Fallen Soldier returns home

[EW1066]

We had a funeral procession come through our small town today. I had an opportunity to pay my respects and took a few shots of other doing the same. The focus is a bit soft....still trying to figure out why the auto focus is doing this. CC welcome

Post processing is cropping only.

Vince

 

[manaheim]

Is it a new cam? If so, what kind?

You may be aware of this, but digital camera output nearly always needs to be sharpened at least a touch. I'm a Nikon guy, and I've found that aside from the D70 all of the Nikons tend to be QUITE soft. I usually turn the on-camera sharpening option up at least a notch and then do an unsharp mask in photoshop on nearly every pic.

I did a quick job on 2 of your shots... both set to 90% sharpness, 2.2 pixel radius, 2 thresh. I got the following:

Mind you, I think I might do some saturation and contrast adjustments as well, but I wanted to show you exclusively what a bit of sharpening would do.

 

[SanctuS]

I like them all, but number #1 and #3 are cool.

 

[EW1066]

Manaheim,

Thanks for the info and the demo. The camera is a Nikon D80, so your expaeience seems to hold true in this case anyway. I have yet to aquire photoshop. I am using Capture NX. It's the software that came with the camera. I will deffinately bump up the sharpness in the camera as well.

Sanctus,
Thanks for taking the time to tell me you like them......little "ataboy's" go a long way

Vince

 

[JimmyO]

Geez thats alotta bikes

nice shots

 

[EW1066]

Those are the Patriot Guard Riders. I didnt include the pics of the first half of the riders that didnt have flags or the Police riders that preceeded the Patriot Guard. There had to be atleast a mile of bikes. It was an Awe inspiring sight.

The procession was late getting into town because the Widow insisted on thanking and hugging EVERY rider in the procession before heading out from the airport. 35 miles later they pass through our small town and some were still visibly moved.

Vince

 

[EW1066]

This is the beginning of the Patriot Guard.....you can barely see the flag barers in the back

Vince

 

[noob873]

...all of the Nikons tend to be QUITE soft....

I dont know why you say this there are plenty of pics that come out that dont necessarily need to be sharpened.
Not sure why your pics are coming out soft though.

 

[EW1066]

I dont know why you say this there are plenty of pics that come out that dont necessarily need to be sharpened.
Not sure why your pics are coming out soft though.

I didnt say it.

And I dont know why the focus is soft either....

Vince

 

[manaheim]

I dont know why you say this there are plenty of pics that come out that dont necessarily need to be sharpened.
Not sure why your pics are coming out soft though.

mmm, well I say it because it is a fact.

I also say it from experience. I have extensively used the D100, D200, D70S, D80 and D300. I can't personally speak to the D40s, etc. I have consistently seen this behavior and provided this advice to many friends and colleagues who noticed the behavior on their cameras... cameras of all makes and models. Sony, Nikon, Canon, Pentax, my daughter's Fisher Price camera... you name it.

I also said it varies by camera manufacturer and camera. As I mentioned the D70 (I believe it was mainly the D70S...) was famous for -very- sharp pictures, but most of the Nikons appear to have a bit of softness to them by default. (somewhat configurable)

I somewhat hinted at this but wasn't explicit... this also depends very much on personal preference. Beware! Level of sharpening desired is subjective, so this quickly becomes a religious issue.

I should also point out that it varies from pic to pic... if you take a picture of a sunset or a bride at the window, you may WANT the softness. If you're taking a picture at Fenway, you may not. etc.

Unfortunately, I cannot find the article I read... might have been in a paper trade rag, but it basically explained that there is a reason for this with digital cameras that has something to do with the way they are getting the image on the sensor. My memory on this is very fuzzy (YUK YUK YUK), but I believe it had to do with interpolating information between two pixel locations on the camera to determine the color for that particular pixel. Perhaps someone else here can help me out since I am really grasping at straws at this point. Regardless, experience shows that many d-cams produce soft images.

Anyway, the end result is that most digital pictures start out somewhat soft, and the camera's handling of them determines what the output is when it records the image to memory.

For EW1066... my guess is if you look in the menu you will find that your cam is set to the lowest default sharpening setting. My experience is that even at the highest sharpening settings I tend to tweak most of my pictures... Nikon doesn't tend to go hog wild, probably because they are concerned about over-sharpening as it does have some potentially negative impacts (depending on what you are trying to do, of course). Bump it up a notch, take some pics, see what you think... if you would like more, bump it up again. (particularly where you don't have photoshop yet)

I believe GIMP and some other free tools have equivelent sharpening capabilities (as well as everything else) to Photoshop. You might grab that and toy around with it.

For those interested, here is a tutorial on sharpening:

http://www.dslreports.com/faq/13197

 

[manaheim]

Oh, EW... one more thing. It also appears that your shots have a very shallow depth of field. Do you happen to know what f-stop you were at? I'm betting you had the aperature wide open. That's going to mean that your focal point will be sharp but the amount of elements out of focus (and therefore soft) is going to be pretty extensive.

The picture with mom and the kid is a good example... appears that the daughter was the focus point and mom (who is very close to her but just slightly behind) is more fuzzy.

I think this worked EXTREMELY well with the shot of the woman holding the flag, but I would have chosen a smaller aperature for the woman/child picture as I think the focus distracts from the composition a bit.

 

[Antarctican]

The pics you have shared are very moving indeed. What a huge line of bikes. It's wonderful that a person who made the ultimate sacrifice is honoured in this way. It must help the families, in some small way, to deal with their grief to see such a display of support.

 

[noob873]

I didnt say it.

And I dont know why the focus is soft either....

Vince

I know, note I quoted manaheim
And I still disagree with you manaheim
Sorry I got distracted from the original post, I like the pics you took, but like I said earlier they are quite soft.

 

[manaheim]

I know, note I quoted manaheim
And I still disagree with you manaheim

Bah... now I'm going to HAVE to find that article. The gauntlet has been tossed.

 

[manaheim]

Well, I still haven't found -the- article that details this perfectly, but I've done a bit more research so I can speak to it more effectively. I've also found some related articles that talk about the effect we've been discussing.

Some/many camera manufacturers install an anti-alias filter over the sensor. "This is an optical filter that cuts down the sampling frequency to half of the imager's sensel pitch, keeping it below the Nyquist frequency. But because an anti-alias filter also will make digital images appear softer and less sharp, some manufacturers choose to make cameras without, or with a weak anti-alias filter. Cameras without an anti-alias filter include the Kodak DCS Pro 14n and Sigma SD10, while the Nikon D1h and the Canon EOS 5D are cameras with a weak anti-alias filter." **

(** taken from http://hannemyr.com/photo/defects.html#moire )

As we had discussed previously, the D70S was a far sharper camera right out of the box... it had a weaker anti-aliasing filter. Interestingly, this was done because people had complained that the D100 had been TOO soft. Of course, when they put the weaker filter in, it resulted in more moire and step patterns, thus making people complain. Can't win.

The behavior cause by the anti-alias sensor is VERY similar to what happens when you shrink or enlarge an image. Some interesting articles on that are here:

http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/digital-photo-enlargement.htm

http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/image-interpolation.htm

In general, it is considered "better" to have a picture start out overly soft, simply because it is easier to sharpen an image than it is to soften it once it has been sharpened too far. (Sharpening causes all kinds of interesting nasty side-effects such as haloing if you take it too far)

So again, most cams (or at the VERY least any cam that has an anti-aliasing filter) will have this issue. Obviously, as I said, cameras will have the ability to do more or less sharpening "in cam", but generally speaking its considered common best practice to do most of this work in post-shot tools such as Photoshop. I personally, tend to turn my sharpening in-cam up slightly, but leave enough room for me to tweak it when the image leaves the camera to avoid over-sharpening issues.

I hope this helps.