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Miljenko Devcic | all galleries >> tech >> my_gear >> Nikon D200 >> sharpeningd200 > RAW converters Imatested
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RAW converters Imatested

Here I have shot my standard slanted edge test target using D200 and Nikkor 50mm f1.8 at f/9.
Converters tried: Nikon Capture Editor 4.4, SilkyPix Developer Studio 2.0E, Bibble Lite 4.5, Capture One Pro 3.7.3 and Raw Magick Lite 0.997. NCE set at Standard and High(est)camera sharpenings, as well as None combined with Unsharp Mask Intensity 100%, Halo Width 2% and Threshold 0. SilkyPix set to Strong sharpening, Bibble's Sharpen to Amount 100, Sensitivity 6, Capture One to both "defaults": Soft and Standard with Amounts of 35 and Threshold of 3. Raw Magick Lite was used along with it's integral Level II RM Sharpening filter with default setting and Edge Sharpening amount of 200%.
Most correct NCE sharpening is Unsharp Mask set to Halo width of 2%. Notice steep MTF fallof producing output at Nyquist frequency below 20% providing good interference suppression.
SilkyPix sharpening was pushed all the way to Strong setting in order to get decent sharpness. Notice very wide sharpening radius and lowest MTF30 figure of only 66.2 lp/mm.
Latest Bibble version brings improved response and sharpening, providing high response MTF30 figure at 72.2 lp/mm, along with decent overshoot and good lowpass filtering.
Capture One has spot-on sharpening at Soft setting and more agressive at Standard setting, quite similar to Nikon's in-camera High Sharpening setting. Low pass filtering is a bit to weak, producing relatively high output at Nyquist frequency.
Raw Magick Lite brings highest MTF figure of 84.4 lp/mm, giving all the resolution sensor can provide. This comes with the price of weak filtering with high N.F. output of 33.3%.
Talking of price, here are the timings when converting D200 uncompressed RAW file with those five converters: Bibble: 2 sec, NCE: 10 sec, SilkyPix: 22 sec, Capture One: 23 sec, Raw Magick Lite: 5 minutes and 5 sec. Athlon XP3000+ with 1 Gb of RAM used.For detailed explanation on interpreting Imatest charts please check here: http://www.imatest.com/docs/sfr_MTFplot.html


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