G1 picture sharpness argument...

[wilkuan]

Hi,

I have had a G1 for about 4-5 months now and have generally been happy with it. Lately, I took some
portrait style photos of my brother and his twins, and when I showed it to my friend, he mentioned
that the the picture did not look sharp. I disagreed with him and told him that this was the best that
my G1 could do. We looked at other photos and then he mentioned that my monitor was not calibrated
correctly. We fooled around with the monitor controls, but after playing around with the brightness and
contrast, it still looked the same to me and my friend was not satisfied. I have looked at the photo in other
monitors and it looks the same to me.

So I was wondering what other people think of the sharpness of the picture. I have looked at Pekka's photos,
and those definitely look sharp. I am not sure if I am not using my camera correctly. I know that I have had
problems with the focusing part of the G1, but I think other people have had problems with that feature. I especially shoot a lot of photos with the background more in focus. I mostly shoot in Tv-mode. From my
perspective, I am happy with the way the photo came out. I personally don't think that I can make the picture
sharper, but I would like to hear feedback if this is possible or not.

The link for the pictures is as follows:

http://www.imagestation.com/album/?id=4292467745

The above photo was taken with the G1 with a 420EX TTL flash. It was taken in JPEG format, with Supefine
compression I think. I don't have the specs of the photo with
me right now, but I can post it later if needed. I think I used Tv-mode to control the shutter speed.
I also color balanced it using Photoshop (using Levels). I did not use Unsharp Mask to sharpen the picture.

Thanks for any comments,

Wil

[maple]

After viewing your picture on the gallery, I agree with your friend that your G1 is capable of far better clarity. Refer to Pekka's pictures that are similarly composed and you will see that your G1 is dying to achieve similar (high) standards!

Just a guess... perhaps you used ISO200 or more instead of ISO50? I am a new user of the G1 as well, but toying around with my bad pictures and comparing to Pekka's superior ones have learnt me this lesson! :)

[wilkuan]

I always use ISO 50 for my photos, so the photo was taken at ISO 50.

[Paul V]

Aso, don't forget that Pekka takes most of his photos in RAW mode...

I agree that the sharpness could be slightly better...

And once again, Pekka uses a KPT sharpness plug-in ever so slightly...

Nice skin tones in your photo...

Paul

[AVL_]

I disagree with your friend. This picture is very sharp, and is not out of focus. Did you view your picture at its original size (2048x1536) or did you downsize it first to 1024x768?

Never forget that the pictures you see on Pekka's site, are always downsized to 1024x768. They are also sharpened, in Pekka's case using KPT Equalizer (part of KPT6, a plugin suite for Photoshop), but they can also be sharpened with Photoshop's own Unsharp Mask. Also try setting the sharpness of your G1 to +1, at which it just outputs pictures that are a little more sharpened (which is the same effect as what you can do in Photoshop).

I would suggest you experiment first with downsizing and sharpening. This picture does not look out of focus to me.

[Pekka]

Hi,

AVL_ is right, there seems to be nothing wrong with your image's sharpness. If you see my originals at http://studio-on-the.net/photography/G1/original/ you can compare.

One problem with evaluating sharpness is that the viewing distance in PC is often too short (and not all have top quality monitors), and it makes the original size image look softer (same if you look a print with a loupe). When you view smaller images on monitor your eye fools you to think they have better sharpness even though when magnified they lack great deal of detail compared to original.

Big part of sharpness is really about contrast differences. That's why lighting affects perceived sharpness (side lighting brings out textures etc).

[wilkuan]

To all who posted replies on this topic,

Thanks for your comments and suggestions! It seems that half think it is sharp enough and the other half think it could be better. I will print it out using the Imagestation site and see how it comes out.

Also, I will try to experiment more (especially with RAW vs JPEG photos to see how much of a difference there really is). Obviously, I will need to get a larger capacity compact flash card (all I have right now is a 32 MB card).

To Pekka (thanks for the reply) and others:
I have a question about your closeup pictures. Do you use the macro autofocus or do you manually focus the G1? I seem to almost always have my closeup pictures (e.g., flowers) have part of the flowers out of focus. Do I need to increase my fstop to get the whole object in focus? I think I have tried manually focusing on closeups but I find it very difficult to judge when I have the object in focus (especially by looking at the LCD where I have thought I had some photos in focus, but when I download it and look at the full photo later on, it is completely out of focus).
Thanks for any reply if you have the time.

Wil

[Torben]

A lot of people seem to like oversharpened pictures. Your sharpness level is perfect for this kind of scene.
Although, if you print your picture, you'll probably need extra sharpening.

[Pekka]

wilkuan wrote:
I have a question about your closeup pictures. Do you use the macro autofocus or do you manually focus the G1? I seem to almost always have my closeup pictures (e.g., flowers) have part of the flowers out of focus. Do I need to increase my fstop to get the whole object in focus? I think I have tried manually focusing on closeups but I find it very difficult to judge when I have the object in focus (especially by looking at the LCD where I have thought I had some photos in focus, but when I download it and look at the full photo later on, it is completely out of focus).

With e.g. fruit photos I used a piece of a comic book which I placed to the level I wanted to focus to. The autofocus snapped in to it easily. If you need to get the whole object in focus you'd better use f8 (with tripod) and focus so that 2/3 of the object is behind the focus point. Getting enough closeup depth-of-field with G1 is usually quite easy because of the small sensor.