using sony a350 - alamy rejections

[minoltasonyman]

hi, i'm a newbie here (hello! ) so don't know if i'm posting this in the right place, but i've had an a350 for sometime now and after initally passing the test images for alamy and then loading up a handful of images (with difficulty!) i've had the last 27 images i've tried to upload rejected by the qc system. they were uploaded at different times over about a month but nothing gets accepted. the alamy comments are the usual: dirt & dust on image, artifacts, soft etc, etc. the whole range basically so i've been looking more closely at the images from my camera and wonder whether my a350 is up to the job? i must admit they don't seem to have the clarity i'd wish for, even when using a tripod. i use minolta, sony and sigma lenses with an iso of 100 usually in sunny conditions. does anyone else use images from an a350 and upload to alamy? am i missing something really basic?

[David Kilpatrick]

All of our A350 images have been accepted except one batch where our daughter was visiting Belfast, and tried to get decent views of Stormont in very poor light. I felt the sharpness was OK, given they were enlarged at that time to 48MB, but they said it was a borderline case.

This is the rejected file and a 100% section showing why they rejected it. All her other Belfast stuff, with careful editing, was accepted. I find the Alpha 350 to be one of the sharpest cameras and to have lovely colour quality.

[minoltasonyman]

All of our A350 images have been accepted except one batch where our daughter was visiting Belfast, and tried to get decent views of Stormont in very poor light. I felt the sharpness was OK, given they were enlarged at that time to 48MB, but they said it was a borderline case.

This is the rejected file and a 100% section showing why they rejected it. All her other Belfast stuff, with careful editing, was accepted. I find the Alpha 350 to be one of the sharpest cameras and to have lovely colour quality.

Hi, thanks for that. Interesting, I actually think the sharpness is ok of the Stormont image considering the size of the image. None of my images are any sharper than that, makes me think there's something wrong with my lenses. I thought they were ok but poor lenses always let a camera down. I have a sigma 10-20mm and 10mm at f4 the image is completely blurred the same focal length at f8 is quite sharp-ish. My Minolta (f1.7) 50mm at f8 is really great apart from anything not in the focaus area looks noisy. I see it's possible to load an image up so i'll try that tomorrow, see what you think. I did think about trying another agency, like istock but was put off when I read that they pay from just $0.25 an image! Don't get me wrong about the a350, I really like it, it's certainly the best camera I've ever had. I had Minolta digital before that and Minolta film before that!

[David Kilpatrick]

I'll try to help you with sharpness. I felt that was OK, they felt it was not. I have had much softer images accepted. The key is that the picture must look natural and not as if any processing has been used to enhance sharpness.

Here is a typical f/11 ISO 100 shot on the A350 which shows good sharpness from the CZ 16-80mm lens. This is about the best lens choice for the camera, as it can match the resolution of the excellent sensor. I show the full image and a 100% pic. Default ACR processing, and no noise reduction.

[minoltasonyman]

I'll try to help you with sharpness. I felt that was OK, they felt it was not. I have had much softer images accepted. The key is that the picture must look natural and not as if any processing has been used to enhance sharpness.

Here is a typical f/11 ISO 100 shot on the A350 which shows good sharpness from the CZ 16-80mm lens. This is about the best lens choice for the camera, as it can match the resolution of the excellent sensor. I show the full image and a 100% pic. Default ACR processing, and no noise reduction.

That's very impressive, I can't see any noise in the crop. I have included a shot below with a 100% crop and you'll be able to see what I mean. The image was taken with standard camera settings: f10 iso100, except the sharpness level was set to +3. I have found that with all my images that using the raw feature maybe useful for changing exposure and levels etc but I have found the in-camera processing does a much better job of sharpening the jpg image than the sony raw software.

[David Kilpatrick]

Your image is oversharpened and saved as a in-camera JPEG. That process destroys all fine detail and adds an unwanted dark-light edge to coarse contrast changes. My raw conversion settings here in ACR 6.3 are sharpness 25, radius 0.5, detail 25, masking 0; luminance NR zero; chroma NR zero (no noise reduction, at ISO 100 the A350 needs none at all, it's almost perfect).

If you do not have CS5 or LR3, Photoshop Elements 8 or 9 will do the same basic quality of raw conversion.

There is no point in shooting JPEGs as Alamy will fail them all, and so will iStock or any other site. iStock is even more picky about file quality (especially lack of noise) in some ways. Alamy simply wants a pixel sharp correct image, some noise is acceptable. They will kick out anything with visible colour fringes, jaggies, sharpening halos like your example, or JPEG compression smoothing (like your example again - all texture and fine detail erased by the JPEG process).

I've got a few direct JPEGs into Alamy but never with sharpening at +3. That simply destroys all detail and replaces it with a mess. Sharpening should normally be 0, in some camera using -3 is better but if you find that minus settings actually soften the image (blur it) then they should not be used of course. But the correct workflow is RAW all the time, good quality conversion (avoiding Sony's IDC which just copies the in-camera JPEG result) and save as JPEG level 10 to 12 (maximum quality).

David

[minoltasonyman]

Your image is oversharpened and saved as a in-camera JPEG. That process destroys all fine detail and adds an unwanted dark-light edge to coarse contrast changes. My raw conversion settings here in ACR 6.3 are sharpness 25, radius 0.5, detail 25, masking 0; luminance NR zero; chroma NR zero (no noise reduction, at ISO 100 the A350 needs none at all, it's almost perfect).

If you do not have CS5 or LR3, Photoshop Elements 8 or 9 will do the same basic quality of raw conversion.

There is no point in shooting JPEGs as Alamy will fail them all, and so will iStock or any other site. iStock is even more picky about file quality (especially lack of noise) in some ways. Alamy simply wants a pixel sharp correct image, some noise is acceptable. They will kick out anything with visible colour fringes, jaggies, sharpening halos like your example, or JPEG compression smoothing (like your example again - all texture and fine detail erased by the JPEG process).

I've got a few direct JPEGs into Alamy but never with sharpening at +3. That simply destroys all detail and replaces it with a mess. Sharpening should normally be 0, in some camera using -3 is better but if you find that minus settings actually soften the image (blur it) then they should not be used of course. But the correct workflow is RAW all the time, good quality conversion (avoiding Sony's IDC which just copies the in-camera JPEG result) and save as JPEG level 10 to 12 (maximum quality).

David

Lots of info there, looks like I need some software. I'll try taking the sharpening setting off the a350 and take a couple of shots and see how the images look. I don't have CS anything! or any raw converter except what came with the camera.

[David Kilpatrick]

You have two choices really - Adobe Lightroom 3.2/3.3, for which there is a Release Candidate Beta version you can download free of charge and use until December 31st; followed by purchase, can be had for around £100 I think; offers superb control, correction of lens geometry, aberrations, the lot. Or - Photoshop Elements 9, which does a fine basic conversion using the same 'engine' as Lightroom, but has the really desirable controls disabled (such as lens profiles, extended noise reduction control). But Elements gives you a great photo editing environment (set it to 'Professional' mode to get the AdobeRGB space needed by Alamy) and for around £60-70 is a bargain.

David

[alphaomega]

I have had several hundred A350 images accepted by Alamy and 0 rejected. All processed in ACR. I have even had ISO800 images accepted without a problem. Nothing wrong with that camera. Problem must be with lenses and software settings. I have had A700 Jpegs accepted as well (0 rejections). In camera sharpness set at 0 and no PS sharpness added. Now that Alamy accepts 24Mb it should be impossible to fail with A700/350 and 550 type cameras and good lenses as long as ISO settings are max 800 with A350/700 and probably ISO1600 with A550. Naturally always look out for camera shake etc.

[minoltasonyman]

You have two choices really - Adobe Lightroom 3.2/3.3, for which there is a Release Candidate Beta version you can download free of charge and use until December 31st; followed by purchase, can be had for around £100 I think; offers superb control, correction of lens geometry, aberrations, the lot. Or - Photoshop Elements 9, which does a fine basic conversion using the same 'engine' as Lightroom, but has the really desirable controls disabled (such as lens profiles, extended noise reduction control). But Elements gives you a great photo editing environment (set it to 'Professional' mode to get the AdobeRGB space needed by Alamy) and for around £60-70 is a bargain.

David

Hmmm, I'm scratchin' my head here.... i downloaded the prog lightroom (thanks for that btw - looks really useful!) I re-took a shot with no creative style in raw and then edited into LR with the same settings you mention above. I have included a full image and the crop and you'll see I have exactly the same problem with a kind of 'mush' for trees. What's going wrong, I'm at a loss to understand.

[David Kilpatrick]

Try looking for mush on the bird feeder, because my guess is that you are focused on that. Focusing with all DSLRs is not particularly accurate, especially with shorter lenses - around 18mm etc. Even stopping down does not really bring everything in when you are viewing such high resolution files at 100%. Your image has too much depth to be sharp all the way when viewed as a 5 foot wide display, which is what a 100% section of an A350 file actually is on a 72 dpi screen - still equivalent to a 4 ft blowup even on a finer pitch laptop screen, etc.

Check all the areas of the picture. Are they all like this? Foliage is about the worst thing to try to get sharp, it blows around apart from anything else and it has finer detail than you think. It simply looks slightly out of focus to me.

David

[minoltasonyman]

Try looking for mush on the bird feeder, because my guess is that you are focused on that. Focusing with all DSLRs is not particularly accurate, especially with shorter lenses - around 18mm etc. Even stopping down does not really bring everything in when you are viewing such high resolution files at 100%. Your image has too much depth to be sharp all the way when viewed as a 5 foot wide display, which is what a 100% section of an A350 file actually is on a 72 dpi screen - still equivalent to a 4 ft blowup even on a finer pitch laptop screen, etc.

Check all the areas of the picture. Are they all like this? Foliage is about the worst thing to try to get sharp, it blows around apart from anything else and it has finer detail than you think. It simply looks slightly out of focus to me.

David

Yes, the image was taken on a sigma 10mm at f8. No not all of the pic looks like the background tree mush, the bird feeder is ok and yes I did focus approx on that. Strange thing is I have noticed that sometimes the central area of the lens produces the best quality whilst the edges can be quite noisy. Do you have any of these problems with the CZ lenses? I mean poor focus or quality issues?

I'll try the same shot with my Minolta 50mm 1.7, it's the sharpest lens I have, see what that makes of the trees in the background. I've been trying to get to grips with the lightroom software, it certainly uses up pc power!

[David Kilpatrick]

The Sigma 10-20mm (or 10-24mm) at 10mm will not have very sharp corner/edge detail. Lightroom uses a Lens Profile for this lens, if you have loaded that up it corrects vignetting. That increases the exposure gain to the corners, and will make the image noisier towards the periphery.

Try this experiment. Set the Sigma at 10mm, and the camera/lens on manual focus. Operate the focus ring on the lens, and study the Focus Confirm light in the camera viewfinder. You will notice that the AF confirm stays illuminated for a surprisingly wide range of distances. This is because of the great depth of field of the lens. The best focus is obtained for any given target right in the middle of that range. AF is often locked at the extreme end of the range, either front or back, depending on which direction the lens has focused from. It does not try to measure the whole range of focus confirmation and then pick the midpoint. It just locks as soon as focus is 'good enough' - and with the 10-2xmm at 10mm, that can be a long way from correct.

David

[minoltasonyman]

The Sigma 10-20mm (or 10-24mm) at 10mm will not have very sharp corner/edge detail. Lightroom uses a Lens Profile for this lens, if you have loaded that up it corrects vignetting. That increases the exposure gain to the corners, and will make the image noisier towards the periphery.

Try this experiment. Set the Sigma at 10mm, and the camera/lens on manual focus. Operate the focus ring on the lens, and study the Focus Confirm light in the camera viewfinder. You will notice that the AF confirm stays illuminated for a surprisingly wide range of distances. This is because of the great depth of field of the lens. The best focus is obtained for any given target right in the middle of that range. AF is often locked at the extreme end of the range, either front or back, depending on which direction the lens has focused from. It does not try to measure the whole range of focus confirmation and then pick the midpoint. It just locks as soon as focus is 'good enough' - and with the 10-2xmm at 10mm, that can be a long way from correct.

David

That's amazing! the focus is way off at 10mm, it's ok at 20mm, but at 10mm in manual focus... like you say the focus confirmation is about a 1cm turn away from the correct focus. I've experienced problems before with focus on this lens but as I normally use it for landscapes it's been ok-ish. The distortion/mush that I'm seeing in some of my images could well be down to this lens when it is at 10mm. I'll try my 50mm lens as a comparison and upload the results.

[Lonnie Utah]

MSM,

You should also read up on hyperfocal distance if you haven't already. Just google it.