camera sharpening,A priority, S priority or neither?????? (1 Viewer)

I'm just wondering what everyone prefers? My cp990 was set to auto for in camera sharpening, i'm not sure what auto does so i changed it to normal, what is everyone elses set on? I believe auto to be the default setting.

I tend to use aperture priority, but sometimes using spot metering and A priority doesn't give me the correct shutter speed, would center weighted work better, i've tried it, but didn't notice much difference. I'd just use manual, but with everything else that has to be done to get the shot it's a pain to have to worry about changing the shutter speed IMO.

I also have been using it on the normal setting as well Paul. I was wondering about the contrast settings as well.

I've copied below a portion of Andy Brights suggested settings. If you get a chance, go back about 30 days in his threads and he gives you a full range of setting suggestions. Here is part of it.

Metering:
Now this is quite important as it determines where the camera takes its light reading of the image from, so as to correctly expose the image... Best to ignore matrix metering as it can often lead to the wrong exposure for a small bird against a light/dark background, though if the bird dominates the view it's o.k. Spot Metering is useful as the camer will only take a light reading from the centre spot (hopefully where the subject is)...exposing the subject correctly but to hell with the background.
An in-between metering mode is "Centre Weighted" or "partial spot".... The camera will concentrate on exposing for the centre spot but doesn't totally ignore the lighting of the background.
Finally, and in combination with a focus mode we will get to later, we have "Spot AF Area' metering. Basically spot metering but at different points around the image. I tend to use this for most of my shots, that's why my backgrounds look too dark or bright!

Hi Paul,

I use the 4500, but I would imagine the same applies. I'm new at the game but after following Andy's advice and a little experimenting I found that normal sharpening and normal contrast. It was suggested that using the lower contrast gives good results, but I think from my experiments that is not always the case. More often than not normal contrast is better.

I tend to use the I use the Spot AF area most of the time. I find that it gives that much more control over focus on the subject and being able to expose for the highlights. If you lock the settings by half depressing the shutter release and then while holding that position refocus for the eye you can get correct focus and exposure fairly quickly/easily.

I use the Nikon 4500 and have tried various scopes and settings. I've found that with my camera I should have "Sharpening" set at "Off". I do all my processing on the computer.

Anyway, I've had much better results this past month with this setting. I got my 4500 in early March and was so frustrated trying to get good images that I almost sent the camera back to Nikon for servicing.

Wheb I went birding in California in May (Salton Sea area) I hired a guide (Bob Miller of Southwest Birding) who showed me the best birding areas around the Salton Sea. Anyway, he had a Nikon 4500 and Kowa scope 820 series, this combination gave really nice images. He told me to have the Sharpening turned "Off". He was (for me) quite right!

Just what I've found. We all have to experiment a bit as these cameras can have slight variations. Also depends on your scope. I've had fairly good results with the Eagle Optics Raven. Fair results with the Orion Short-tube F/5 refractor (lots of chromatic aberrations with this scope). Both these scopes are from the U.S.

I've had some nice results with the Kenko 2x converter. Hard to get in Canada so got it on Ebay (new).

My first posting since joining this.

Hi cspratt (always nice to have a name?).
A big welcome on behalf of all the moderators and admin here at BF, we hope you enjoy your time here.

I seem to have missed this thread (which is criminal for a moderator!)
I always prefer to do the majority of sharpening in-computer, but the camera is fairly subtle in it's own sharpening for the most part. With auto sharpening, you are left in the hands of what some Nikon software programmer decides is appropriate for the image.... and sometimes it gets it wrong and will oversharpen, though I haven't seen the camera produce anything awful in terms of oversharpening in any of the sharpen settings.


A slight benefit of switching off the in-camera sharpening is that the image sizes will be a bit smaller, so you could get a few extra shots out of a memory card.

Andy

Andy Bright said:

A slight benefit of switching off the in-camera sharpening is that the image sizes will be a bit smaller, so you could get a few extra shots out of a memory card.

Andy

Click to expand...

Aha! I did not know that. Always learning something here Andy. Actually I have a whole lot to learn but thanks for the tip.

Hi all:

Sorry about that (no signature appended to my first post).

Name is:

Chris. Spratt