Negative Thoughts or Digital

It shouldn't take that much time. Have you seen the sharpening tuts in "RAW & Post Processing"?

I average about 23 seconds per shot of all the ones I sell from my galleries.

www.pbase.com/jpfergus​on

Must be still using the IBM XT w/ 640KB memory and 10MB HDD 5 1/4 FDD

I am a former large and medium format shooter. We did a test once 4x5 vs. 1Ds. Same subject, drum scanned 4x5 transparency vs. ACR processed 1Ds image. We had 40 x60 enlargements made. If a client insisted on shooting 4x5 we would show them the prints, most of them changed their mind. I have catalog covers shot with a 6MB camera that are equal to or better in apparent sharpness to ones shot with Hassleblad.

Sharpness has two constituents: resolution and acutance.

Resolution occurs in the camera because it is a function of lens and film or sensor. The finer the grain of the film or the smaller the size of the pixels the higher the resolution. Once the shot is taken nothing can alter that.

Acutance in film is a function of film, developer and processing methods. It increases the edge sharpness of areas of different contrast and gives an artificial enhancement of sharpness and when over done gives the same kind of artificial appearance as oversharpening in PS.

The various sharpening tools in PS and similar programmes are increasing acutance and giving an illusion of extra sharpness but do nothing to increase the resolution. If the information isn't there you can't sharpen it.

howie... there should be settings in your 30D to sharpen your image. I agree with you that film slr are sharper than digital without post-processing. and this is the point that i've raised in other threads... sometimes one person will not have time to do hours of post processing on digital pics. with your experience, you should be able to play around with your 30D and lens to find a consistent sharp picture.