Nikon DSLR tips

I wasn't really sure what to call this thread but was wondering if anyone has similar problems. Just recently bought a Nikon D5100, put my photographs onto the laptop and found that it softens the image somewhat from what it looks like on the camera to what it looks like on the screen. This also happens on the Nikon View software where I click on an image, for a small second its sharp and then goes back to being slightly soft focus. Any ideas or tips?

 

Sounds like it may be a problem specifically to your model as i have a D40 and certainly haven't noticed any issues with overly soft images.

 

No too much of a problem if (1) you have not set the camera to sharpen images and (b) realise that camera software is designed on the basis that sharpening will be done by processing software such as Nikon Capture2 or Photoshop where sharpening will be the final step of the editing process.

 

Could it possibly be your laptop?

I would try loading the images to a n other computer, PC not laptop to see what they look like - if the result is the same, take the camera back to where you bought it, otherwise its something to do with your laptop!

 

Might be worth resetting the default settings on the camera to see if its the autofocus thats out. Might be stupid, but check things like lense is set for autofocus, image stabilizers set, or settings on the camera. All it takes is a switch to be knocked forcing a setting to stay. Otherwise, try justing the photos from the SD card and display them on a different laptop, computer etc.

 

Thanks all, I shall have a go to see what works and if it changes anything!

 

I don't see a problem with the sharpness of the images coming out of my D5100 when I view them at 100%, which is the only way to be reasonably sure that no interpolation is being done by the software you're using to view them. As the images look sharp on the back of the camera, I suspect it's most likely a 'problem' with the software that's displaying them, rather than the images themselves.

I usually find, when viewing a full size image from the camera on a computer screen, it looks fairly unsharp. I think this is because the on-the-fly interpolation algorithms that resize your image so it fits on the screen are not very good. Certainly, when I view a full size jpeg with the slide show function on Windows 7 it looks rubbish. If I resize the image in Photoshop to something like 1200 pixels wide (or whatever will fit on your monitor without resizing) it looks great. When you downsample from the full 16Mp image to something more suitable for viewing on screen, you'll need to apply a little bit of sharpening to compensate for the smoothing introduced by the interpolation when you downsize the image. It may be that the on-the-fly interpolation is just a simple linear interpolation, rather than something like bicubic, and it will certainly miss out the sharpening step.