Your camera vs. USM

[ang1970]

I wanted to see how my camera's on-board sharpening parameter would fare against Photoshop's USM filter. So I did a little experiment, the results of which are posted here: http://www.pbase.com/ang1970/olympus_vs_usm.

The first three shots (c3kz-hard.jpg c3kz-med.jpg c3kz-soft.jpg) are taken one after the other, on a tripod, with all settings exactly the same except sharpness. Sharpness settings are reflected by the filenames, respectively HARD, NORMAL, and SOFT.
Here is the EXIF data for the shots.

Date/Time: 26-Nov-2003 01:08:54
Make: Olympus
Model: C-3000Z
Flash Used: No
Focal Length: 6.6 mm
Exposure Time: 3.20 sec
Aperture: f/2.8
ISO Equivalent: 100
Exposure Bias:
White Balance: Auto
Metering Mode: multi spot (3)
JPEG Quality: (6)
Exposure Program: manual (1)
Focus Distance:

The two later shots (usm-hard.jpg usm-med.jpg) are edits of c3kz-soft.jpg, the shot taken with the least amount of in-camera sharpening.
USM settings for these two edits are as follows:

usm-med.jpg

Amount = 100%
Radius = 1 pixels
Threshhold = 0

usm-hard.jpg

Amount = 100%
Radius = 1.5 pixels
Threshhold = 0

Please post your comments/observations here. Also, if you're inspired to do the same type of experiment on your own camera (and I hope you do!), please post the link in this thread. Include as much info as possible, for a thorough comparison.