well if I go back to xpixel's S2 70mm quasi macro shots there is a LOT more detail and interest, DR just about everything. What am I mossing?
What I think is "missing" is what folks see as their definition for "sharp" or "detail" ...
Some folks view images with higher contrast as "sharper" than actually sharper images at lower contrast, while others see the differences in actual realized detail and claim the latter as "sharper" even though it's contrast is lower. (Some called the higher contrast images crunchier, while others claimed they were over-sharpened.)
Historically, Zeiss and Nikon took the former approach while Schneider and Leica took the latter. Rodenstock and Canon divided the baby in the middle. In recent years, Leica and Schneider have moved toward the middle-ground model with their newest glass bumping up contrast a bit at the expense of finest detail. With digital, this has all muddied as processing settings can alter the final detail-contrast weighting dramatically; folks often crank up "clarity" to this 'higher-contrast is sharper' effect.
In fact, higher contrast does make medium to lower spatial frequencies appear sharper, but all that is at the expense of higher frequency detail. The trick is where to balance; there is no point in having crisp detail if it is too small to be seen by the unaided eye at the enlargement output chosen.
So really, a "best processing" model should probably target the highest frequency that can be readily seen by a majority of human visual acutance ranges at the preferred enlargement. Tough order I think, so in practice most of us simply process to what we view as being "sharpest" -- and invariably there will be disagreements ...
My .02 only,
