Just how good are the pictures that my new little camera takes? This morning, I put an extension tube on my D80 and took a few pictures of the dahlberg daisies that I photographed Thursday with the L22.
Here’s a portion of the above photo, cropped but othewise unaltered.
Doesn’t look as detailed as the one the little camera took? Don’t be too sure of that. Here are portions of the two images side by side, viewed at 300% in Photoshop. The D80’s image is on the left.
This should make it clear that the apparent superior crispness of the L22’s image is due to aggressive sharpening by the camera’s software — notice how the edges of the petals are highlighted. Even though the D80’s image looks softer, the DSLR actually caught more detail than the compact camera.
*****
Here’s the first red daylily of the year.
