When using the detail-feature?
 

My little experience right now tells me, that the picture-quality with the detail-setting turned off is just perfect (btw. I'm using a 23" apple cinema display). When I turn it on, it looks just worse. So I can't see a cause to ever turn it on. Do you know a situation, when it can get useful to have that feature?

I was picking up something like noise in areas of even color. I turned Detail On, Level to 0 (which is not the same as Off), Frequency to 30, and Crispening to 20. I'm still playing with the exact settings, but so far it's taken care of the noise and I haven't found any sharpening artifacts yet.

Pete

I never use this "feature".
As Dominic said, with Detail Off it looks perfect. When Detail is on it looks much worse, just like old, oversharpened and artificial hdv video...


Dennis

the problem with "pre-sharpening" in the camera is that it makes compression artifacts worse, and it greatly increases the file size.

So true, sharpening in post (if necessary) works much better.


Dennis

That sounds interesting. I will try that!

I wonder what is the advantage in this if any at all? Detail is artificial no matter what.

In case I wasn't clear in my first post: These settings don't appear to increase edge sharpening (at least that I can see on my less-than-hi-def monitor). They do smooth out areas of smooth color.

I suppose (thinking out loud here) that I could use the skin smoothing settings to do the same thing, but then I'd have to tell the camera what color to smooth.

Pete

I shoot with detail on.
sample here
www.vimeo.com/paulkellett

look at Kiss Me Kate.

Paul

Paul - what detail settings do you use? the videos look good

I think, you can't judge detail-settings by watching vimeo-videos. The resolution is too low, the compression too high.

Chiming in

I agree about detail being off, i remember some examples way back in the sample footage thread and it was like night and day. The biggest problem with detail was sharpening highlights creating that tell-tale contrast ringing.

There's enough native resolution to not need sharpening i think.

I think it's on there for technical comparisons and 'sharpness' tests.

ALthough i am aware there there are a lot of tweakable parameters, perhaps some are useful but i would imagine they'd need changing scene by scene and who on earth is going to test for that.

Does anyone have a real reason for using detail?

Pete do you have an example full frame with the effect you're talking about? In most cases i'd rather have the noise because 8 bit compression isn't really good enough for truely smooth gradients and the noise helps.

cheers
paul

I use detail on,just on with no numbers dialed in.
I've recorded 2 identical clips one with detail on,one with detail off.
I rendered the clips for the web and burnt them to dvd,i prefer the detail on,as did everyone who sat and watched the clips with me.

It's just personal preference is suppose.

Paul.

Generally if you downsample the sharpened source looks more contrasty (looks 'better') and the ringing effect is reduced (i assume you're talk SD DVD and web?)

Im interested in whether there's a benefit to detail during capture for HD resolutions. Sharpening in post is easy and also selective and i can see the reasons for the compression working harder for artificially sharpened edges.

Do you have two full resolution frames from each of the tests to have a peek at? The sharpening effects really depend on what the image is.

many thanks!
paul

Not from the tests,that was ages ago when i first got the cam.
I've got some screengrabs with detail on if you want them posted.

Paul