Photos for Nadim

Hi Nadim,
I posted this link at dp, but decided to post here too. It is basically a copy of what I posted at dp for you. All photos are new and were shot in raw, saved as tif, resized to 50%, then saved as jpeg. The larger photos are with the B300+full tele, the smaller ones are just full tele. I thought the magazine cover shots would be challenging due to the content...hotels and all! It will be interesting to see what you can do with them>>>
http://fototime.com/in​v/5F1C9DBCEAE0077
nahau

digital vs optical

Hi Nahau,

Thanks for the picture.. this is exactly the test I was looking for..

I took your picture 2, cropped a small area, zoomed 640%, applied Unsharp Mask, and unzoomed it by 400% .. got finally the 170% that the B-300 provide, right ?

The digitally processed image is at: http://home.earthlink.​net …roppedzoomedunz​ooomed.jpg

Compare it with your picture1... ignoring the difference in exposure (contrast, colors).

Look carefully:
. the problem is one of the building, that has jaggy line. This is where the optic zoom has a definitive advantage. Why the jaggy lines ? Your original picture2 gives the clue: smaller pixel sizes would have been recommended for a better anti-aliasing.
. Some of the small objects (small details) such as people on the beach are less clear in the retouched picture2 than they are on the original.

But overall, the image isn't as bad as one would have expected from a digital zoom. I will try different approaches later today to try to get a better result, without using only IrfanView and PS6.

Have a good day, talk to you later,
nadim

not bad!

Hi Nadim,
I took a look at the photo and did the comparison. The enhanced photo2 does look better than the original photo2 when zoomed to like size, but not quite close to the B300 photo1. The building edges definitely lose sharpness and form. I purposely gave you this photo because I knew it would be a challenge and was really curious to see how they would transform through software.
You mention "pixels"...should I have specified the size during conversion from raw? The default is 180 and I never changed it...is there an optimal size or something better to use than 180?
Thanks for engaging this topic, it surely will help others if they are interested in cropping, enhancing, then printing.
nahau

Hi Nahau,
the 180dpi shouldn't make a difference, as it is an indication for printers on the final size of the image in inches... ( I suppose so)

I reread your first message. What software did you use to resize the originals to 50% ? I know that Photoshop does an UGLY job when resizing down, creating jagged artifacts... IrfanView, although free, gives much better results when downsampling.

It seems that there is no suitable alternative to buying a good telelens, such as the B-300... nadim

Hi Nadim,
I used Paintshoppro7 to do everything. I tried resizing/resampling again using Irfanview, but it turned out about the same (as far as I can tell). I used the Lanczos filter when trying that and best quality. I have to agree that it seems the optics will win over software. Thanks for doing all this!
nahau