Canon uses less in-camera sharpening, but actually they pick more fine details than Kodak (or at least they used to) because Kodak image processing destroys more fine details than Canon one. You just need to sharpen a little the images in the computer to get similar or even better levels of sharpness, or increase it in-camera if the model allows it. Guillermo..

Thanks for responding. sorry - i'm still a bit confused - let me see if I'm understanding correctly. The canon does not SHOW the fineness of detail it's picking up even though it is there & once you run it through paint shop pro or the like, you can "sharpen" the picture to bring out this detail & have it look natural b/c the fineness is already there? as a side question, why would Canon choose to record but not show fineness of detail? perhaps more importantly, can you help me understand how the Kodak will lose sharpness? & in what part of the process? ie recording the image, downloading to computer, enlarging the image, printing out? last question: what settings would you adjust to sharpen an image in camera [if the model allowed]? thanks in advance for answers to any part of these questions! i'm only going to buy one camera & i'll probably use it for the next 10 years so I really appreciate any feedback...

Canon cameras do record fine detail, but if you read many other forums, people have asked the same question. As a result some other Canon camera users have contacted technical support thinking it's a problem with the camera. Their answer to this apparent "problem", by default Canon cameras have much lower sharpening than what is used on a competitors camera. The reason why they do this is because in-camera sharpening isn't quite as advanced (or good for that matter) as running an unsharp mask, or in Photoshop duplicating the layer and running a high pass filter and setting the blending mode of the layer to hard light and adjusting the opacity to your own preference. For example I use a Canon S1 IS, I turned off all in-camera sharpening simply because I get better results when I do it by hand. But if you are not into editing your photos just bump up the in-camera sharpening and you will get better results but not as good as doing it by hand. Anyway hope that helps...

P Jayne:.

Kodak uses a rather aggresive noise reduction system in the camera. Canon prefer to keep the noise reduction as low as possible, at the expense of some extra noise (in the same way they prefer to apply less sharpening) to deliver an image as close as possible to the original.

The aggresive noise reduction tend to interpret constant high frequency image content (as the leaves of a grass field, or tree leaves) as noise, deleting the detail along with the noise of those areas, so grass fields look too flat and "plastic" in some pictures. Regarding sharpness settings, at least in Canon cameras, it cant be changed (except to "Low Sharpening") in their entry level line (as the A510 and A520) but can be set via a custom parameter setting in the Sxx and Gx lines to Low, Normal or High. Guillermo..

Thank you for your help - my comparison shopping can now be a little more educated which I appreciate...