10d Images sharpness

[ChuckB]

My images from my 10d are soft when viewed in PS CS. I called canon and was instructed to set the sharpness up to max. Is this something all 10d cameras have or should I send it in under warranty to re calibrate?
Should I set other settings different than the default settings?

Thanks
ChuckB
Jude 1:21

[ssim]

Chuck

Need a litlle more information:

What lens are you using
Are you shooting JPG or RAW

A cheap lens will give you cheap results. I had the same problem with my 10D when I got it. I was so excited to get the camera that I didn't do the right research and ended up with a couple of lenses that I now regret. They were definitely soft. I have since got myself pretty much nothing but L series lenses and the difference is astonishing. I also took all my lenses and body to Canon and had them calibrate them.

I shoot almost exclusively in RAW and do a fair bit of post processing including sharpening.

Perhaps you could post an example.

[J.A.F. Doorhof]

I know this problem.
When I shot with my first lenses I needed almost max sharpness.

Now when I use my current setup I hardly need any sharpening.

Glass is very very important.

Greetings,
Frank

[ChuckB]

My lenses are
Tamron 20-40 2.7 sp af 2.7 - 3.5
canon 50mm MK2
Canon 28-80 3.5-5.6 USM.

ChuckB

[Cordell]

My lenses are
Tamron 20-40 2.7 sp af 2.7 - 3.5
canon 50mm MK2
Canon 28-80 3.5-5.6 USM.

ChuckB

Chuck, I'm assuming you are doing some form of post processing? If not, part of your problem starts there. So people will argue about the lens choices you have, but sticking with what you already have I'm going to ask are you making color and tonal adjustments, are you sharpening your images after all other adjustments including cropping? If not do a search on the net on post processing photos.

Your camera is not a point and shoot, so make sure you don't treat it as such. DSLR cameras are made to be set with defaults for post processing (IE image adjustments including sharpening before printing).

[ChuckB]

Ok yesterday a customer came in wanting a photo of a painting (20x24).
he wanted a full view in 8x10 and an 8x10 of the sugunture, and a couple of close ups to show brush detail.
I shot almost 30+ photos before I got one that was sharp. I used the 50mm, tripod, and raw settings. Do the color setting make a difference on sharpness? Like sRGB, or ADOBE, etc?

Now today I call Canon, they say set parameters at sharpen +2.

I did have the camera ready for shipping, no batteries can caps on body. :D When I take the photos now, after putting batteries back in, they look sharper. I do not sharpen in the camera but will sharpen in PSCS after editing. However I found the images in PSCS were very soft, to the point of looking like they were "smuged" :?


SIGH... I will get this down pat NO MATTER WHAT!! :P

[Jesper]

You're not the first one who notices that your 10D images are not super sharp. This is considered to be normal for higher-end DSLRs.

(Almost) all point-and-shoot digital cameras apply heavy sharpening to the photos you take with them, so especially compared to a P&S digital camera your 10D images may look a little soft. On cameras like the 10D, the camera deliberately doesn't sharpen the images very heavily. Especially if you are shooting RAW, the camera just records the image from the sensor directly, without (or with maybe only very little) processing in the camera (like sharpening, changing colour saturation etc). It's expected that you do the processing yourself on your computer - so that you get maximum control over the final result.

On the 300D (Digital Rebel), the sharpening is at +1 by default, while it is at 0 on the 10D, so with the default settings, images from the 300D might look a little sharper than from the 10D.

[Motorsports Photo]

My images from my 10d are soft when viewed in PS CS. I called canon and was instructed to set the sharpness up to max. Is this something all 10d cameras have or should I send it in under warranty to re calibrate?
Should I set other settings different than the default settings?


Chuck-

Its the "nature of the beast" that digital images straight from the camera are "soft." As mentioned on this forum before the only way you can make comparisons on a screen is with the image at 100%. At any other the pixels are re-arranged to fit the space and some programs do this better than others.

ALL printed pics should have a dose of unsharp masking. It seems everyone has their favorite numbers and some say the numbers change with the type of image but I use 95, 4, 2 to print to my Epson 2000P. You can experiment to find what numbers work best for you.

BTW- The only changes in image sttings I use is a boost to color saturation. The rest are at "0" since they can easily be manipulated in photoshop.

-Pete

[Ballen Photo]

I'm finding this thread very educational, and by posting this reply I'll hopefully be notified of added information as it's posted here.
So far, I only have PS Elelments, Photo Impact, and Ulead Photo Explorer 7.0 Pro.
I'm pretty sure that I want to get Adobe PS CS next, so this is a very interesting thread to me.
All suggestions are welcome.
Now I have to go read the manual to see how to boost the saturation in my 10D.
Thanks to all the posters here for all this information.
.........Bruce

[vsolanoy]

I got even more confused when I viewed my 10D pictures on my Mac. Even with color profiles set to SRGB with a monitor specific profile on my PC (Windows 2000), the images always appeared dark and the colors somewhat muddy.

When moved all my photography stuffs to a new iBook G4, the photos (all jpg) appeared to have better saturation and contrast, which appeared to give the photos better sharpness. The prints appear to be better on the Mac as well... I'm not quite sure what's going on, but I'm wondering whether some of these quality issues is due to incorrect profiles in workflow. I know that gamma is different between Macs and PCs... but would it make that much of a difference?

Victor

[J.A.F. Doorhof]

Gamma is VERY important, especially in the darker regions and colorsaturation.

The difference in prints COULD be a problem of colorprofiling which could be different between the MAC and PC.

Greetings,
Frank

[EXA1a]

Ok yesterday a customer came in wanting a photo of a painting (20x24).
he wanted a full view in 8x10 and an 8x10 of the sugunture, and a couple of close ups to show brush detail.
I shot almost 30+ photos before I got one that was sharp. I used the 50mm, tripod, and raw settings.

I can't help it but this sounds like a focusing issue. If I understand you corectly, you actually get sharp pictures straight out of the camera once in a while. Did you perform some focusing checks?

--Jens--

[Jim Larson]

ALL printed pics should have a dose of unsharp masking. It seems everyone has their favorite numbers and some say the numbers change with the type of image but I use 95, 4, 2 to print to my Epson 2000P. You can experiment to find what numbers work best for you.

USE FILTERS, SHARPEN, UNSHARP MASK

Do not sharpen in camera. One of the beauties of dSLRs (which I don't like too much) is that the images are deliberately undersharpened out of the camera. Shooting RAW and processing later in photoshop is the way to go.

For onscreen viewing, my favorite setting is 200, 0.3, 0. Some photos get more. Some get less.

Why is sharpening necessary? Don't have links handy, but it has MUCH to do with the anti-aliasing filter in the camera, which also has much to do with the fact that the individual pixels are only sensitive to one color. Do some searchs.

Sharpening has absolutely nothing to do with focus. A fuzzy photo can be slightly improved by over-sharpening. A poorly resolved photo from a kit lens can be improved by over-sharpening, but once you see a crisp properly focused photo from a good lens, you won't go back.

[dtrayers]

Roger Cavanagh (http://www.rogercavanagh.com/helpinfo/03_sharpening.htm) has some great links to sharpening discussions and info.

[John57]

I like many others have had this problem with 2 different 10D's and soft pictures. One of the 10D bodies had to go back and canon said it was not focusing within tolerances so corrected it but the main problem was the lenses I was using. I was advised to try one 'L' lens and see what I thought. The difference was amazing - but they are costly and usually quite heavy! I have since aquired 3 other 'L' lenses and all of my softness issues have gone. With these lenses I now do hardly any sharpening either in camera or in PS.

The cheaper canon and tamron lenses I had were just not up to digital. They were designed for film cameras which just react differently to the light throught the lens and the reflections produced. As more lenses designed specifically for digital are made this will become less of an issue but for now just try or rent one 'L' lens and see what you think. The 17-40L f4 seems to work particularly well on my 10D.

For info your 50mm should be pretty good as well though as some canon lenses though not marked 'L' are built better than others.

[J.A.F. Doorhof]

John, sorry to barge in.
L lenses are ALSO designed for film camera's and they have the same problems as all other lenses.

The ONLY REAL difference is the resolution of the lens, which with most L lenses are very high, so that the quality is much better than that of cheaper lenses.

However there are lensen which will equal or better L lenses.

I have 4 lenses which according to the net and most reviews are equal or better than L glass, but alot cheaper.

The difference is indeed STUNNING, I have tried alot of lenses lately and found that the difference between normal glass and good quality glass is like switching from a 3 MP camera to a 6.5MP camera (yes it can be that big).

There are some new lenses on the market specially made for digital camera's, I use the Tamron 28-75 XR Di Model A09 which is designed for digital bodies and to be honest I can see a difference which I did not expect.

Greetings,
Frank