[Leica] Medium Format Digital

[mark at rabinergroup.com (Mark Rabiner)]

I'm a bit out of my element when I'll looking at and talking about medium
format digital  but I thought Bobs excellent images he posted yesterday
looked just a tad crispy. Sharpened. And that even though there was no hands
sharpening happening in the workflow there was some buried it turned out  in
a preset.   As this happened to me in the smaller format digital world. For
me it was best to leave "sharpened for web" preset turned off  before hand
in the adobe camera raw interface and sharpen it  myself to taste.  Starting
from scratch. Making sure no one sneaked into the kitchen and put a pinch of
something in.   I think the preset puts the sharpening in later; after
you're doing tweaking it. So  you don't see it till you reopen the image
again.  You end up with consistently over sharpened images as there are in
effect in the kitchen two chefs both adding salt to the same pot.
>From what I've understood all along just because there is no antializing
mask in medium format does not mean  one doesn't need examine  your image
and add whatever sharpening needed.
When I sharpened one of my images  I don't do so begrudgingly thinking this
is a defect in the digital process or my Nikons. I do so becuae the digital
processs has only a few correlations with my darkroom experience and there
is a whole lot of new stuff involved i'm needing to get used to. I wish I'd
had that control in the darkroom. As far as mask making in the darkroom
contrast or sharpness I knew people who did it as part of their workflow.
And I wasn't even about to go there.


Mark William Rabiner