35mm hybrid workflow vs dslr

[marco_landini]

<p>slide scan, do you think is oversharpened ? <a href="

D90 <a href="

@Daniel : I wish to improve my workflow, in a conservative way, just adding to the raw only the basic correction in tone curve and contrast and a bit of sharpening. In this discussion is evident that my great difficulty is sharpening. I just want to give the right sharpness after the anti-aliasing filter intervention of my D90, and a final output sharpening. I use focus magic at 3 for capture sharpening, but It seems to be too much, maybe 1 is better. I' ve tryed also photokit sharpener either for capture sharpening and output sharpening. It seems my settings of the 2 sharpening plug-ins are wrong. Do you suggest me some settings to keep my images sharp and crisp but not oversharpened ? I like to add some hi radius low amount usm, to add some mid-tonal contrast and clarity, at amount 20, radius 50. I like it.</p>

[sebastianmoran]

<p>Marco, I like the train image very much. </p>

<p>For sharpening, I learned a LOT from Bruce Fraser <em>Real World Sharpening with Photoshop CS2</em>. Bruce has died; I think this book is still the best reference and is still fully relevant. He covers specifically the need for capture sharpening on both scan from film and digital sensor. A key point for me: scanned film needs noise reduction before you can do sharpening.</p>

<p>Also, scans do need some sharpening at capture.</p>

<p>Back to the images, I like the train very much, but you are the only one to know what look you want. The question is how to achieve your aim. There's no "right" or "best" way to render an image.</p>

<p>Stuart, I'm quite impressed that your film and digital images have, to me, the same feel. You've obviously learned to control both.</p>

[tom_mann1]

<p>Since it's almost mandatory to sharpen after downsizing (eg, for posting on photo.net), one can run into trouble (eg, halos, stair-stepping, aliasing, etc.) if you sharpen too much before downsizing. The reason is that the initial sharpening can introduce spatial frequencies above the Nyquist frequency allowed by the subsequent downrezing step.</p>

<p>The trick is to be conservative in sharpening before downsizing, but tweak the final sharpening step.</p>

<p>HTH,</p>

<p>Tom M</p>

[danielleetaylor]

<p>marco - in the third pair the D90 shot fairs better because of better light. The Velvia shot still suffers from the color balance issue, and I would pick the color/contrast of the D90 in this case. (Again though, different scenes under different light. Try shooting same scene on both for a while.)</p>

<p>Neither is obviously over sharpened for the screen size.</p>

<p><em>Do you suggest me some settings to keep my images sharp and crisp but not oversharpened ? I like to add some hi radius low amount usm, to add some mid-tonal contrast and clarity, at amount 20, radius 50. I like it.</em></p>

<p>That's known as local contrast enhancement, and I do the same. I use Smart Sharpen (PS CS4) for detail sharpening, usually a radius of 0.5-1px and an amount somewhere between 50% and 100%.</p>

<p>The important thing is that optimum sharpening varies from image to image. On some images I've actually done two Smart Sharpen passes, one at 1px and one at 0.5. On others, I barely touch the image with 0.5px and a very low amount. It all depends on subject, light, lens, previous post processing, and target print size.</p>

<p>Do you have an example pair where you prefer the film sample? Or did you prefer the film sample in all 3 cases here? So far only the first film scan was obviously over sharpened. Perhaps sharpening is not what's turning you off. What don't you like about any of the D90 shots here?</p>

[randall_pukalo]

<p>Personally, I liked the Velvia sunset shot a lot better. Better/warmer colors. At first, I actually thought it was digital, due to the lightened foreground (usually slide w/o a split ND filter will set this very dark). The train image colors turned me off, it reminded me of Ektar 100, with its cold harsh tones. (but it does FANTASTIC sunsets - the only neg film that can compete with slide in this arena). I thought that was the film shot !<br>

Anyways, if you like film results, why not just shoot film? Yoou can still uase your digital for times when it isnt worth the money/time cost shooting film. The Coolscan 5000 scans will be fine, or if you are in the US, simply send to NCPS to have dev and scanned for under $20/ roll. The scanner they use is a $45,000 Kodak Professional scanner designed for scanning pros shots for huge enlargements back in thefilm days. See Ken rockwells site for some scan examples.<br>

Shoot some RealRaw shots and be happy;-).</p>

[Uhooru]

I do similar Marco. But i use both workflows. I like results better in most cases in film but i don't dislike digital either. I

find with digital the more processing done incamera,the better. Actually film is the same. Also i agree that the casbah

shot is over sharpened. You can see a prominant halo at the sky line.

[marco_landini]

<p>I love this picture. Taken by d90, 50 1.8 af-d. In capture nx2 I left the same sharpness value as was set in camera (+4), and no sharpening in ps. I know the best way is to set to 0 the sharpenss in raw conversion, ad add shapness only in the final stages of editing in photoshop ( capture and output sharpening). But I have to say I like this result, with on camera shapening on and kept on in raw to tiff conversion.<br>

<a href="

 

[tom_mann1]

<p>Hi again, Marco - You photo of the cement / gravel / coal plant is indeed very nice. If you look carefully on a good monitor at close distances, it's easy to see that there is a prominent white halo that surrounds almost every dark line that has the sky for it's background. However, if the monitor isn't quite so good, the monitor is connected to the PC with a low quality analog/VGA cable (ie, with signal reflections because of termination problems), if the viewer is a bit further away, etc. I doubt many ordinary viewers (ie, not us pixel peepers) would even notice the white halos, let alone say they're objectionable. They would probably simply say, "Oooh, what a nice sharp picture!"</p>

<p>IMHO, there is a time and place for taking exquisite care with the preparation of an image, and posting a 700 pixel mini-image in a discussion forum usually isn't one of them. I've posted plenty of oversharpened images to "No Words" simply because I'm lazy, wanted to post something, didn't want to take the time to tweak each and every image I post, and because my personal preference is that I'd rather err on the side of a bit of over-sharpening rather than having people think my shot was OOF.</p>

<p>OTOH, photo.net can be a good place to hone your skills in preparation for more serious presentation of your work. So, taken with that in mind, if you would like someone else to show you what their idea of optimal sharpening is, why don't you make the RAW file for the industrial image available. You can then compare your idea of optimal sharpening to their best shot at it, albeit both will be for 700 px wide monitor output, ie, in this thread.</p>

<p>Tom M</p>