Amazingly, I couldn't apply my normal sharpening to this image. My starting point is 300/0.3/0 after resizing. But with this picture I applied almost no sharpening. Doing so ruined the pattern on the instrument.
Lonnit would probably disagree with you about the cleanliness of the sensor. She claims to have gotten significant noise at ISO 400 on hers. I should mention that I applied a significant curves adjustment to the lower, right bokeh in order to reduce noise. All the original noise is still there. I just adjusted the curve to be shallower in that part of the picture while retaining the same overall level. I don't use this technique very much, but I'm thinking I ought to. You don't get the artifacts you get with other noise suppression schemes.
The rest of the image, however, is more likely to have had the curve steepened instead, thus exaggerating whatever noise might have been there. -- Victor
I love this, so rich in tone and crisp in contrast and focus, you know Victor this just makes me more regretful that I sold my 10D to buy a 20D... Forget the extra megapixels, I always felt that it was a "cleaner image sensor". I can see the 52 you refer to upside-down. Great image ~ Bob
