Yes, they were, and I use sharpness -1 or -2 as well, and that one in particular had a slight crop. So thanks. Next week I will be getting photoshop ("student" discount, $199 lifetime license for Illustrator CS3, Photoshop CS3, Acrobat Pro, and something else) which is a more sophisticated sharpening tool than irfanview, which tens to sharpen like a sledge hammer. Maybe I'll even pick up on RAW...
Looks like you are enjoying that new lens raven. I can concur with you as I also couldn't resist the lens when I when to B&H recently so I got one too. So far I've been pretty pleased with it althought the weight is a bit of a shock compared with the kit lenses. Still brilliantly light for a 600mm zoom though. Yes focus does hunt a bit sometimes but I've found it ok if you give it a contrasty subject to grab on to. I'll have to try the MF trick you suggested. At full stretch the contrast seems a bit lacking to me but having said that I've got some lovely shots with it so I'm not really complaining (& I did have the camera on -1 contrast). Here's one I shot of lady liberty from a boat on a short harbour cruise we did on holiday. It was a fairly bright day but it was the first time I'd really used the lens & I wanted to make sure I didn't get any camera shake on the boat so I used iso 400 to keep the speed up to 1/1000s. Looking at it now I'd like to go back (not much chance of that in the near future!) & try a lower iso as I'm sure the conditions would have allowed it. I know you like to use negative sharpness but I always use +1 as I like sharp images straight from the camera & dont seem to get much time for PPing. Not sure where the sweet spot of the lens is yet I'm still playing about with it. Let me know if you've found it.
Last edited by Phill D; 08-25-2008 at 01:34 AM.
Around every picture there's a corner & round every corner there's a picture
- the fun's in finding them
Same here when I shoot - the purely useless Noise Filter gets turned off, and in-camera sharpening goes down to at least -1. Olympus jacked up in-camera sharpening to compensate for the filter
Nice, I hope your time on the eastern seaboard and your camera gear acquisition trip were enjoyable. I have actually never been to NYC.
It is hard to resist 600mm for under $350, isn't it? No, no sweet spot I only use it at 600mm wide open . And ISO400. My little E-410 isn't stabilized, so I try to keep the shutter at 1/2000 if possible, 1/1000 if not. Ok, I've done a handful of shots at wider angles. But, not very many.
Is it really possibly to see unsharpness on web sized images? I shrink them to 999 pixels wide, which comes out to under 0.7 megapixel for the whole image on the web. They start out a little over 10MP, so almost 15 camera pixels go into every 1 web pixel. That means the camera has a blur radius greater than 4 pixels wide as a result of using sharpness -2, to produce 1 pixel width of blur for Don to see. Which I don't think is the case. I direct your attention to the mountain goat shots by the 14-54 and 18-180 lenses, which are 100% crops and look acceptably sharp at -2 to me. I think any unsharpness visible must be a result of JPEG compression, or furry subjects. Or, hopefully not, my new lens is very blurry (I'll examine it more closely).
I'll grant you that there may be slight differences in each camera and lens, also I shoot in RAW almost all the time with all settings at 0, filters etc. off.
But in my post processing I always sharpen and I still maintain it's possible some of your dissatisfaction with your images is to be found in your camera settings.
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Originally Posted by raven15
. And ISO400. My little E-410 isn't stabilized, so I try to keep the shutter at 1/2000 if possible, 1/1000 if not. Ok, I've done a handful of shots at wider angles. But, not very many. 
