in camera sharpening

I've been doing a ton of reading in books and on the internet about the d-7000.It seems to me that a lot of people dial in a lot of in camera sharpening when shooting jpeg.don't you loose a lot of data with lots of sharpening?I've been seeing sugestions of +7 to +9 levels.should'nt the d-7000 be able to produce tack sharp images with 0 sharpening with a lens known for producing tack sharp images providing all else is correct? thanks, Troy

Plenty of data to work with. It's not that much of an issue if you're shooting at full resolution. If you're worried about retaining more data, shoot in RAW. Sharpness limits depend greatly on your AF calibration, aperture/shutter speed and the lens you're using. With higher resolutions these days, pixel peeping has gotten out of hand. This is partially why there are so many complaints with the D800.

I leave my sharpness settings pretty much at default for all my cam bodies. But then again, I shoot RAW most of the time. I rather do my own sharpening in PP.

Mike FM said:

Plenty of data to work with. It's not that much of an issue if you're shooting at full resolution. If you're worried about retaining more data, shoot in RAW. Sharpness limits depend greatly on your AF calibration, aperture/shutter speed and the lens you're using. With higher resolutions these days, pixel peeping has gotten out of hand. This is partially why there are so many complaints with the D800.

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Unless you're talking about the left focus issue, which has little to nothing to do with resolution, I don't hear a whole lot of complaints about the D800. Other than file size.

BackdoorHippie said:

Unless you're talking about the left focus issue, which has little to nothing to do with resolution, I don't hear a whole lot of complaints about the D800. Other than file size.

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I said nothing about focus issues with the D800. Focus has everything to do with the end result, especially with a high resolution image.

...and yes I do mean file size. It's not a big issue, but it is an issue. My point is, people nowadays tend to view each image under the microscope instead of appreciating the whole image. 36MP is moot for most photographers. Chances are, most of that data gets thrown away when you send it out for common print sizes if they even get printed at all. Professionals looking for the most data available skip the D800 and head towards medium format. The D800 is a really great camera, but let's not kid ourselves into thinking it's the perfect camera. Sorry to burst your bubble, but yes, I have heard other subjective complaints.

I have my D7000 set at +6 for sharpening based on what I've read on-line; haven't tried anything above that. I shoot jpeg and I'm still learning the aspects of the camera. I use the 18-105 kit lens. Sharpeness can change over focal length and based on other camera settings. What lens are you using and have you tried any different settings?

chico said:

... don't you lose a lot of data with lots of sharpening?

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Well if you're shooting JPG I would be forced to assume "data loss" isn't your primary concern... But to answer your question there is no additional data loss from using in-camera sharpening that I can see.

chico said:

... shouldn't the d-7000 be able to produce tack sharp images with 0 sharpening with a lens known for producing tack sharp images providing all else is correct?

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I guess you could argue that point but the simple fact is, in my experience with a Nikon D40, a Nikon D5100 and now a Nikon D7100, the images were soft at the factory default setting. Increasing the in-camera Sharpness setting improved things dramatically when shooing JPG. And for me the whole point of shooting JPG in the first place is to avoid doing post processing. In actuality I shoot RAW + JPG because I just can't bring myself to work with .JPG files but some people are impatient so I give them JPG's and keep RAW files archived.

Oversharpening can cause artifacts, especially with JPEG. You are far better leaving it off and doing any necessary sharpening in post processing. Once you sharpen in the camera, you are stuck with it. RAW with digital is really the only way to go in my opinion.

In a nutshell my logic is this:

If you're willing to do post-processing yourself may as well shoot RAW and take full control over the output.

If you're *not* willing to do post-processing you may as well shoot in .JPG and let the camera do the processing.

I shoot a lot of small to medium sized products under continuous lighting using default sharpness settings. Everything else is manual. Because images are required like yesterday, I take jpeg on one card and raw on the other. If post-processing requires dreaded time consuming adjustment, unless I've really screwed up I have raw to fix the image(s). That's a practice I employ in my personal/hobby shooting. Insurance is cheap with the D7000, which IMHO does have great jpeg IQ.