Pin sharp

englishpremier

englishpremier

englishpremier

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Is the Nikon D50 capable of achieving pin sharp photos when in perfect conditions?

Many of you guys on here are using FF cameras but there are are fair few crop guys about. A lot of the images I see posted are wickedly sharp and clear.

Obviously my camera more advanced than my skill level, but even browsing through images taken by many others with D50s none come close in sharpness to the types of images i see in these forums.

Is the camera just not up to it? Or is it because only beginners have bought it?

flickr - nikon d50 group

http://www.flickr.com/groups/nikond50/pool/
 
Sharpness is primarily about the lens. Get a 50mm f/1.8 prime lens, and you will see sharp. :)
 
This is a snap from a Canon 500D which is a crop sensor camera. The lens was a 70-200 f/4L. I can't comment on that specific D50 sensor but a crop camera isn't going to be your limiting factor. Even some of the higher end cameras like the 7D have a crop sensor.

img1861c.jpg


100cropg.jpg
 
A lot of it will be down to beginners buying it, however there are plenty of good examples if you know where to look. Shooting a decent prime you'll get sharp enough results, but obviously full frame will give a much sharper image.

Still, there are plenty of D50 shots which are stunning images: (not my images, just from the flickr group)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/32081016@N07/3616508392/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/32081016@N07/3591908830/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/drewwilsonphotography/1872799475/

What I'd be more worried about with the d50 is noise performance, which as far as I know is decidedly awful. Sharpness with good quality lenses will be fine, though as said, not up to full frame standards as is inevitable.
 
Ksanti said:
but obviously full frame will give a much sharper image.
Click to expand...

Really? I wasn't aware that full frame made any inherent improvement in sharpness, dynamic range, noise handling and colour rendition yest but I'd never heard anyone say go full frame for sharper pictures.

Back to the OP your camera is perfectly capable of razor sharp images under the correct conditions and using the correct techniques as is every dSLR ever made. Lense choice will make a difference as will you chosen aperture etc. Basically even with the kit lens if you set it at f8 stick it on a tripod and use a cable release with shutter lock up you should get a perfectly sharp image of your subject especially once processed. Don't forget if shooting RAW your images will need sharpening in post to bring out the best in them.
 
I can get decent quality images out of it, and i've seen some great shots online, but nothing i've seen taken with a D50 using either the kit lens or a prime is razor sharp.

The funny thing is I can't find any good example not that I come to search for them
 
a1ex2001 said:
Really? I wasn't aware that full frame made any inherent improvement in sharpness, dynamic range, noise handling and colour rendition yest but I'd never heard anyone say go full frame for sharper pictures.
Click to expand...

It doesn't change how sharp the lens is, but you use more of the imaging circle. If you cropped in a full frame image 1.6x you would have equivalent sharpness of an ASP-C format camera.
http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/full-frame-advantage.htm
(I know it's Uncle Ken but the thinking is right and his writeup is just the best I've found on the subject thus far)
 
Ksanti said:
It doesn't change how sharp the lens is, but you use more of the imaging circle. If you cropped in a full frame image 1.6x you would have equivalent sharpness of an ASP-C format camera.
http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/full-frame-advantage.htm
(I know it's Uncle Ken but the thinking is right and his writeup is just the best I've found on the subject thus far)
Click to expand...

That is not really sound logic. Image sharpness is a function of the sensor resolution, the lens and aperture. A full fame sensor can only capture a sharper image than a crop sensor if the size of the photosites are larger, at the same density then there is no advantage on full frame. The only advantage at equal pixel densities is the FX sensor will have around twice the area and twice the pixels but the per pixel sharpness in the centre will be the same. And on FX you will never get the same sharpness towards the edges.


This is one of the many myths about full frame. The new 36MP sensors coming next year will struggle to get sharpness the same as the current 16MP crop sensors. The total resolution may well be higher but per pixel sharpness may be less.
 
Ksanti said:
It doesn't change how sharp the lens is, but you use more of the imaging circle. If you cropped in a full frame image 1.6x you would have equivalent sharpness of an ASP-C format camera.
http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/full-frame-advantage.htm
(I know it's Uncle Ken but the thinking is right and his writeup is just the best I've found on the subject thus far)
Click to expand...

There is some very fuzzy logic in there as usual from good old Ken and some terrible example shots!

D.P. said:
That is not really sound logic. Image sharpness is a function of the sensor resolution, the lens and aperture. A full fame sensor can only capture a sharper image than a crop sensor if the size of the photosites are larger, at the same density then there is no advantage on full frame. The only advantage at equal pixel densities is the FX sensor will have around twice the area and twice the pixels but the per pixel sharpness in the centre will be the same. And on FX you will never get the same sharpness towards the edges.


This is one of the many myths about full frame. The new 36MP sensors coming next year will struggle to get sharpness the same as the current 16MP crop sensors. The total resolution may well be higher but per pixel sharpness may be less.
Click to expand...

That was my understanding, a lot of people seem to treat full frame like the holy grail and I'll admit I do to sometimes but it's not the great panacea everyone seem to think it is. In most cases going full frame will not improve someones photography half as much as going out and practicing will!
 
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Lightroom does a little bit of sharping by default when you import a RAW although usually you need to tweak it a bit further. Good place to start is using one of the sharpening presets and then adjust at your leisure.
 
Dunky said:
Lightroom does a little bit of sharping by default when you import a RAW although usually you need to tweak it a bit further. Good place to start is using one of the sharpening presets and then adjust at your leisure.
Click to expand...

One of the inbuilt LR presets?
 
I use Darktable on Linux. That has a sharpen setting that by default is

Radius 2.00
Amount 0.5
Threshold 0.04

I usually bump the Amount up to 2.0 (that is the max) and leave the Radius and Threshold alone, since i don't know what they do.
 
D.P. said:
Snip.
Click to expand...

Actually, it's not my logic which is fuzzy. I've seen the evidence for myself and done the test shots myself as well.

Per pixel sharpness yes, but when was the last time you posted an image on the internet at full resolution? And when was the last time you printed an image and chose how big your print was based solely on how many pixels you have?

You don't. You print at a size that is convenient and display on the internet in the same manner. Viewing at 100% and taking crops from the same resolution/size; of course the full frame images will be no different from the crop, but that's a very far gone scenario which never actually arises.

Lenses, by and large, don't outresolve sensors, particularly not crop sensors. We'll assign them a hypothetical unit of sharpness, a "light pixel"; the number of light pixels a lens offers comes down to how small a lens can focus light. You take an image, then display it at a desired size regardless of how big the sensor was. The only way the sharpness of an image would be the same from a full frame camera and a crop camera is if you always displayed full frame images at 1.6 times the size of your crop images, or cropped them in 1.6 times. Lenses aren't perfectly sharp to the extent that a low ISO 100% crop looks exactly the same as a full size image and in exactly the same way, full frame images are sharper.
e.g.
(NB this is a vast exaggeration of how soft lenses are, but it's just the logic that matters here rather than the exact numbers)
9alMT.jpg


At web viewing sizes this admittedly tends to make little difference but it can become very apparent in proper prints and when processing images.
 
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Jimmy1983 said:
One of the inbuilt LR presets?
Click to expand...

Yup, there should be two LR presets ('Scenic' and 'Faces') - use which ever one is appropriate. Also when doing sharpening, zooming into 100% (or using the magnified preview just above the sharpening box) helps when touching up the sharpness (it's not always visible when using 'Fit' or 'Fill' zoom level.

I also find using a bit of 'Clarity' (comes under the 'Presence' section) also helps to "sharpen" the image a little.

Not got Lightroom open (at work) so the above is from memory.
 
Most cameras will do 'pin sharp', it's the lenses that are usually the weakest link. Unfortunately don't have a 100% crop to hand but this might give you an idea. 70-200 f4/L on a 400D

IMG_0994.jpg
 
Ksanti said:
Actually, it's not my logic which is fuzzy. I've seen the evidence for myself and done the test shots myself as well.

Per pixel sharpness yes, but when was the last time you posted an image on the internet at full resolution? And when was the last time you printed an image and chose how big your print was based solely on how many pixels you have?

You don't. You print at a size that is convenient and display on the internet in the same manner. Viewing at 100% and taking crops from the same resolution/size; of course the full frame images will be no different from the crop, but that's a very far gone scenario which never actually arises.

Lenses, by and large, don't outresolve sensors, particularly not crop sensors. We'll assign them a hypothetical unit of sharpness, a "light pixel"; the number of light pixels a lens offers comes down to how small a lens can focus light. You take an image, then display it at a desired size regardless of how big the sensor was. The only way the sharpness of an image would be the same from a full frame camera and a crop camera is if you always displayed full frame images at 1.6 times the size of your crop images, or cropped them in 1.6 times. Lenses aren't perfectly sharp to the extent that a low ISO 100% crop looks exactly the same as a full size image and in exactly the same way, full frame images are sharper.
e.g.
(NB this is a vast exaggeration of how soft lenses are, but it's just the logic that matters here rather than the exact numbers)


At web viewing sizes this admittedly tends to make little difference but it can become very apparent in proper prints and when processing images.
Click to expand...




You missed the important part of my post, full frame sensor may offer a higher total resolution but that does not make sor a sharper a image in the common undertanding of sharpness. Sharpness dependsm on pixel size and lens quality. If you were to use the same lens to take the same image from the same position with the same pixel density you have not gained anything with a full frame camera. You would need a lens with a 1.5x longer focal length to get any increased resolution, but if you were shooting say a distant small bird then the same same longer lens will getter you even more pixels per feather on a crop sensor.
Hence many wildlife photographers use crop cameras.

There is no free lunch as they say. Full frame doesn't magically improve things universally and there are manz pros and cons.
 
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