Image Sharpness of D70

[charles_sullivan]

I recently purchased the D70 and use it primarily for wildflower

photography in the macro mode. I shoot almost entirely in the

Aperature Priority Mode. I am not completely satisfied with the image

sharpness I have been getting. In fact the images I get with my Fuji

4900Z are more crisp. I am using a solid Bogen tripod with a pistol

grip head, occasionally 52mm of extension and I have been careful to

get parallel to the subject. I have the focus mode set to sharp in the

Image Quality Menu and use the Dynamic Focus Mode. I have even tried

using the remote as an electronic cable release in order to minimze

camera vibration. Does anyone have experience using the D70 for this

kind of photography? Are there any camera settings that I can change

in order to get the razor sharp images I desire? The landscape

photographs I have taken are very crisp and pleasing. Any and all help

will be greatly appreciated.

[ellis_vener_photography]

What sharpening settings are you using?

[joseph_wisniewski]

OK, bunch of questions.

 

What lens are you using?

 

What do you mean by 52mm of extension? Are you talking about extension tubes? Some lenses are not sharp on tubes, especially zooms and wides.

 

What aperture? You may need to be down around f16. Remember, you're using much larger lenses and a much larger sensor than your Fuji, so you've got much less DOF. This can be annoying in macro shots.

 

Is at least part of your image satisfactorially sharp?

 

Try turning off the dynamic focus.

 

Try shooting raw, and playing with different sharpening options later.

 

And, can you post an example?

[davidweaverphoto]

My first thought is: "...hmmm...wind?..." I've been shooting wildflowers with great results. I DO NOT use dynamic focus because it doesnt' work well and I get to select what I really want as sharp by using manual focus... especially with an old 55 AF Micro Nikkor. The shots are sharp. Extension??? what do you mean? Extension tube? Closeup filters/ Diopters?

[chris haake]

There is something very important to bring up here. Notice that just a day or two ago, Mihut Ionescu noticed that his D70 was SHARPER than his 35mm gear. I certainly can't dispute either person's individual claim...my point is that there are many factors involved in photography. The culprit could be wind, lense(s), printing method, printing media, photographer's own actions, sample variation...you get the point. I would hazard a guess that it is not the D70 that is the culprit, but some other factor. Explore around, and good luck to you (and, of course, have some fun while you're at it).

[eric friedemann]

Without going over what's already been said, one thing that jumped out at me is that you are using AF for still-life macro work. For greater precision in focus while shooting close-up, switch to manual focus.

[efusco]

What sharpening settings and post-processing sharpening techniques are you using. Realize as well that with macro and esp. macro with extension tubes and lack of the ability to use mirror lock-up you're going to have some vibration from that. I agree with the others that you need to be manually focusing macro shots. And a pistol grip is not going to be the most stable foundation.

 

Realize, also, that some people have reported problems with back-focusing on their D70s, it might be worth checking your camera for that problem.

[hayward]

I suspect that the lack of "sharpness" may be related to depth of field. The 4900Z has an engineered tendency to have more depth of field, making all parts of the photo relatively sharp. The D70 will blur parts of the frame unless you set the aperture at f/22 or higher. Please post one of your pics and I can tell for sure.

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I've had a D70 for about a week and it is sharper than the results I've been able to acheive with 35mm film and the same lenses. <a href="http://www.photo.net/photo/2364311&size=lg">Here is a macro I took a few days ago with the D70 and Tamron 90mm macro, as an example.</a>

[mihut_ionescu]

John, we seem to agree on the sharpness of D70 vs. film.

 

Charles, check that you D70 doesn't have the back focusing problem which many people have noticed. I thought it was a joke, but last week I and a colleague of mine took a few test portraits with his D70 and 80% were back focused, the rest of 20% were in focus just because we were using a smaller aperture. This seems to be a real problem with the D70 and I hope that mine won't have this problem when I order it ;).

[scott_warn]

I think that your choice of settings may be part of the problem, specifically your choice of Dynamic Focus. This mode is intended for shooting active subjects, like a soccer game, and allows the camera to choose what is focused on. With a static subject, it may be that the camera defaults to the closest subject when you have Dynamic AF chosen. I think that a better choice would be to choose single point AF where you are in complete control of the focus point used. With the narrow depth of field shooting macro you really need to have complete control of your focus point. It is also important that you choose a focusing target as near the hyperfocal point as possible.

 

Another factor is if your are using JPG or RAW. You did not state if your were shooting RAW or JPG. When I first tried my camera out I saw what I believed was flare in the fine details. I had the camera set to JPF, Large, and Fine compression. After comparing identical shots using RAW and JPG, I found that what I thought was flare was really an artifact of the JPG compression.

 

You also did not state what lens you are using. I have not tried my 105 Micro yet but it's next on my list of lenses to test. It may be possible that you are using a lens that really does not work well up close. If you have the kit zoom, give that lens a try, mine is surprizingly good at the minimum focusing distance.

 

A trial version of Nikon Capture is included with the software for the D70 and I urge you to try it out. Shooting in RAW mode will allow you to use Capture to tweak the image with controls that are a lot more versatile than the, in camera, custom settings. I think that if you experiment with the sharpening filters available in Capture you will be stunned at how much you can improve the sharpness without impacting the final print. I have not run a complete test of the in camera sharpening but my testing between normal and high indicate the it is VERY conservative. My hunch is that your Fuji has a much more aggressive sharpening filter applied to the images than what you get using the settings on the D70. Capture can overcome this because it offers a huge range of adjustment. I am only just starting to explore what Capture can do but have seen enough to know that it will be my very next purchase.

 

Back focus problems with the D70 are a hot button issue on some of the photo boards. Concerned about this problem, I downloaded one of the tests offered and ran some tests using the supplied targets. Using the supplied focusing targets I did see some back focus, about 10mm at a distance of about 20 inches. What is interesting is that when I used simple newprint as a focusing target I saw absolutely no back focus, NONE. Based on this I have a hunch that the back focus issue may be caused by the distinctive geometric patterns used for focusing targets. In my general walk around shooting I have not seen any evidence of back focus in my photos so I have stopped actively worrying about this issue.

[aaron_ng]

Note that in the dpreview forums, Nikon Singapore are accepting D70s that lack image sharpness under warranty repair and they are "recalibrating" it. Maybe you should try getting Nikon there to do the same for you?

 

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1034&message=8769388

 

Go here for before and after pics.

 

Aaron

[jeff_towarnicki]

If you are in Aperature priority and have the DOF cranked way down (low aperature) part of your image will be very very sharp, but lots of the image will be out of focus, this is because your circle of confusion will be very small. You would have to do a back focus test to see if you had a back focus issue with the focusing system, and this is easier to test back focus when using a low aperature because you can see if the correct area is in focus, where as if you use a high aperature it will be hard to tell. It is very hard to check on a single photo if you have a BF issue, but noticable if on all your photos in average consistantly appear to be "slightly out of focus".

 

A Fuji 4900Z probably has a much higher aperature being used in automatic and will make more of the image look sharp, but won't be able to do portrait shots like the D70 can... (these point and shoot cameras fly off the assembly line and I bet the farm the focus plane differs on each one and they use DOF to make BF, or even front focus at that matter. Front focus is usually not an issue cause the way the geometry of optics work is 1/3 (on average of the front is in focus whereas 2/3's of the remaining circle of confusion is the rear of the focus point.

 

I've had expereince with the D70, and if you have the focus mode in closest subject you can run into focus problems, and I never use this mode, I only use single area.

 

Best just to use manual focus for best results and it is digital.. I tent to use manual and move the focus ring and take 10 shots of something I like varing the focus.. after all it is digital :) and discard the files that don't look good....

 

Cheers,

 

JT.

[Carl Stone]

I'm not a big fan of pistol grip heads where critical focus, as in macro, is an issue. The

movement from base to lens can be devastating, so I would prefer to keep the lens

closer to the mount. Wind can really play havoc here. This is no criticism, but

technique can make the diffrence between good images and bad.