Elinchrom Quadra or Ranger?

MR do little wrote in post #10702509
Get better lenses/camera and you wont have to...

I dont sharpen my images when i resize them for web, i use bicubic (best for smooth gradients) resizing a high mp file for web make it more then sharp enough for portraits imo.

I think his camera and lenses are sharp but the lighting, I mean, seems to bring out more details with his Quadra shots.

Paul was responding to the part about sharpening.

TMR Design wrote in post #10702643
Paul was responding to the part about sharpening.

Lol. I know. I was just responding to the "get a sharper camera and lens so you won't have to sharpen" comment.

Seanzky wrote in post #10702577
I think his camera and lenses are sharp but the lighting, I mean, seems to bring out more details with his Quadra shots.

As much as i like my Elinchrom gear i cant really say that i buy into a theory that the brand alone makes for sharper images.


There are variabels in the lightning that can affect the appearance of sharpness yes, but for portraits like the Pham posted (non moving) the only thing that will affect is the charachter of light, contrast hard/soft etc.

Which is not a feature of the strobe it self but more a result of which modifier you used.

As for sharpening for web, if your resizing your high mp file (20mp+) to 800x600 px and still need to sharpen after the fact your resized it with bicubic sharper (best for reduction) your either do something wrong or simply making up for cheap gear.

Got it! Good info. I never said sharper images, by the way. LOL. Pham said he sharpens his or something but I said cleaner and crisper. Maybe I'm describing it wrong. Haha. But I definitely see some kind of difference in the Quadra shots.

MR do little wrote in post #10702717
As much as i like my Elinchrom gear i cant really say that i buy into a theory that the brand alone makes for sharper images.


As for sharpening for web, if your resizing your high mp file (20mp+) to 800x600 px and still need to sharpen after the fact your resized it with bicubic sharper (best for reduction) your either do something wrong or simply making up for cheap gear.

i guess my 85L and 5dMKii isn't good enough.. haha..

probably doing something wrong..

actually it looks sharp in the canon DPP program

and when coverted to jpeg it looses sharpness.. but all RAW to Jpeg does that

but for me, i am just spending more time on my files now a days and working it over.

sure it looks ok enough from full 21mp file converted to 1024pix on the long side.. at 72 DPI.. but i just go over the areas i want to sharpen some more.. just me..

nobody else does this?

@ Sean.. maybe the deep octa puts off just a perfect mix of beauty dish light/softbox in a more directional application and the light quality is better for the subject?

Depends on who you ask.

There are certainly combinations that can do better in terms of sharpness when shooting with flash.

However i suspect you preference is simply different when it comes to sharpening, as opposed to mine where i rather have a smooth transition instead of sharpness at the cost of the risk of introducing halos.

There are plenty of people who sharpen for web, in fact if you look at flickr or this site (or just about any other forum) you see people preference for sharpening is very much like yours, mostly more then you probably want to sharpen as there is ALOT of oversharpened images with halos presented on the web.

I do sharpen my images for output, but i rarely do it for small images that is presented on the web.

I dont use Canon software (or any Canon hardware for that matter) i use LR3 and PSC5 mainly. Raw sharpening is a whole other chapter. .-)

As for selective sharpening, its a matter of preference and workflow. I dont do it, my lenses takes care of that.

There is no right or wrong, you should take my my comment as a little bit of jousting.... This is after all a Canon forum is it not..

MR do little wrote in post #10703030
There are plenty of people who sharpen for web, in fact if you look at flickr or this site (or just about any other forum) you see people preference for sharpening is very much like yours, mostly more then you probably want to sharpen as there is ALOT of oversharpened images with halos presented on the web.

I do sharpen my images for output, but i rarely do it for small images that is presented on the web.

I dont use Canon software (or any Canon hardware for that matter) i use LR3 and PSC5 mainly. Raw sharpening is a whole other chapter. .-)

As for selective sharpening, its a matter of preference and workflow. I dont do it, my lenses takes care of that.

There is no right or wrong, you should take my my comment as a little bit of jousting.... This is after all a Canon forum is it not..

of course it is just all subjective.. haha..

thanks for the info

off to another senior shoot ! with quadra fully charged and ready to go !

MR do little wrote in post #10702717
As for sharpening for web, if your resizing your high mp file (20mp+) to 800x600 px and still need to sharpen after the fact your resized it with bicubic sharper (best for reduction) your either do something wrong or simply making up for cheap gear.

Whoa..this is a completely untrue statement. Every time you resize to a smaller size a considerable amount you need to sharpen your image again either using unsharp mask (the noobs way, which sucks), HP Mask with selective masking (the intermediate way) or using the Separation of spatial frequency data method (best way I know). Just using bicubic sharper as an option while reducing will not be sufficient. You can use the best camera and best lens in the world and you still need to sharpen the image, ask any good image retoucher and he/she will confirm what I am saying here.

telles75 wrote in post #10703718
You can use the best camera and best lens in the world and you still need to sharpen the image, ask any good image retoucher and he/she will confirm what I am saying here.

And it varies from camera to camera as well, depending on how strong the AA filter is.

MR do little and telles75 thanks for the little bit of info, i'm completely useless when it comes to processing images and any tidbits i stumble across always help.

I always sharpen for screen when I export out of LR for web stuff.

ed. wrote in post #10704025
I always sharpen for screen when I export out of LR for web stuff.

Me too, on the rare occasions I actually take photos.