G2 and sharpening

[haertig]

Do other G2 users find that most, if not all, portrait shots using the camera's autofocus require sharpening? My portraits always seem to benefit from a mild amount of sharpening. Is this normal or is my G2 (new) having focusing difficulties? I always try to lock focus on a subject's eye before recomposing and shooting. I've also been using the camera's default settings for the most part. I think that means 50 ISO, max resolution, and "fine" JPG compression. I don't notice anything that I would call JPG artifacts, but the shots seem ever-so-slightly soft. his occurs under both sunlight and flash conditions. I'm probably mistaken, but I would think that a tack sharp original would not benefit from sharpening. Rather, the image would degrade with sharpening. Is this correct?

Thanks

[Mike K]

Virtually all digital photos require sharpening. In fact film images also benifit from this. I have a friend that owns a photo printing business, he does high quality drum scans of negatives and transparencies and prints them at very large sizes. His clients really like the process because he also uses nik sharpener on them, so they are crisper than standard dark room elargements (which he does as well). The output of the G-2 is not sharpened as much in the camera as some digicams, which is a good thing since one wants to sharpen after upsampling for printing, not before. The detail is still there, just requires some enhanced edge contrast to bring it out. Here are a few tutorials to get you started.
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/instant_photoshop.htm
http://www.scantips.com/simple6.html
http://www.creativepro.com/story/feature/11242.html?cprose=I39
http://www.quiknet.com/~frcn/Sharpen.html
I like to use Ultra sharpen pro as it will work with PS Elements and leaves the smooth areas noise free.
http://www.ultrasharpen.com/
Its similar to this method by Fred Miranda which requires a more expensive version of PS.
http://www.outbackphoto.com/workshop/photoshop_corner/essay_05/essay.html
Regards, Mike K