Bob, You wrote: | Yes. Unsharp masking is a one-way degredation process. | If the camera manufacturer really gives a camera with better | (more accurate) focussing then fine, it's an improvement. If | what they actually do is build in an algorithm (you can't turn | off) that does anin-camera sharpening to make the output | *look* sharper - as theyalready do with consumer cameras | - it's a bad day. While I agree with what you are saying, especially about an algorithm that cannot be turned off, I would like to add that as I understand it a sharp focus is more than a simple matter of optics. Perception is also involved, which the sharpening algorithms attempt to address. The lenses developed for film cameras, as I understand it, were developed to focus very precisely on a flat plane. But that was not enough. Coatings had to be applied to get the different colors to focus on the same plane. And even that was not enough. There is also something that a good lens does to increase contrast, which enhances the PERCEPTUAL sharpness of an image. Perhaps Andy can find one of the optics wizards at RIT to help explain this (or prove me to be all wet). As we have discussed previously on the list, digitally acquired images need some sharpening to overcome inherent problems in the acquisition process. Most of this sharpening, via algorithm, is subtle. So I maintain that a bit, perhaps only a very small bit, of camera sharpening via algorithm is not necessarily a bad thing. But as with you, I feel this should be a choice. Then of course, like most people, I frequently take the image and oversharpen it in Photoshop. But then who are we trying to please with the our final image if not ourselves? I wind up with what I perceive to be the best representation of what I saw in the field or studio. pax, rand
