D80 Camera Settings

[tdisom]

What camera settings do you use to get maximum sharpness, color, and contrast?

[K1W1]

How long is a piece of string? :D:D

There is no one answer to that question as there are so many variables including what lens you are using and what you are photographing to start with.

[tdisom]

Thanks for the quick response K1W1. I remember you answered the other post of mine, the one about the in camera light meter. Good looking out! I guess it was a pretty bland question. As a photo knob I guess my questions will just come that way. However, I will do my very best not to next time. I hope this will be closer to an actual question rather a shoot and hope.

I use the sigma lens in my signature and I know its not the sharpest lens in the shed but sometime my images are ok (for a knob) and then sometimes they lack sharpness. I shoot on a very sturdy tripod and under well lit conditions. My question is what do you do when your images aren't coming out sharp when you know it could be better. When I said in camera settings I didn't mean manual settings like f/2.8, 1/50/ 500 ISO. I meant menu settings. Hope this gives you a little more to go on.

[Tomcat]

Do you have a wireless remote?

[tdisom]

No I don't.

[K1W1]

I use the sigma lens in my signature and I know its not the sharpest lens in the shed but sometime my images are ok (for a knob) and then sometimes they lack sharpness. I shoot on a very sturdy tripod and under well lit conditions. My question is what do you do when your images aren't coming out sharp when you know it could be better.

What focal lengths are you using for the non sharp Sigma images?
On my version of that lens it is very soft between 200 and 300mm so no images in those focal lengths are truly sharp. That's the lenses fault not you or the camera. In those cases I have found the easiest thing to do is take the photo then sharpen it later with software (Capture NX, Photoshop, Lightroom, etc). It won't work for every scene but usually it's the best I've been able to get. At the same time you can fix any CA issues that crop up.
Tomcats suggestion about the remote for tripod use is also a good one although if you are taking photos of static scenes you can do the same thing by using the delayed shutter release. That's what I do, it saves carrying a remote around.

[tdisom]

Thanks K1W1, Normally I shoot 70-150. I shot 300 once, of the moon It was'nt too bad, it didn't appear as close as I thought it would, but hey the lense was only 89 bucks. Shooting 70mm - 100mm is ok nothing to brag about but above 100 is horrible, sometimes. I thought maybe I had my camera menu setting wrong or something. Well guess thats why the good lenses cost big bucks. I'm not at a level where my photography warrants lenses that expensive. Once I get a better than ok image with crappy lenses then I'll go out on the limb for the good stuff. Thanks All for your help. Any and all pointers are welcome and appreciated.

[Tomcat]

Nikon Wireless Remote ML-L3. It's about the size of 2 SDHC memory cards. Can be hard to keep up with sometimes.

Which pocket did I put it in???

[Visual Reality]

Sharpness, color, and contrast are handled in PP if you are shooting RAW...no camera settings will change this...

As you can see, I'm not a huge fan of in-camera processing :)

[Rooz]

colour mode IIIa i think its called bumps everything up but imo its too saturated for people. default settigns on the d80 are soft so bump up the sharpness by a couple of points and the contrast by 1 point. my d300 is set to almost max sharpness. i know its better to do this in PP but i'm too lazy. besdies, you can always take it out in raw if needs be.

[Visual Reality]

The problem with sharpening in-camera is that after a file is resized later, especially when reducing, so many pixels are thrown away that your image is "soft" again and all sharpening beore resizing does is possibly introduce artifacts if its cranked too high. You lose most of the sharpening, requiring an "output" sharpening pass after resizing. That's why I leave my images untouched in-cam save for some D-Lighting which I am not sure if it comes through in Lightroom anway.

Just thought I'd expand a bit on that :)

[erichlund]

There is a compromise position on the whole in camera sharpening issue if you shoot RAW. Go ahead. Turn sharpening up in the camera. The will help the in camera review process, because it's applied to the jpegs. However, it's only exif data on your RAW images.

When you download to your computer, if you use Nikon Transfer, you can have it automatically remove all sharpening from the exif. Alternatively, you can use a batch in View or Capture to remove sharpening from all the photos before processing. You can then do all your individual processing on all the photos.

Resharpening should be the last thing you do, and frankly, I find that certain types of sharpening can be applied in batch, because all the photos need about the same amount. Some people also do a final sharpening based on the display media, but often, if you show discipline in your process, you can use subdirectories and batch different media sharpenings as well.