nikon sharpness

regarding the nikon d300
for flight and general wildlife photography
what sharpness in the menus is preferred

i use +5 with mine.

If you capture in RAW it will only affect the jpeg preview.

If applying any in-camera sharpening at all (I don't because I shoot RAW) I would keep it on the lowest level for "capture sharpening" only. The problem with in-camera sharpening is that you can never go back so if you sharpen too aggressively in camera you are stuck with the image forever. Also you are then faced with a sharpened image which you may have to process, and in so doing you have put the cart before the horse- sharpening should generally be the last thing you do to an image, not the first. If I shot jpegs only I would turn in-camera sharpening off and sharpen in post-processing.

The best thing to do if you shoot jpeg, IMO, is to do some test shots yourself and see what you like. Should not be difficult to do :)

I would agree with John Chardine's remarks totally. The Nikon D300 is a great camera and so long as you use Nikon's best lenses PS should take care of all your sharpening needs.

None.

I shoot RAW and use 50 / 5 / 4 as capture sharpening in NX2.

I do my first stage final sharpening in PS as well as my final and it varies, depending on image detail, output, etc.

I agree with Fab's. The sharpening in camera, if you shoot RAW only effects the jpeg. To see a nice sharp preview image in the LCD I use +5.

The problem with aggressive sharpening in camera (I consider anything over 2 agressive) is that it skews the histogram as well, giving non optimal information to use when setting exposure.

This is why I use a NearUniWB preset with sharpening set to NONE.

I also use a flat tone curve which further allows the generated histogram to approximate a true RAW histogram.

What Jim said :D:D

Jim,
Could I ask how this equates to the d300 settings in really dumbed down terms?

How does one set a nearuniWB and a flat tone curve. Sorry if this is a daft question.

regards.
Stu.