Sharpness issue bringing me down

True, as others said, that Dslr don't sharpen pictures and really don't have a high sharp setting. The other factor is that you are lookin at a high resolution pic at 72dpi (100% on screen).

Depending on your need here are some solutions:

1. If you need to keep it at the same resolution, then you have to do a batch process to sharpen all the pics.

2. If it's for web or similar, if you downsize it, you will notice how sharp it really is because of the details the camera captured.

3. If your are printing it, then you can either sharpen it in the program before printing, or directly set a high sharpening in the printer properties.

--
Z.

Have you really looked closely at those supposed "sharp" pictures from the other cameras?

With some experience you might come to the same conclusion as I. The quality of the keepers with the 300d far exceeds my expectations and the number of keepers increases with experience.

The inexperence regarding lenses, DOF, suitter speeds, camera shake etc. has far more to do with this issue than with anything else mentioned (focus, AI servo, blah blah).

Give yourself some time to learn how to best use the features. Then pickup a good lens and learn it's best attributes.

I highly recommend you get the 70-200mm F4 for your work. I had that lense and it is awesome! It changed my mind about the camera real fast. Cameta and B&H sell them for around $579.

If you find that you don't like it it well sell very easily for very close to what you paid for it. It has a sweet spot at around 5.6 to 8.0 aperature and try and shoot at 1/400 or higher for handheld shots.

The pic you uploaded looks fine. If you want shots that look more like P&S cameras, use the smallest jpeg size and the maximum anmount of sharpening and bump up the contrast and color saturation.

dlesko

ustad2be said:

I've been using a 300D with the kit lens ever since it came out a
few months ago. I have to shapen every single image with photoshop
to make it right. Since I take a lot of pictures, its really time
consuming. What I need to know is, is this issue with the camera or
the lens? If the issue is with the lens, what other lens do you
suggest? If its the camera, what other camera do you suggest?
I use the camera for my work and only take pictures outside in
daylight. I'm willing to spend up to $1000 for a better lens if it
will resolve my issue.
Please advice.
Thanks in advance.

Click to expand...

whazzup said:

Actions sent. Feel free to share. I don't pretend to have all the
answers, but these work for me.

Click to expand...

Sorry, could I bother you to send to me as well?

[email protected]

Thanks.

ustad2be said:

I've been using a 300D with the kit lens ever since it came out a
few months ago. I have to shapen every single image with photoshop
to make it right. Since I take a lot of pictures, its really time
consuming. What I need to know is, is this issue with the camera or
the lens? If the issue is with the lens, what other lens do you
suggest? If its the camera, what other camera do you suggest?
I use the camera for my work and only take pictures outside in
daylight. I'm willing to spend up to $1000 for a better lens if it
will resolve my issue.
Please advice.
Thanks in advance.

Click to expand...

I prefer to shoot in RAW and handle the sharpening during conversion. Since switching to C1 Rebel Edition, I've found that I don't need to employ Photoshop's (or any other tool's) USM. In the Focus tab, I set the look to "standard" and the sharpening amount to 100 with a threshold of 3. I find that C1's demosaicing algorithm results in sharper-than-typical images without much amplification of any noise. The only problem with recommending this to you is that you say you take a lot of pictures. Shooting RAW in volume requires that you buy a large CF card and use batch processing to develop the images. The larger card is well within your budget, but, to get the larger batch queue, you'll need to use a higher-end version of C1, and these do not yet support the 300D. However, you could use Breezebrowser to batch convert. Breezebrowser lets you set sharpening during conversion and/or to apply a post-conversion USM, all in batch mode. Now that I think about it, this may be the way to go for you.

David

Yeah Joe, I hear you but PP will most always improve the out of cam image . Even from a Fuji S2 pro.
John

Joe Farrugia said:

johnd1 said:

You mean you actually purchased this camera without knowing that
digital images from a dlsr benefit from require some degree of
sharpening? What planet do you live on?
John

Click to expand...

John, I beg to differ.

There IS one DSLR that consistently produces excellent JPEGS
straight out of camera.

Sharp; lowest noise, even at ISO 1600; lovely skin tones even on
Auto White balance.

It's called the Fujifilm S2 Pro.

I assure you it doesn't need any sharpening (or post-processing) to
produce excellent, saleable prints.

The con: it comes at a premium price, & you do have to have high
quality glass to go with it.

Regards,

--

JF

Click to expand...

Here is all the exif info from the picture he posted.

Camera
Make Canon
Model Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL
Orientation upper left
X resolution 180
Y resolution 180
Resolution unit 2
Datetime 2003:11:09 15:23:26
YCbCr positioning centered
Image
Exposure time 1/50 s
F-number 5.6
ISO speed ratings 100
Date/time original 2003:11:09 15:23:26
Date/time digitized 2003:11:09 15:23:26
Component config YCbCr
Compressed BPP 3
Shutter speed value 0.020000 s
Aperture value 4.97086
Exposure bias value 0
Max. aperture value 3.61472
Metering mode Pattern
Flash Flash did not fire
Focal length 18 mm
User comment
Colorspace sRGB
Pixel X dimension 1536
Pixel Y dimension 1024
Focal plane X res. 1721.97
Focal plane Y res. 1721.01
Focal plane res. unit inch
Sensing method One-chip color area sensor
Custom Rendered Normal process
Exposure mode Auto exposure
White balance Auto white balance
Scene capture type Standard
Image description
Artist
Copyright
Miscellaneous
Exif version (30,32,32,30)

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FlashPix version (30,31,30,30)
File source DSC

Joe Farrugia said:

There IS one DSLR that consistently produces excellent JPEGS
straight out of camera.

Sharp; lowest noise, even at ISO 1600; lovely skin tones even on
Auto White balance.

It's called the Fujifilm S2 Pro.

I assure you it doesn't need any sharpening (or post-processing) to
produce excellent, saleable prints.

The con: it comes at a premium price, & you do have to have high
quality glass to go with it.

Click to expand...

You missed the biggest "con" of the S2 of all: the camera is making all your decisions for you and they can't be reversed. Canon lets YOU choose what you want. You can always add these things, you can't subtract them easily if at all.

If someone wants that sharpened high contrast P&S look from the Rebel it is a simple matter of storing those settings in one of the three available user preferences settings.

ustad2be said:

Here is an unedited photo. I do not have the EXIF data for it.

Click to expand...

The EXIF data is still there if one saves that jpeg and looks at it in a vewer that shows EXIF data.

I note that you set a smaller size apparently on the camera and that's not a good thing to do. It's always best if you use the full sensor size since the camera doesn't downsize pics that well and if you look closely at your pic you'll see some jaggies caused by the camera downsizing the pic. Look particularly at the grille on the front of the truck.

Other than those jaggies, it looks plenty sharp to me and I don't know what you expect, but the background is a little out of focus since the picture was shot at an f5.6 lens opening. Also the shutter speed is a little on the slow side at 1/50th so you may have just a smidgeon of camera shake too.

Sooo, next time under cloudy conditions like that, try boosting the ISO to 200 or 400 so you can get a little faster shutter speed and a little smaller lens opening. Also set the camera for full size pics instead of the smaller size and I think you'll have a lot better results.

Last of all, remember that most DSLRs (and Canons in particular) use a bit less 'in camera' sharpening than the typical 'point and shoot' digicam.

You CAN set it to sharpen more, but it's always best to do any sharpening in post processing in my and most people's opinion.

Regards

Bob the Printer

I do not pretend to be a photoshop guru, but here are my actions. I hope it inspires others to improve upon them. I am open to suggestions. One thing one could do is create a droplet in PS that automates a whole batch of files.

I need to credit Mr. Jalapeno from Pop Photo's forums and his diligence in teaching me (and others) numerous photoshop techniques. If this works for you, great. If not, you might want to consider Fred Miranda's Intellisharpen Pro which I am sure is 100x better and more customizable. I think it's less than 20 bucks. In any case, sharpening is clearly an art, and is a very important part of the digital slr workflow. If you want to print straight from the camera, then get an S50.

http://homepage.mac.com/lberger/files/FileSharing37.html

Now, now. We're all here to learn.

ustad2be said:

I've been using a 300D with the kit lens ever since it came out a
few months ago. I have to shapen every single image with photoshop
to make it right. Since I take a lot of pictures, its really time
consuming. What I need to know is, is this issue with the camera or
the lens? If the issue is with the lens, what other lens do you
suggest? If its the camera, what other camera do you suggest?
I use the camera for my work and only take pictures outside in
daylight. I'm willing to spend up to $1000 for a better lens if it
will resolve my issue.
Please advice.
Thanks in advance.

Click to expand...

Looks great to me, if ya dont want that lens i would be glad to take it off your hands. Just kidding. maybe....... No problems there, nice shot!!!
--
Rudi
http://www.pbase.com/rudiman