Sharpness

I have the EOS 30D. I use it to shoot portraits and headshots mainly.

Since I bought it I have only been shooting in RAW.

Now I was wondering if there is an ideal setting for sharpness.

I use the 24-105 L which I hear is pretty sharp. So therefore I set my

sharpness in camera to it's lowest.And when working on my RAW images I also

set sharpness to zero.

I was wondering what creative mode you folks find more effective when shooting

your portraits and what setting you have your sharpness on.

I also like to set my contrast to it's lowest in camera.

I believe I have been shooting in the portrait mode but I have lowered the

sharpness to zero. I hear the faithful mode gives accurate skintones when

shooting in color.

 

Thanks for any advice

 

Joe

If you are shooting in RAW then the modes do nothing to the images. RAW images are unprocessed. The accompanying JPEGS may be effected by the mode settings but the Raw images are not.

I shoot with the exact same setup but for different subjects. My rig is sharp wide open but it wasn't that way when I got it. The lens went back to Canon in the first week and when I got it back from calibration it was perfect. It is the one lens I have ever had "my first L" that my only consideration when shooting wide open is depth of field, I never worry about sharpness at that point. I keep my sharpness settings in the middle but shoot raw also and never have to sharpen those. I am also a pixel peeper "the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem". Everything gets the 100% crop scrutiny with me.

The camera settings do nothing for RAW, RAW is raw!

 

What RAW convertor are you using, you need to either specify sharpening in that or better still master edge masked sharpening on CS2.

I believe the general consensus is to "sharpen for the output". In other words if you shrink an image down for posting to the web it will need *much* less sharpening than, say, a 13X19 inch print that will be hung on the wall.

 

I personally turn sharpening off in ACR (which defaults to "25" - whatever that is) and do all sharpening in PS, again, depending on the size of the output. Good luck!

RAW is RAW. I think only Canon's RAW converters (in DPP and ZoomBrowser) take the in-camera settings as their default parameters for the conversion, but of course they don't actually change the RAW file and you have always the possibility to change all those parameters as you like.

 

ACR is not aware of the camera settings and uses its own default or automatic parameters for conversion if you don't set them.

Definitely what Beau said -- sharpending depends on your SUBJECT and the size of the outputed image (Web or print); also, you should NOT be using ACR blind, get the book -- the ACR Bible that's mentioned time & time again and is authored by the late, great Bruce Fraser. This issue of (how to) sharpening images has been solved a long time ago already.

<p>

I am a long time film guy turned digital and had the same questions about RAW. Again, RAW means nothing has been done to alter the image - you need to add sharpness, if you like. You may not add any sharpening or a whole lot - depends on what you want as output. My process is: </P> 1. shoot raw </P> 2. open in PS elements 5 </P> 3. Simple quick Unsharp Mask adjustment to image </P>4. adjust color/contrast/crop </P>5. Resize for output </P> 6. Apply final sharpening via Sharpness/Lens Blur </P>7. Print </P>

Dan</P>

<a href="http://members.aol.com/dcolucci">www.antiquecameras.net</a>

Hey Eric~Where did you send/take your lenses to get calibrated?

Sorry I forgot to mention I open my files with ACR. in PSE 3.

Thanks all for clearing this issue up.

Joe look into PhaseOne Capture One. It is much faster and easier to use than ACR and I find it to do a better job. Its about $99, but it was included free with certain CF cards. Might be worth looking into one of those packages.

 

M