Is "Hard" sharpness best on the Casio QV3000?

[Karl Guttag]

I got my Casio 3000 Tuesday. Today I ran some experiments and found that on the camera seemed to do a significantly better job when I set the sharpness to “Hard.” It was a scene with a lot of sharp edges (a house with bricks and shingles). I noticed in the Normal mode, the camera would have “blurry blotches” in some areas (it would loose edges and blurr out the area around them sometimes). Setting the mode to Hard seemed to clear these up, (it also saved about a 6% larger file in Hard than Normal and Normal saved a 16% more bits than the soft) .

I tried PhotoShop unsharp mask on shots taken with Hard, Normal, and Soft settings from the same image to try to get back sharpness. I could never get the Soft to look as good as the Normal and the Normal to look as good as the Hard. It looks to me that the Casio’s “Hard” mode it keeping more of the high frequency components and actually saving more information. At the same time I did not notice any "ringing" associated with over-sharpening in the Hard mode (in fact I felt I could sharpen the image more in the Hard mode without getting ringing than in the other modes).

It is a small experiment, but it seems to me that it is best to leave the camera in Hard mode if one wants better image quality.

I was wondering what others think.

Karl

 

[Paul Higginbottom]

Thanks for the info Karl - very interesting. I'll try the hard sharpness setting for a while and see how it goes.

I got my Casio 3000 Tuesday. Today I ran some experiments and found that
on the camera seemed to do a significantly better job when I set the
sharpness to “Hard.” It was a scene with a lot of sharp
edges (a house with bricks and shingles). I noticed in the Normal mode,
the camera would have “blurry blotches” in some areas (it
would loose edges and blurr out the area around them sometimes). Setting
the mode to Hard seemed to clear these up, (it also saved about a 6%
larger file in Hard than Normal and Normal saved a 16% more bits than the
soft) .

I tried PhotoShop unsharp mask on shots taken with Hard, Normal, and Soft
settings from the same image to try to get back sharpness. I could
never get the Soft to look as good as the Normal and the Normal to look
as good as the Hard. It looks to me that the Casio’s
“Hard” mode it keeping more of the high frequency components
and actually saving more information. At the same time I did not notice
any "ringing" associated with over-sharpening in the Hard mode (in fact I
felt I could sharpen the image more in the Hard mode without getting
ringing than in the other modes).

It is a small experiment, but it seems to me that it is best to leave the
camera in Hard mode if one wants better image quality.

I was wondering what others think.

Karl

 

[Ivan Sayanov]

It is a small experiment, but it seems to me that it is best to leave the
camera in Hard mode if one wants better image quality.

I'am confirm it. And what is more I leave the camera in Hard mode for SHARPNESS and High mode for SATURATION already. The pictures is very good!

Unfortunately I notice that my camera have very poor brightness. I not know how to increase it. Help me.

 

[Karl Guttag]

What "brightness" are you refering to? The image that is captured or the display. The LCD display does tend to wash out in sunlight.

I have found that the exposure of the image has been pretty good. You can up the exposure, but I have never found this to be necessary.

You can also increase the sensitivity to get better low light performance. The display on the back looks very noisy when you do this but acutal picture come out fairly good (there is some noise as expected, but much better than the display shows, and for most uses quite nice -- better than I expected).

Karl

It is a small experiment, but it seems to me that it is best to leave the
camera in Hard mode if one wants better image quality.

I'am confirm it. And what is more I leave the camera in Hard mode for
SHARPNESS and High mode for SATURATION already. The pictures is very good!

Unfortunately I notice that my camera have very poor brightness. I not
know how to increase it. Help me.

 

[David S]

Karl,

I have found that this camera's hard sharpness does a better job than I can by processing a normal image with software. This is especially true with sharp edges like buildings and brick walls.

Tests of saturation settings show that in any photo of substantial contrast using high makes the brighter areas way too intense to be pleasing (at least as I percieve it) Saturation does have it's uses on dull or fully shaded areas.

I have found that the exposure of the image has been pretty good. You
can up the exposure, but I have never found this to be necessary.

You can also increase the sensitivity to get better low light
performance. The display on the back looks very noisy when you do this
but acutal picture come out fairly good (there is some noise as expected,
but much better than the display shows, and for most uses quite nice --
better than I expected).

Karl

It is a small experiment, but it seems to me that it is best to leave the
camera in Hard mode if one wants better image quality.

I'am confirm it. And what is more I leave the camera in Hard mode for
SHARPNESS and High mode for SATURATION already. The pictures is very good!

Unfortunately I notice that my camera have very poor brightness. I not
know how to increase it. Help me.

 

[Karl Guttag]

David,

I am a little confused by your choices of words (I know my hands sometimes type one thing when my mind ment something else ). . You said "tests of saturations" but then talked in terms of "too bright." Contrast has to do with how the intensity/brightness varies from pixel to pixel (high contrast drives light shades toward white and dark shades toward black) and saturation has to do with color ranging (high saturation is very rich/colorfull). When you say "too bright" that is generally associate with contrast rather than saturation.

I could thus read you comments either to refer to setting contrast or saturation to High causing problems, which do you mean? In the context of you message, I would read it to mean contrast.

Karl

I have found that this camera's hard sharpness does a better job than I
can by processing a normal image with software. This is especially true
with sharp edges like buildings and brick walls.

Tests of saturation settings show that in any photo of substantial
contrast using high makes the brighter areas way too intense to be
pleasing (at least as I percieve it) Saturation does have it's uses on
dull or fully shaded areas.

I have found that the exposure of the image has been pretty good. You
can up the exposure, but I have never found this to be necessary.

You can also increase the sensitivity to get better low light
performance. The display on the back looks very noisy when you do this
but acutal picture come out fairly good (there is some noise as expected,
but much better than the display shows, and for most uses quite nice --
better than I expected).

Karl

It is a small experiment, but it seems to me that it is best to leave the
camera in Hard mode if one wants better image quality.

I'am confirm it. And what is more I leave the camera in Hard mode for
SHARPNESS and High mode for SATURATION already. The pictures is very good!

Unfortunately I notice that my camera have very poor brightness. I not
know how to increase it. Help me.

 

[David S]

Karl:

I see what you mean and I will clarify.

What I did is I picked a scene (my back yard). I took a photo on normal and then with saturation set to high and Low. Also I took shots with contrast set to High and Low.

The digital image can only represent different color by varying the intensity of the component colors. So whether I change saturation or contrast it is still a variation of the basic component colors. Looking at the results from the tests it is clear that contrast and saturation settings are not quite doing the same thing. Whereas contrast seems to adjust the overal relative brightness, saturation picks out the percieved more intense color and boosts that: reds are more intense, greens more brilliant etc.

The result of increasing saturation is that bright colors are moved more towards the brighter end of the color range and that is what causes a percieved increase in contrast. If you do the tests and compare high saturation to high contrast you will see that the results are fairly similar. I think it is more obvious on a sunny day.

Just this week I took 60 shots with saturation accidentally left on high. Some of the shots probably turned out better for it (a learning experience). In other shots that were taken with a mix of sunlite and shade the brite areas were saturated to the point of being totally washed out (too bright). Exposure is always a challenge in shots like that anyway but high saturation pushed it way over the top in this case.

Please let me know your results.

Thanks

I am a little confused by your choices of words (I know my hands
sometimes type one thing when my mind ment something else ). . You
said "tests of saturations" but then talked in terms of "too bright."
Contrast has to do with how the intensity/brightness varies from pixel to
pixel (high contrast drives light shades toward white and dark shades
toward black) and saturation has to do with color ranging (high
saturation is very rich/colorfull). When you say "too bright" that is
generally associate with contrast rather than saturation.

I could thus read you comments either to refer to setting contrast or
saturation to High causing problems, which do you mean? In the context
of you message, I would read it to mean contrast.

Karl

I have found that this camera's hard sharpness does a better job than I
can by processing a normal image with software. This is especially true
with sharp edges like buildings and brick walls.

Tests of saturation settings show that in any photo of substantial
contrast using high makes the brighter areas way too intense to be
pleasing (at least as I percieve it) Saturation does have it's uses on
dull or fully shaded areas.

I have found that the exposure of the image has been pretty good. You
can up the exposure, but I have never found this to be necessary.

You can also increase the sensitivity to get better low light
performance. The display on the back looks very noisy when you do this
but acutal picture come out fairly good (there is some noise as expected,
but much better than the display shows, and for most uses quite nice --
better than I expected).

Karl

It is a small experiment, but it seems to me that it is best to leave the
camera in Hard mode if one wants better image quality.

I'am confirm it. And what is more I leave the camera in Hard mode for
SHARPNESS and High mode for SATURATION already. The pictures is very good!

Unfortunately I notice that my camera have very poor brightness. I not
know how to increase it. Help me.

 

[Karl Guttag]

David,

I looks like you made a good study and thanks for the information. There is some cross relationship between brightness and saturation and contrast and sharpness, and sharpness and saturation (particularly confusion is contrast and sharpness as a more contrasty image tends to look sharper). Of course all these get mixed up with exposure settings and the like.

I also took some pictures accidentally with the camera set to high saturation and noticed a bit of color noise (another effect to too high a saturation).

I see what you mean and I will clarify.

What I did is I picked a scene (my back yard). I took a photo on normal
and then with saturation set to high and Low. Also I took shots with
contrast set to High and Low.

The digital image can only represent different color by varying the
intensity of the component colors. So whether I change saturation or
contrast it is still a variation of the basic component colors. Looking
at the results from the tests it is clear that contrast and saturation
settings are not quite doing the same thing. Whereas contrast seems to
adjust the overal relative brightness, saturation picks out the percieved
more intense color and boosts that: reds are more intense, greens more
brilliant etc.

The result of increasing saturation is that bright colors are moved more
towards the brighter end of the color range and that is what causes a
percieved increase in contrast. If you do the tests and compare high
saturation to high contrast you will see that the results are fairly
similar. I think it is more obvious on a sunny day.

Just this week I took 60 shots with saturation accidentally left on high.
Some of the shots probably turned out better for it (a learning
experience). In other shots that were taken with a mix of sunlite and
shade the brite areas were saturated to the point of being totally washed
out (too bright). Exposure is always a challenge in shots like that
anyway but high saturation pushed it way over the top in this case.

Please let me know your results.

Thanks

David,

 

[Karl Guttag]

I re-ran my little test of a picture of a house to see if TIFF would help any. First it was not the easiest thing to do (thanks to Paul for his site that tells how to do it - push set and then flash mode buttons -- turn camera off to get out). The camera seems to take a minute to store each TIFF (ok maybe it was only 30 seconds, but it was slow). Then it turns out that the TIFF format they used was not recognize by either the Casio supplied loader or Photoshop or Ulead's PhotoExplorer. I was able to get IXLA's Explorer to read them and convert them to PhotoShop format (which should be a lossless conversion). Unfortunately, all the camera data such as exposure was lossed in the conversion.

Next problem is that I will confirm an earlier report that the camera does change shutter settings when you change contrast or other modes, so I suspect it changes it when you go from FINE to TIFF.

The TIFF exposure looked different than the comparable JPEG I took a minute before it. So I suspect that the other settings, including the shutter speed were different. IF I go back and to it, I guess I better try locking in the shutter speed, but who knows what else the camera might auto change like exposure (it has a mind of it own ).

The bottom line is that some of the blurring artifacts were still there even in TIFF. This suggests that the problem is probably in the color space conversion. DISCLAIMER Note that I am trying to see the limits of the camera so as to better know how to use it. All the 3.3 Megapixel cameras are "fudging" a bit about resolution (as the topic 3.3 versus 9 megabytes points out).

I just noticed in DPR's news section that Nikon just announce new and improved software for translation of their "raw" mode (storing the imager data rather than converting it inside the camera) stating that it had a better algorithm on it. I would be nice if the Casio had a raw mode as well.

For thoses that a foolhardy enough to follow my advise. I seem to think the following is the best "general" way to set up the camera:

Capture mode: JPEG FINE
Sharpness: Hard (saves about 6% more bits and fewer high res artifacts)
Contrast: Normal (High compresses the high end and saves fewer bits)
Saturation: Normal (High tends oversaturat, Low tends to look pale)
Exposure: Normal

Of course there are exceptions for special circumstances. Like the camera seems to do better in low light if you increase the sensitivity (not to be confused with exposure).

Karl

Thanks for the info Karl - very interesting. I'll try the hard sharpness
setting for a while and see how it goes.

 

[Mr. Krinkle]

I hate to sound like a broken record, but when the QV2000 came out, there was a lot of discussion about 'jaggies' or JPEG artifacts in the 'normal' sharpness setting. Softening the focus a little bit in the normal mode for the QV3000 may be Casio's way of fixing said perceived problem. This is a good thing, IMHO, and it's even better since we know about it, and can adjust the sharpness depending on what we want. Power to the people.

-Mr. K.

PS - FWIW, I only have the QV2000, not the 3000.

 

[Karl Guttag]

You have a fair point, and it is true that if you low pass filtering will reduce some JPEG artifacts. The QV3000 seems to keep more data in the Hard mode (but of coarse sharper data compresses less well) and for my small experiment I did not see any artifact creep in. I don't know whether the softening is done in the actual focusing or in the processing, but I suspect it is in the processing.

I hate to sound like a broken record, but when the QV2000 came out, there
was a lot of discussion about 'jaggies' or JPEG artifacts in the 'normal'
sharpness setting. Softening the focus a little bit in the normal mode
for the QV3000 may be Casio's way of fixing said perceived problem. This
is a good thing, IMHO, and it's even better since we know about it, and
can adjust the sharpness depending on what we want. Power to the people.


-Mr. K.

PS - FWIW, I only have the QV2000, not the 3000.