1Ds III sharpening

[luong]

The 1Ds III files need a fair amount of capture sharpening to counter the effect of a strong AA filter. I have PK sharpener and apply mostly "superfine" ("digital high res"),  but have found that in general, even those settings are insufficient. For low ISO shots, I often prefer the good old unsharp mask, with radius about 0.5 pix and amounts in the 200-300 range.

What capture sharpening methods do you use with your 1Ds III ?

[witz]

The 1Ds III files need a fair amount of capture sharpening to counter the effect of a strong AA filter. I have PK sharpener and apply mostly "superfine" ("digital high res"),  but have found that in general, even those settings are insufficient. For low ISO shots, I often prefer the good old unsharp mask, with radius about 0.5 pix and amounts in the 200-300 range.

What capture sharpening methods do you use with your 1Ds III ?
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here's a simple ( please don't critique... just a simple setup )  shot taken just a few hours ago... 1ds3, iso 100, 70-200 f4L @ f13 1/125 around 85mm ( get file info in photoshop to get actual meta )

[a href=\"http://www.1080studio.com/1ds3witz.zip]http://www.1080studio.com/1ds3witz.zip[/url]

in the folder you will find a full rez 16 bit tiff and a screen shot of the sharpening settings I use in acr.

I don't have any problems with the sharpness and quality of this camera!

file upload will be complete around 5:40pm est

[Jonathan Wienke]

For capture sharpening (undoing AA filter softness), the best tool I've found so far is Focus Magic. Radius 2, 25%, followed by radius 1, 25-75% (depending on lens).

[ErikKaffehr]

Hi,

I used Focus Magic, too. Problem is that it does not work on Photoshop CS3 on my Intel Mac. You don't have any new info?

Thanks by the way for a lot of good postings.

Best regards
Erik

For capture sharpening (undoing AA filter softness), the best tool I've found so far is Focus Magic. Radius 2, 25%, followed by radius 1, 25-75% (depending on lens).
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=191731\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

[ErikKaffehr]

Hi,

I'd think that PK sharpener would do about just unsharp mask, radius 0.4 and some pretty hefty amount. PK sharpener does more things, however. It can do noise reduction before the sharpening step, does masking for detail and things like that.

Some reflections in general:

- Radius is dependent on both camera resolution and subject. High resolution and small details need small radius and large amount. Other subjects like portraits benefit more from large radius and less amount.

- Radius 0.4 and amount of 300 may be in line with Canons recommendations. I think that Bruce Fraser at least hinted on amount of 500 in "Image Sharpening with Photoshop CS2" (page 168). Setting a high mount would enhance noise, however, which is the reason that Bruce Fraser recommended to use edge masks for sharpening.

- Some plugins, like Focus magic, can do deconvolution. Deconvolution can correct for problems where the "Point Spread Function" (PSF) is known. The PSF may be known for defocused images and also the AA-filter of specific cameras. Deconvolution is essentially an "undo" for loss of sharpness.

- The smart sharpen filter in Photoshop CS may or may not do deconvolution when "remove lens blur" is selected. It is not stated in the documentation.

- The capture sharpening in ACR and Lightroom is said to be pretty good, probably better than what can be done in Photoshop. It is based on Bruce Fraser's ideas but Adobe engineers have tweaked the algorithms to work better with capture sharpening.

- Photokit Sharpener is still a god tool for doing image enhancement.

Personally I think that the Anti Anti Aliasing filter debate is a little out of proportion. On a high res camera the lens will act as a major contributor to unsharpness at most apertures. Autofocus systems are prone to focusing errors. The AA filter is not there without a purpose and it is a quite expensive part of the system. Systems without AA filters do have problems with moiré patterns.

Erik

The 1Ds III files need a fair amount of capture sharpening to counter the effect of a strong AA filter. I have PK sharpener and apply mostly "superfine" ("digital high res"),  but have found that in general, even those settings are insufficient. For low ISO shots, I often prefer the good old unsharp mask, with radius about 0.5 pix and amounts in the 200-300 range.

What capture sharpening methods do you use with your 1Ds III ?
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=191634\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

[Jonathan Wienke]

Hi,

I used Focus Magic, too. Problem is that it does not work on Photoshop CS3 on my Intel Mac. You don't have any new info?

Thanks by the way for a lot of good postings.

Sorry, no. I'm using Windows, which has no problems with Focus Magic.

[sojournerphoto]

The 1Ds III files need a fair amount of capture sharpening to counter the effect of a strong AA filter. I have PK sharpener and apply mostly "superfine" ("digital high res"),  but have found that in general, even those settings are insufficient. For low ISO shots, I often prefer the good old unsharp mask, with radius about 0.5 pix and amounts in the 200-300 range.

What capture sharpening methods do you use with your 1Ds III ?
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=191634\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

This could be a useful thread.

Canon suggest usm at 0.3 to 0.5 radu=ius with amount of 250, threshhold ranging from 1 to 5 depending on iso.

In LR I've been using amount 50, radius 0.5 and detail 50 to 100 depending on image with masking set to suit iso and image. On occasionI've increased the amount to 60ish.

I don't like aggresively sharpening most of my pics, but am still learning the ropes with the 1Ds3. I use lower amounts settings (typically 40), but usually a bigger radius (0.7 to 0.9 normally) for the 5D.

Other peoples experience would be welcomed as I am very much at thestart of understading how to get the best from the files.

Mike.

[John S C]

Mike

I've had my 1Ds 3 for a short time as well, and am also playing around with the sharpness settings in Lightroom

I was running at about 70-80 for sharpening  with a radius of around 1. However I was keeping the detail setting fairly low, around 25 . Having read you post I re visited some images and reduced the sharpening but increased the detail. In a number of cases, I found this gave a better result.

It looks as though there isn't a standard setting you really have to go on an image by image basis.

As you found with your 5D the settings are a lot lower with this camera . Well that's what presets are for  

[Doyle Yoder]

I see references to using LR and ACR a lot. I am really curious what subject matter you guys shoot that the low detail/sharpness of LR and ACR works for you.

Every time I have every tried settings in LR and ACR (and I think I have tried them all) I seem to get soft very low detail images compared to say software like Raw Developer or Capture NX. I have read other places and here in this thread again about sharpening and detail from ACR/LR and try them but I have never found any settings that really worked.

The only thing I can ever figure out your looking for the soft smooth look. Portrait work I can understand but what other uses do you find in processing raw files with ACR/LR?

Doyle

[sojournerphoto]

I see references to using LR and ACR a lot. I am really curious what subject matter you guys shoot that the low detail/sharpness of LR and ACR works for you.

Every time I have every tried settings in LR and ACR (and I think I have tried them all) I seem to get soft very low detail images compared to say software like Raw Developer or Capture NX. I have read other places and here in this thread again about sharpening and detail from ACR/LR and try them but I have never found any settings that really worked.

The only thing I can ever figure out your looking for the soft smooth look. Portrait work I can understand but what other uses do you find in processing raw files with ACR/LR?

Doyle
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tbh I'm still not entirely happy with LR/ACR. It's much improved in v4 cf the v3's, which (after testing) I didn't use at all. At present DXo doesn't support the 1Ds3 and I've just started working with the free version of Silkypix - I'll pay the upgrade cost if I like the results.

Raw Developer appears to be mac only (please correct me if I'm wrong) and I'm pc only at present (not ideological, just history), I haven't tried capture one and only have so much time.

I do like the DAM functionality in LR, and iview seemed to fall by the wayside after MS got their hands on it... but LR doesn't let me use other raw converters in an efficient manner

There is still some way to go before all this is sorted out

Oh, and I don't just shoot landscape that requires lots of detail:)

Mike

[Doyle Yoder]

I wish I had some thing better to tell you. Yes Raw Developer is Mac only. For me if I was not using Macs I would buy one if only to process files with RD. It is that good with the 1Ds3 files.

Over the last 7 or so years I think I have tried every raw processor there is out there. I shot Nikon and Kodak at the time.

If I recall exactly my observations were as follows.

Bibble and Capture One were very much the same. You could get good detail from them if you could live with the artifacts they created.

Silkypix and all the others I remember were no better than LR/ACR as far as extracting detail.

Like I said before Capture and Raw Developer were the real standouts of the bunch. It is too bad for Nikon that Capture and the new Capture NX is so damn slow that it is not practical for rendering with individual attention to a whole batch of files from a day of shooting. And to top that off not releasing the info for 3rd parties to fully utilize the capacity of NEF files.

So that is my Nikon rant and the reason my newest camera is a Canon.

Doyle