Kits lens soft

Forgive my ignorance, I'm sure this question has been addressed before but I don't see it.

I just purchased a DL with kit 18-55.

I'm very happy with the camera but the pictures seem soft. They are focussed but always slightly soft, also a slight color cast but this may be more my inexperience with post processing. I shoot RAW.

Is the quality of the kit lens that is responsible?

I am considering a Tamron 28-70, would this be noticably better?

Regards

Steve C

Hi Steve, and welcome to the forum,

I too bought the DL with the 18-55 around new year. If you have just started with digital then you'll notice that the slight softening is inherant in all images, regardless of the lens used. I like the lens, and some do, some don't elsewhere on the forum. That's down to both personal preference and I suppose the odd bad lens. Colour cast is (should be??) independant of the lens, so that's something to work on, when setting up the camera. Certainly tungsten lighting tends to be outside the parameters of the AWB (Auto White Balance) and so you need to change the setting to Tungsten on the menu. You'll find it by pressing the FN button on the back.. page 112 in the manual.

What program are you using to process your RAW images? Rawshooter Essentials 2006 is free and now supports the RAW files generated by the DL, and is easy to use. Just adjust the Colour Temperature slider to obtain the right light. You can also sharpen etc. with the various sliders. Although I don't shoot many RAW files yet, it is a very intuitive program to use.

If you look at the top of the page, you'll see MattMatic's name. He's the author of Sharpenomatic, which demonstrates how to sharpen up your images.


When using *.jpg images, I find that the Unsharp Mask tool in GIMP works very well, if done a bit at a time.

I can't comment on the Tamron lens, but I'm sure someone else here can.

Hope that's a start,

Cheers

Liam

Just to add to Liam's comment...
The RAW image is always soft-ish (it's largely down to the Bayer matrix filter). It does depend on the RAW convertor, and I think I've tried them all, but I get the best results from not sharpening in the convertor at all, and then doing the work in Photoshop (my Sharpen-O-Matic technique seems to come up trumps with most images).

The lens does make a difference, of course, but most of the Pentax lenses are fine pieces of glass. It's not just sharpness that makes Pentax lenses unique - the whole set of contrast, flare control, bokeh, colour.

Regarding colour casts - if you shoot RAW, then there are a few areas that can be improved on. First of all it's important to get an accurate white balance reading. I bought an Expodisc last year, and although expensive, I have been very pleased with the results! You can get a reasonable white balance reading off a white sheet of A4 paper, especially in flat lighting conditions.
Within the RAW convertor you should always tackle the white balance first before adjusting exposure. And if you adjust exposure significantly, then go back and revisit the white balance settings. (Check out the Capture One guide I posted here - it'll give some insights even if you don't use C1.)

Hope that helps!
Matt

The 16-45 is considered a better lens, but it's also a lot more expensive. What are your needs, how big do you need to print? If you just make 4x6 snapshots, then the lens is certanly not any kind of limitation.

Thanks for the assistance.

I use Elements 4 and the RAW plug in. I'll look at Rawshooter tonight as Shutterbug magazine also recommended it.

I'm familiar with white balance and am careful to set this using a Whitebal card.

I'll take a look at Sharpenomatic. I haven't really done much with sharpening so that may help. I assumed that the RAW image would be sharp and post processing sharpening was more for effects and enhancements.

When I print 6x4s on a dye sub they look pretty good but I'd like to do up to 10x8 prints at least.

Scarlton,

There is some contoversy over whether digital SLR's are soft or sharp. Soime manufacturers (c@n@n) have been accused of setting the software in their cameras to "over sharpen" the image. Then, hey, we go and soften up all those romantic portraits!

Unfortunately the Sharpen-O-Matic will only work with Photoshop. Elements doesn't have the inherent ability to split and work on the channels seperately. It's quite a long winded approach to do manually and requires Photoshop actions too.

Working with RAW with Capture One I have printed up to 20x16" at 402dpi and the results are, if I do say so myself, amazing. I've printed images taken with both the 16-45 and the SMC-FA 24-90 to that size, and am sure I could comfortably take them larger still.

Matt

Talk to your lab, as many are quite proffecient at sharpening images for their printers.
ps.. is my Pentax 85mm soft focus sharp? I'm not sure if I'm getting edge to edge sharpness....nice portraits though...

For Elements, a good way of getting some sharpness is one of the following methods:

1. Duplicate the background onto a new layer. Run "High Pass" filter (found in Filter / Other) - set the radius so you can see the details only. Desaturate. Set layer's blend mode to "Soft Light", and adjust layer opacity to suit. (This is called "High Pass Sharpening"

2. Duplicate the background onto a new layer. Run "Unsharp Mask". Pick a threshold of 0, an amount of 100 to 150% and a radius of something like 0.5 to 1.1. Set the layer blend mode to "Luminosity" and adjust the layer opacity to suit.

Both these methods have slightly different results, but they're a good start to boosting some of the detail in an image. The advantage of having the sharpening on a layer is two fold: (1) you can hide the layer to compare the difference, (2) you can erase parts of the layer to prevent sharpening in those regions.

It's also well worth looking at Richard Lynch's books "Hidden Elements". There's plenty of interesting stuff if you're adventurous. www.hiddenelements.com

Hope that helps
Matt

Hi,

I find GIMP useful for sharpening up photos, and although I'm not anywhere near as good as Matt at this sort of thing, GIMP does give good results if a little time is spent on them.

I've just finished this one, a scanned photo. I've used a little sharpening overall, and more used in selected areas, using the unsharp mask and the lassoo tool. Then a little adjustment of contrast, selectively again (I find that adjusting contrast (slightly) helps to bring out some areas more realistically when used in conjuntion with the sharpening, especially on B&W) can work wonders.

This is from another family photo.
Before



After



I set the unsharp mask to..

Radius 5.0
Amount 0.5
Threshold 0.0

and repeated as necessary a little at a time until the desired effect is acheived. Of course, recently, I've been doing this on old photos, so it doesn't take much to make a big improvement. Using the same settings on a Pentax .jpg does work well though.

Cheers

Liam

There's a "quick and dirty" method of sharpening that is pretty useful for non-destructive sharpening;

Duplicate background layer.
Apply High Pass filter to the duplicate layer, start off with radius around 10 and experiment.
Change blend mode to Hard Light, and your photo is now sharper.
Adjust opacity to taste.

You can also use Soft Light as a blending mode. Experiment until you find a combination you like.

The benefit is that you don't have to make it the last step - it's a layer, you can turn it off if necessary.

I'd already said that Arthur Stated as option (1)
It's a good one, especially if you INVERT the layer after running high pass - it smooths instead
Matt

Guys

Thanks again, lots of good advice.

I downloaded RawShooter and saw an immediate improvement in sharpness over essentials RAW and Pentax RAW lab. Will play more with RawShooter.