Picture Control

It was mentioned in a different post that you should set you "sharpness" level in the "Set Picture Control" to 6 . Why wouldn't you want the best sharp picture and set it to the maximum 9 ? That's what I did for all of them. Is that wrong ?

ned2021 said:

It was mentioned in a different post that you should set you "sharpness" level in the "Set Picture Control" to 6 . Why wouldn't you want the best sharp picture and set it to the maximum 9 ? That's what I did for all of them. Is that wrong ?

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I routinely suggest +6 because it seems to me to be the sweet spot; a drastic improvement without looking over-processed. That's a matter of personal taste, however, and if maxing out the setting is working for you, by all means stick with it.

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Why "6"? Because it is easier to achieve sharp photos (if and when needed, by post processing RAWs) without losing smoothness of the textures than the other way around (to soften the sharpness level "9").
It would be very interesting to see any of your "sharpness 9" portraits or/and contrasty scenes (with most of the DSLR cameras, the maxed out-of-camera sharpness will probably make the human skin look like a sheet of a sand paper)... http://goo.gl/JgYF4S

Thanks Horoscope and Dragan. I switched my settngs to 6. Never really tested the 9 sharpness , just assumed that it was better. I'm kind of a newb in digital stuff.

I suspect a suitably arranged setting with a series of JPEGs shot with varying levels of sharpness is in order here.

as mentioned, 6 is the sweet spot. if you are shooting in raw you can always add extra sharpness in post processing if required. excess sharpness, saturation etc will make the images look unnatural. it really is a matter of trial and error to see what suits you with the camera and lenses you are using.

I shoot RAW...lol it gives you maximum control over all aspects after the picture has been taken