Sharpen on the camera or after the fact?

[Woodchuck]

Hi,

I have an S30 and am having a blast with it. However, generally I find the pictures a little on the soft side and generally do a minor "sharpen" of most of them (usually with ACDSee). Today I went to an outside model train show and set the sharpen control on the camera on the plus side. The pictures I took today seem a lot better and don't feel I need to use sharpen on the computer side. My curiosity is if it makes any difference to sharpen on the camera or afterwards on the computer? My gut feeling is that it may retain better detail when cropping if done on the camera. Any thoughts on this?

Thanks a lot!

[jim9tan]

Sharpness can be very subjective. It is a good idea to test your camera's sharpen facility against the software that's available to you.

Software varies in ability. In general, the Unsharpen Mask (USM) technique yields the best results. It allows you to specific the degree of sharpening (from 1 to 100), the radius of the effect, etc.

In my tests, I find that TIFF images from RAW files are soft. The JPG images are "sharper" and noisier. TIFF images which have been sharpened "in" camera are slightly sharper than JPG and somewhat less noisy.

The question is: How "sharp" do you need your output? Only you can decide. I suggest that you experiment with USM on RAW/TIFF and JPG images.

Find your preference. Also, USM can be used to correct images that are less than perfect. I am sure that all of us take pictures like that.

Regards,

[Woodchuck]

Hi jim9tan,

Thanks much for the feedback! I have a lot of experimenting to do and that is the element that is really keeping me interested in photography. Years ago I played around a lot with 35mm photography, but did not have nearly as much fun as I am having with the digital in learning how to compose, edit and do special effects on photos. And, what a joy to go out shooting for a day and realize I am not wasting film :-)

[Aundog]

I missed something! Which control do you use to sharpen the image on the camera (S30)?
btw do you find the Auto mode with flash on gives flesh tones that are much too red?

[Rustle]

Sharpening can be found at the bottom of the menu screen. I'll save flash comments for your other thread.

Russ

[Aundog]

Thanks Russ
I was in Auto Mode and thus no Sharpness option; found it now!