nikon d 300

[stuart wanuck]

what is the recommended sharpness setting for the nikon d 300 ?
for bird photography

[Stuart Hill]

Hi Stuart,

I have mine set to the highest setting in camera to help see if shots are sharp in the field but remove all of this in post. Preferring to capture sharpen in photoshop and then as needed depening on where the image is going, ie, the web, small print, large print.

regards.
Stu.

[Jeff Donald]

Are you shooting RAW or JPEG?

[Fabs Forns]

If you are using RAW it does not matter.

[Jeff Donald]

It "might" matter if you're using your histogram to determine exposure. The histogram is based on a jpeg image and setting the sharpening on jpegs excessively high will cause the histogram to read incorrectly (over-exposed) and thus result in the photographer making exposure compensation that is not necessary.

If you're not shooting Raw, then setting the sharpening to the highest setting is not something that can be "removed" in post. Jpegs can't have their sharpening removed without damaging the pixels. If you are shooting Raw, then the sharpening is not affecting the Raw and "removing" it in post would actually result in less sharp files, depending on the post processing software you're using.

[Desmond Chan]

If you're not shooting Raw, then setting the sharpening to the highest setting is not something that can be "removed" in post. Jpegs can't have their sharpening removed without damaging the pixels.

If it looks too sharp, then apply a teeny tiny dose of blur to it :) Another way I can think of is open your jpeg file on ACR using "open as" and select "camera raw". Reduce the "clarity". Or just reduce the contrast :D

[Dan Brown]

I am shooting Raw+jpeg with the sharpening set a +9 and the contrast set a low, which, I am told brings the histogram back in line. It seems to work fine, I can see really sharp previews in the field and my exposures are acceptable to me:).

[Jeff Donald]

If it looks too sharp, then apply a teeny tiny dose of blur to it :) Another way I can think of is open your jpeg file on ACR using "open as" and select "camera raw". Reduce the "clarity". Or just reduce the contrast :D

That's kind of like trying to unbake a cake. It doesn't really work well because over sharpening causes artifacts that will still be visible after blurring image. It may work a few limited types of images, but if the image contained any micro detail the blurring will obscure it.

[Desmond Chan]

That's kind of like trying to unbake a cake. It doesn't really work well because over sharpening causes artifacts that will still be visible after blurring image. It may work a few limited types of images, but if the image contained any micro detail the blurring will obscure it.

Well, I'm simply suggesting a solution to deal with the scenario where one finds one's image looks too sharp. If you pixel peep, I think - and I've read somewhere - you can detect anything you do in post-processing. But I'm quite sure that applying blur to an image will make it looks...not sharp, or at least not as sharp as it was before :D:D

[Stuart Hill]

I mentioned I remove the sharpening in post. I should have mentioned I shoot raw and use nikon nx2 to process the raws. In this you can change ALL the variables put on in camera from white balance to sharpening. Because its the original raw file you wont degrade the image or end up with less sharp images.

I learnt here that images should not be sharpening properly until final output is known.

regards.
Stu.

[scott benson]

if you shot raw there is no sharpening done in camera, sharpening is only done when applied in processing.

info about raw.
http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/RAW-file-format.htm

[JH Tugs]

Scott,

You're correct that the RAW image itself undergoes no sharpening in camera.

However, the preview image on the camera's screen is not typically created from the RAW. Instead, usually there is a smaller sized JPEG "preview" image embedded in the RAW file format, and that's used for the screen display to save the camera the processing task of decoding the entire RAW file every time you view an image. (This certainly applies to Canon CRW and CR2 files, and most Nikon NEF files - though some of the older cameras like D1 apparently don't embed a JPG). When the camera calculates a histogram to display to you, that too is based on the JPEG image and not on the RAW.

That JPEG preview image is affected by the in-camera settings for saturation/contrast/sharpening/whatever, and therefore so is your histogram. So if you ever chimp to monitor your exposure (and who doesn't), having your in camera processing settings set up appropriately turns out to be extremely important. Otherwise as discussed above you will end up making decisions based on a histogram that is skewed in one direction or the other.

The "right" in-camera settings are usually camera specific ("+3 sharpening" is not really an absolute measure, after all). The best way to experiment is to take a bracketed series of pictures with your current in-camera settings from underexposed to overexposed, and note the exposure at which the camera tells you (via histogram/flashing bits) that your highlights have blown. Then open the RAW files and see whether those blown pixels are truly at 255,255,255 or not. Depending on your in-camera settings, you'll likely find that the RAW doesn't blow pixels when the camera says you did. It's a fun experiment

Wiser folks feel free to correct anything misleading there please :)