I have been awaiting a long time for the D-70 to come out so I could buy something affordable and still use all my Nikon lenses... and so 2 weeks ago I did just that.
Well, I hope that I am doing something wrong, but so far I am horribly unsatisfied with the sharpness of the D-70. Again, I say that I HOPE I am doing something wrong.
I am not talking about pixelation, I am talking about the lack of sharpness of the lens/camera. I am using the D-70 "kit" that comes with the 18-70 DX lens.
I have tried manual and auto focus and really nothing in the entire photo seems to be sharp??! I am using the JPG format and software other than Nikon's, but that shouldn't matter should it?
Anyone else have a similar problem? Just wondering. If I cannot get the same sharpness from the D-70 as I did my F-100 what is the point?
i have a d100 and am actually quite satisfired with the sharpness of the images ... however i noticed differences with different lenses (zoom lenses generally being worse) ... i always shoot raw (NEF) and convert it to jpeg later (then you can still control sharpening levels and other things in nikon capture, which i think is really worth the money) ... i remember that there was some issue out there about in camera sharpening being rather low (don't know how this compares to the d70) ... make sure that some sharpening is selected.
also, you should consider that if you blow up your 6MP image to 100% on your computer screen it will never really look sharp ... just imagine how a print from 35mm film would look at this size!
A friend got the D70 kit about 2 weeks ago and pictures were razor sharp. Did you try to do a focus test with a ruler to evaluate depth of field and where the camera is focusing?
I have a Nikon D70 and the 18-70 DX lens. I'm very pleased with my new camera. One thing I have noticed is that the 18-70 lens is not so sharp at the biggest apartue(at wide angle mostly). Go to f8/f11 or something like that then it's much sharper.
I have read that some D70 have problem with backfocus. The focus ends up behind the place where you focused. This I have not expirenced.
If it helps any, this picture was taken (very hastily after getting home from the shop!) with the kit lens. Just been cropped and resized - now it may be a boring picture, an overly shallow depth of field and the focus isn't in quite the right place ;) but it looks sharp to me...
Try an f/8 setting on a support. If pics are still blurry, then you have something not set correctly.
Am amazed at the range of correctly exposed and non-blurred shots I am seeing with mine. Couldn't be happier. Hope you discover your glitch so that you can start enjoying your new acquisition.
I am taking for granted that items like lens clean, enough light for your subject, etc are already eliminated.
I am assuming this is your first digital camera, is this correct? For most digital cameras the image will look a little blurry when zoomed in to the pixel level. This is pretty much standard and caused by the treatment of the bayer pattern. Having said that I would expect the photos from the D-70 to be overall sharper looking then what we get out of the F100. How are you doing the comparison between the F100 an the D-70?
The only thing that springs to mind is to check your jpg quality setting is on "Fine". Haven't even bothered to take a picture set on "Basic" but agressive jpg compression can make pictures look blurry and generally horrible.
I had the same 'problem' when I first started using the 300d with the kit lens, images seemed to be too soft. It just takes some experimenting and adjusting settings/paramaters etc.
I will take the time and do some nuts and bolts testing this weekend... but so far, yes, lens is clean, plenty of light, no tripod yet, but shouldn't need one above 250/sec?, this is my 3rd digital camera, but first digital SLR, using fine JPG resolution, etc.
I get good depth of field, but even in the middle of the depth of field there seems to be no clear "sharp" area. My point and shoot Olympus D-40 has made sharper images. I hope it is just a setting and not a defect?
Believe me I'm not bagging on Nikon, I have loved all my Mikon SLR's through the years, I just want to get this worked out!
I will post tests later!...
Oh, here are over 200 photos on my website that I just posted - granted SOME of the blur IS low light, but certainly not the ones in direct sunlight with shutter speeds of 360/sec or so... I have yet to find a "sharp" photo in the whole lot??!
I think the shots look great. I clicked about 10 and more then half look wonderful. Have you cleaned your glasses? LOL
Hey the colors are really nice also. Several I think your using too much dof [drop the F-stop down]....and that is why the lack of 'crisp'. For the most part they look really nice to me. You'll soon have that new camera dancing to your tune.
I think the shots look great. I clicked about 10 and more then half look wonderful. Have you cleaned your glasses? LOL
Hey the colors are really nice also. Several I think your using too much dof [drop the F-stop down]....and that is why the lack of 'crisp'. For the most part they look really nice to me. You'll soon have that new camera dancing to your tune.
I agree, the photos don't look as bad as your original post implied. I would expect that these kit lenses are not going to give you the razor sharp images you might get from other high quality lenses. Also, keep in mind that images from a DSLR will be softer than images from a P&S simply because there is less in-camera processing done. Have you applied any post-processing such as USM to any of these?
I am not sure how you can evaluate the sharpness with such small images. Even a very blurry shot can look sharp when reduced to a small size. What would help would be to see a crop of a full size image.
If the sharpening algorithms in camera are anything like my 5400 they take some getting used to - in fact the camera's sharpest setting is really not noticeably processed. Which IMO is as it should be, but after a Fuji it took some while to acclimatise.
Have you tried printing any of your photos?
I too have the D70 with the kit lens and I have been more than impressed with how sharp they print up 8X10 on my Canon S820 printer.
BTW it's hard to tell looking at the small photos you linked too, but most of them looked fine to me.
Roger
