Eleanor, would you mind posting the shot of that nice chardonnay bottle both with and
without sharpening? Pretty please?
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My reason for asking is that my thinking runs sort of counter to Guy's. I'm not interested in the apparent sharpness of web material, but only in the appearance of medium or medium-large print output. From this perspective, little initial 'capture sharpening' should be necessary on a file made without an AA filter. Default and 'capture' sharpening were initially intended simply to counteract the blur of AA filters. A 42MP Sony file will already print as 14x21 at 360 ppi; 22x33 @ 240, 30x45 @ 180. In many instances one may be resing
down, rather than up, to print. So even in fairly large prints, one should need only a little 'output sharpening.'
What I'm really hoping for from the RX2: From this expensive, small, light, constant-companion, carry-around camera I'd like to see something like what I get from the A7rII using the better and sometimes older Zeiss and Leica lenses. I mean a detailed file with enhanced tonal gradation, and a bit of the old Zeiss '3D' look – that is, good resolution at the point of focus (even wide open), an appearance of roundness of objects and faces, separation of subject from background, and good bokeh.
If one is old-fashioned enough to fear an overtly digital look, then the unsharpened performance or rendering of the lens-and-sensor combination should be quite good initially and all by itself, without needing much sharpening – barring a bad lens copy or poor adjustment of lens to sensor.
Maybe there are two different goals here – one is achieving maximum apparent micro-contrtast and/or resolution; the other, displaying the native rendering of really nice lenses. I'm more interested in the latter.
Kirk
(A further note, less relevant to Eleanor's helpful testing: I'm now printing mostly BW from converted A7rII files. I've compared these to my 18MB Monochrom files made with no Bayer array, and at 100% the converted 42MB Sony files do look a bit less sharp, as folks have mentioned above. But the Sony file is larger; so the MM files have to be res'd up, or the Sony files downsized, to make the same size of print. After this step the 'softer' 42MB Sony files yield equal-or-better image quality in printed output. I'd be expecting the same result from the RX2's sensor as from the A7rII's. If I didn't see that, I'd suspect problems of quality control.)