simon_says wrote:
Ugh, this question always seems to show up...
Don't bother worrying about it. You're totally taking the fun out of photography. Part of doing photography is to enjoy it, not fuss over the details. If it really stresses you out this much then maybe it's time to find a new hobby.
I enjoy photography quite a bit, and it's something I'd like to take from a hobby to a pseudo profession.
Since I sell prints on a semi-often basis, I want to present the best work I can. The way I understand it is that I should offer everything as the moment it would make or break me. Meaning, if it's not good enough for me, it's not good enough for a client. I'm a painter by trade (houses, not pictures) and you certainly wouldn't want me to offer you "good enough".
I go through this every once in awhile...a couple thousand clicks later, I go "everything is fine", then a couple thousand more, this crap happens again.
When I first bought the lenses, I asked for a focus test chart. People said to shoot until I notice a flaw. Well, I did that and was pleased with the results. Then I seen a flaw. Then I started looking at all my 100% crops. Most, the focus is where it's supposed to be. However, when I've seen others post 100% crops, mine always look more "dotty" or "grainy" (excluding normal high iso noise) and less sharp than the others posted. I would almost be willing to be my copies are either "sharp" or at least in spec, so that's not a worry and focus seems to be on (i've never really done focus tests at full length, I usually do them at near minimum distance and everything checks out just fine.
the one I do for this is 4 wire nuts on an anvil. Set them staggered, and it's easy to tell where the DoF is, and easy to tell if a lens is front or back focusing. Then again, if it's missing a little bit close, it may not be noticeable far away.
The bottom line is this, am I expecting too much from my 100% crops?
AGeoJO wrote:
Robert,
I resize it only to fit 800 pixels at the long edge, again for web presentation purposes only.
The point of 100% crop is to crop 800 pixels, a very small portion, out of the image and post it with NO resizing. That is what 100% crop means. So by this definition it might be very useful to the OP to see a true 100% crop of your sample image to see how it compares to his lens results.
Makten wrote:
Mk III what? 1Ds or 1D? What focal length? What aperture?
The exif says 1/200 sec and 70mm at f2.8. It's taken with a 1D Mark III. About what I get from mine.
Also, I want to add that no sharpening was applied to my images.
I also did a quick test, and you guys can repeat this.
Open an image in DPP. Take the sharpness to 0. Save the file as a tiff. Open the tiff in Zoombrowser EX. Add USM 300% .3 and 0. Save the file.
Open Photoshop CS2, and open the OLD file (the one with 0 sharpness applied and without USM), add the SAME numbers in PSCS2. Save the file as a different name (obviously). The results are quite different.
The zoombrowser sharpening is a lot more "sharp".
That said, what is the equivalent sharpening click, to the USM in DPP? (DPP afaik doesn't have USM).
I will chime in here..let me know if I am wrong but say you have a 30d and its 8.2mp,you view the whole image on your 1600x1024 monitor which comes out to approx 1.8mp so how on earth can one judge the true rez unless your monitor does 8.2mp rez which there are that do but cost 1000s $$$...the image will only look as good as what your monitor outputs
1024x768 will look worse than a 3840x2048 which is needed to get a real idea of what the image is in reality...so on a 1024x768 monitor you are only seeing 25 percent of a 8.2mp image and with a 3840x2048 monitor you are seeing 100 percent...
I'm a self confessed pixel peeper. I don't expect my lenses to give perfect corners at all apertures, but I like to know what happens to my images throughout the f stop range as I open up or stop down. Its surprising just how many lenses can cope perfectly well with being assessed at 100%. Even alot of budget glass gives great images at 100%, for example I'm continuously impressed with the sharpness of my Tokina 12-24, a lens which loves being pixel peeped, as do my Canon primes.
At the moment I am using a humble 40D, but with everyone projecting the availability of cameras with 30+ megapixels in the near future, surely there is an argument for saying that a lens that cannot cope with being pixel peeped on today's cameras certainly won't be able to cope with (or be worthy of) the next generation of super detailed sensors.
If you don't agree with pixel peeping, why pay high prices for cameras with the latest sensors?
digitalbug30d wrote:
I will chime in here..let me know if I am wrong but say you have a 30d and its 8.2mp,you view the whole image on your 1600x1024 monitor which comes out to approx 1.8mp so how on earth can one judge the true rez unless your monitor does 8.2mp rez which there are that do but cost 1000s $$$...the image will only look as good as what your monitor outputs
1024x768 will look worse than a 3840x2048 which is needed to get a real idea of what the image is in reality...so on a 1024x768 monitor you are only seeing 25 percent of a 8.2mp image and with a 3840x2048 monitor you are seeing 100 percent... ...Show more →
That's why when you click "100% view" the image is larger than your monitor, at least I think that's why.
Wowee! the shadows in that image is what the highlights of my 5D at iso 3200 look like! Don't think I've ever actually looked at what the later generation can do at higher iso - the 1.3X crop never interested me and the price of the 1Ds was rather out of my league! Iso 1600 on my 5D's is quite a bit noisier than that but heck if they don't make a great full page spread on a 10X14" storybook album spread and you really need to get close to see the noise, at normal viewing distances it looks like texture.
