Originally posted by Pak
Thanks all for the ideas, I will definitely try some of the suggestions in the next days.
Focal length of the first picture was 48mm and I was focusing on the center of the picture.
I just did some quick test and I bumped the sharpening from 0 to +2 it seems to make a difference, I will have to try it outside though.
@interested observer
I'm not sure I understand the whole crop thing. All I did was to crop the image in photoshop and save it, I thought that was a 100% crop. Also it seems that imgur.com doesn't keep the exif data.
The mountain is called Cataract Peak and the picture is taken from the Pipestone Valley in the canadian rockies.
I took me about 2 minutes with Google Earth, but I am figuring out that Cataract Peak was about 8 to 10 miles away (using the ruler in the tools menu), which would make each pixel in your crop be about 6'x4' (on the peak). At 48mm, the depth of field is 35' to infinity, with an view angle of 27 degrees. So the small trees in the foreground are farther away that what they appear. At 35' you had great resolution on them, along with the ground cover. I believe that you were almost directly south in the meadow area with a ridge line off to your right. That pretty much fits with your angle of view.
With the polarizer, and everything, I would say that its a wonderful image, the filter pulled out and defined the sky real well (it might have reduced the overall resolution a bit). I think that its as sharp as you can expect. I do not know that any camera for this image will do much better. And for a kit lens - I think that you were able to pull every last bit of resolution out of this.
To get sharper, you might try an FA 43 Limited, along with a DA* 40. However, each of those lenses will put a hefty dent in your check book (compared to the kit lens). Since your at 48mm anyway, any of the K50, or M50 or A50 prime lenses at f2, for about $20 to $50 will give you a marginally better image. But, I am thinking that you probably captured 90% of what is attainable. Everything else will be adding a few % points.
In terms of the crop your posted image is 569 x 475 pixels. The crop that I took from the original is 469 x 356 at 100%. In order to match your crop, I needed to zoom in another 25% or so. I do not know what went on.....