Canon G9 and oversharpened JPEGs

Even though I have my Canon G9 set to sharpening -2, the JPEGs are still extremely oversharpened. See the example below (100% crops):

JPEG	RAW, unsharpened	RAW with unsharp mask, 0.5 radius, 100%

The Canon G9 is producing JPEGs that, perhaps are suited for consumers who don’t know how to post-process their photos, but are not acceptable for high quality professional work. I can only imagine how bad the JPEGs would come out if I set sharpening to zero! (Or maybe the output would be the same because this setting isn’t doing anything?)

This is unfortunate, because besides the oversharpening, I don’t really see any other reason to shoot RAW. But these heavy sharpening halos show up even after I downsize the image for posting on the web, and give the photos an artificial look that I don’t like.

A big thumbs down to Canon for producing bad JPEGs.

Comments

True, it looks oversharpened, but I don't know how much of the photo that sample is - is it a little tiny snip? in which case it may not be oversharpened, but rather ready for printing. If it's the whole frame it would look terrible.

[arkhangelsk]

Well, if you are pixel peeping, then yes, that left picture has a white halo, but it is faint, and to a more usual user looking from a distance, the white halo will create the illusion of sharpness and will be much preferred by many.

I guess they figure if you are *serious* about post-processing you'll have used RAW, and use your own converter (if you can't afford things like Photoshop or Bibble Labs, you can always just use RawTherapee, which is free, supports the G9 and works OK - in fact, it worked better and produced less wierd casts than Bibble for me).

[Mike]

Canon is notorious for having overly high default sharpening on all of their cameras. There is also a shift in jpeg processing methods in which it is now known to be better to sharpen the raw data BEFORE it is converted to JPEG in-camera. One reason for this is most camera companies want to avoid the dreaded "D200 syndrome" in which a $2000 camera makes seemingly soft images when viewed straight out of the camera, due to the strong AA filter and the belief that professionals want a minimally sharpened file (This is still true). An imaging professional would in fact appreciate that, as sharpening should really only be done prior to printing and for a specific size. However, because the unfortunate reality is that most people who buy expensive cameras are not professionals, not really good photographers anyway, and definitely not very knowledgeable about how to post-process, they whined and whined (some of these people fancy themselves experts on forums), thereby forcing camera makers to say "Fine, you want sharper images we'll give them to you." Keep in mind that any point & shoot is not a "professional" tool anyway and sharpening artifacts are ALWAYS more pronounced on them.

[Rob]

Hi,
You said that you have set the sharpening on your G9 to -2. I have recently bought a G9 and cannot find a way to adjust the sharpening for shooting JPEGs. Please could you explain your method?
Thanks
Rob