Sharpness vs. detail, what’s the difference?
Detail is how much information the image/video actually contains. On the other hand, sharpness in digital imaging is more about the processing that’s been used to create a perception that the image is sharper than the optics were able to resolve it – effectively fooling your eye to think it’s better than it is. It’s a technique used in virtually all mobile devices and many, many digital cameras. It’s the detail that’s important. If you like edges to have a crisp look to them you can create that in many image editing programs. There is also a sharpening setting in the N8’s still camera, should you prefer this look. But you’re not actually creating any new information. The benefit of the new Carl Zeiss optics is that they naturally resolve very high levels of detail without the need for edge enhancement (sharpening). In fact, we’ve almost disabled the sharpening, it’s set so low. The result is no black or white lines around areas of high contrast as you will see in other broadly comparab
