less aggressive than the standard, so you may be able to more easily notice the compression artifacts when using standrad that otherwise wouldn't be obvious to you if you used fine. Some examples of compression artifacts that you might notice in the standard jpeg compression mode would be noise around edges (mosiquito noise), blockiness in shadowy or dark areas (checkerboarding), staircasing on lines that should be straight, etc. If you switch to fine, you might still notice some of this (especially when looking at full size or zoomed in on your computer), but it should be greatly reduced from the standard setting.

Hope that clears it up.

This and the bug photo - now, you are approaching what the camera can do. The sharpness and detail of the tortoise / turtle is high - there's lot of detail in the skin and in the bright light, you are getting a good depth of field except for a few blades of grass.

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Ananda
http://www.flickr.com/photos/32554587@N00/
http://picasaweb.google.com/AnandaSim

Good explanation. When we take a photo, we are making a recording of reality onto our equipment. If our technology were limitless, we would always shoot at "perfect" quality - i.e. uncompressed. This isn't possible, so we have this technology called JPEG compression - we take a "close enough to excellent" picture. Now, the JPEG scientists have been very clever and they have managed to reduce the file size a lot without losing sharpness, detail in the photo. Even a highly compressed JPEG gives you some picture enjoyment.

There is a point where the balance of quality loss vs reduced file size - and it's all about reduced file size - where each of us is happy with. Reduced file size gives you more pictures on your memory card in case you are running short at the time, reduced file size gives you faster recovery to readiness for the next shot.

Given that I have a couple of 2Gb cards in hand, an 8MP camera with good lens and I am not shooting action sequences, I don't see any benefit stepping down from the best JPEG quality to anything lower - JPEG of any in-camera quality is already compressed in comparison to RAW or TIFF. When you step down from the best JPEG quality and the highest resolution, you are permanently recording less information, less detail.

Sharpening is a completely different aspect - PP allows you to emphasise the boundaries between light and dark - make those ridges more distinct. On some subjects, it reduces some mush and fools the eye to thinking that photo appears sharper - there is no real improvement in detail and data quality of the file. On other subjects and photos, it just makes the photo look gritty and unnatural like an etch, and increases visible grain / noise. Again, if you have lots of data in the original photo due to use of camera FINE JPEG, the computer can calculate better sharpening than if you had a photo where the resolution and compression are worse - because the sharpening calculations will sharpen the grain/noise rather than the subjects of your photo.

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Ananda
http://www.flickr.com/photos/32554587@N00/
http://picasaweb.google.com/AnandaSim

Mcamden & Ananda

I big Thank You for both of your replies, very helpful & informative, plus written well enough for a non-techy like myself to understand! This forum has been a great source of info since starting my digicam quest last fall.

By reading this info, I can make my settings decision based on what I am shooting. Random, point 'n click - maybe everything set at normal. Once in a lifetime shots (sunsets, beautiful landscapes, etc) - Fine Compression & High Sharpness.

Up to this point, my P850 has been set at normal Sharpness & standard Compression. I think I will try to get out sometime soon and setup the tripod on a nice scene, and then take photos with a bunch of different settings. Then see if I can tell the difference on the PC screen.

Thanks again!
--
JT
P850