D700 is not very good....

[gooseberry]

what about your in camera settings? did you set sharpening in camera?

Looks like he used Normal sharpness and Normal contrast in the in camera settings. If you haven't done any other sharpening after you brought the image it into CS3 - you might want to check what settings you used for downsizing the image (did you use bicubic ? need to be careful in using anything else like bicubic sharper etc)

 

[Rashkae]

Bro, It really does look like sharpening artifacts. Best not to apply sharpening in RAW.

 

[Henessy]

...if you use it to shoot a scene with a lot of minute details eg. leaves on trees in a forest, and then downsize the image for posting on the web.

It's resolution is just too high for its own good especially if coupled with a really sharp lens like the 24-70mm f/2.8, and the downsized image will look like it has been processed to death and heavily sharpened.

I was rather disappointed when I looked at the downsized images of some of my shots taken during my recent holiday trip. And some viewers had commented that they were too heavily sharpened even though I had not carried out any additional sharpening after raw conversion.

Take for example this photo...

Many viewers had commented it was too heavily sharpened or that the compression was too high. But I had not sharpen this photo nor used a high compression factor when saving to file because when I view the image at 100%, I can see very distinctly every leaf and twig on the trees like in the 100% cropped section of the photo here:

And the image prints out even better in A4 size. Every leaf and twig/branch on the trees are even more distinctly and sharply visible in the print than on the monitor at 100% size.

So maybe the moral of the story here is that we should not use too good a lens when shooting a very busy scene with lots of minute details with the D700 if the images were going to be downsized later on for posting on the web ? :think:

Nice pic you have there:thumbsup:

 

[viix]

...if you use it to shoot a scene with a lot of minute details eg. leaves on trees in a forest, and then downsize the image for posting on the web.

It's resolution is just too high for its own good especially if coupled with a really sharp lens like the 24-70mm f/2.8, and the downsized image will look like it has been processed to death and heavily sharpened.

I was rather disappointed when I looked at the downsized images of some of my shots taken during my recent holiday trip. And some viewers had commented that they were too heavily sharpened even though I had not carried out any additional sharpening after raw conversion.

Take for example this photo...

Many viewers had commented it was too heavily sharpened or that the compression was too high. But I had not sharpen this photo nor used a high compression factor when saving to file because when I view the image at 100%, I can see very distinctly every leaf and twig on the trees like in the 100% cropped section of the photo here:

And the image prints out even better in A4 size. Every leaf and twig/branch on the trees are even more distinctly and sharply visible in the print than on the monitor at 100% size.

So maybe the moral of the story here is that we should not use too good a lens when shooting a very busy scene with lots of minute details with the D700 if the images were going to be downsized later on for posting on the web ? :think:

Nice picture you have there. Was Dlighting activated? I'm not too sure about the Nikon system, particularly the D700 sensor, but back when I was using the 1st generation Fuji SuperCCD, when ever I took photos of fine details, the sensor (at 3mp then) was not able to resolve the detail. The moire algorithm that calculated the resultant image turned out like yours, and while it looked fine on print, it was painful to see on screen..

This isn't so much limited to D700 but affect every camera, with the D700 probably more aggressive in translating the bayer array sensor readout.. if the D700 is anything like the fuji's algorithm, it would probably resolve alot of white detail which otherwise would have been flat on other sensors.

 

[Lumiere]

Nice picture you have there. Was Dlighting activated? I'm not too sure about the Nikon system, particularly the D700 sensor, but back when I was using the 1st generation Fuji SuperCCD, when ever I took photos of fine details, the sensor (at 3mp then) was not able to resolve the detail. The moire algorithm that calculated the resultant image turned out like yours, and while it looked fine on print, it was painful to see on screen..

This isn't so much limited to D700 but affect every camera, with the D700 probably more aggressive in translating the bayer array sensor readout.. if the D700 is anything like the fuji's algorithm, it would probably resolve alot of white detail which otherwise would have been flat on other sensors.

I'm quite lost at this...care to explain in more layman terms..thanks and sorry for troubling you :dunno:

 

[tomcat]

Nice picture you have there. Was Dlighting activated? I'm not too sure about the Nikon system, particularly the D700 sensor, but back when I was using the 1st generation Fuji SuperCCD, when ever I took photos of fine details, the sensor (at 3mp then) was not able to resolve the detail. The moire algorithm that calculated the resultant image turned out like yours, and while it looked fine on print, it was painful to see on screen..

This isn't so much limited to D700 but affect every camera, with the D700 probably more aggressive in translating the bayer array sensor readout.. if the D700 is anything like the fuji's algorithm, it would probably resolve alot of white detail which otherwise would have been flat on other sensors.

Dlighting is set to Normal but as I'm shooting raw and not using Capture NX2 for conversion, the Dlighting function, like many of the other more specialised camera settings are ignored by DxO Pro during raw conversion.

In my view, it is not so much that the D700 sensor cannot resolve the fine details.. it certainly could as evident when I view the image at full resolution on the monitor, but it's that it resolved so much fine details that if these details were downsized drastically with the rest of the image, they bunch up together and make the downsized image looked oversharpened.

I have actually seen something similar before in some of my Sigma SD14 and DP1 images, though not to this extent. The Foveon sensors in these cameras are capable of very high resolution and I have observed that some of the photos if they were sharply focused in the first place, would look like they were highly sharpened if I downsize them for the web.

 

[lsisaxon]

Dlighting is set to Normal but as I'm shooting raw and not using Capture NX2 for conversion, the Dlighting function, like many of the other more specialised camera settings are ignored by DxO Pro during raw conversion.

In my view, it is not so much that the D700 sensor cannot resolve the fine details.. it certainly could as evident when I view the image at full resolution on the monitor, but it's that it resolved so much fine details that if these details were downsized drastically with the rest of the image, they bunch up together and make the downsized image looked oversharpened.

It certainly has to do with the algorithm for downsizing.

 

[David Kwok]

I always process each raw file individually and only make adjustments to suit the respective image. There is no clarity function in DxO Pro which I was trial-testing with this batch of raw files. There is some sharpening during raw conversion, but my point is that there are no further sharpening or USM during subsequent processing unlike with other DSLRs/lenses combinations that I had used before.

Anyway, I tried using other raw converters like SilkyPix Pro, ACR, Capture NX2 to see if the raw converter was at fault but the results are still the same... The only way to reduce the downsizing artifacts is to reduce the overall contrast but that would make the image very dull and gloomy which did not reflect the true lighting condition at the time of shooting. :dunno:

This is special, now we have people complain that good lens are producing too good image and spolit it instead :sweat:
I used DxO too, I think if you don't want your image to be too sharp, deactivate the DxO lens sharpen feature. Would playing with the sharpener in the Picture Control give you softer image, though I think it shouldn't affect raw at all.

When you downside, not sure if you are using Adobe CS, you can choose Bicubic(best for smooth gradient) to soften it instead of sharpen it using (best for reduction)

 

[Hein]

Well, I also juz had my D700 and 24-70... Here's a shot I got from my 1st outing with my cam, and it's highly downsized... I LOVE the cam and lens so far compared to my previous setup...