The Never-Ending Quest For Sharpness

Strappy

Strappy

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Based on these posts from the Show Us thread ....

Crtm said:
Rush Hour by MrsR66, on Flickr
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skysh4rk said:
A nice set of images, but the Rush Hour photo is especially strong. It's nice to see a bit of movement and dynamism, characteristics that are often ignored or minimised in the never-ending, and possibly overvalued, quest for sharpness.
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I suppose the over-arching question would be, are you on a quest for sharpness or do you perceive this in your wider ... erm ... perception of photography? It seems to be a key driver for many of the digital guys but is that because of the level of detail that can be captured on a sensor where it might be softened by the grain structure of film?

Are old lenses only sharp enough for film or should digital manufacturers look at reproducing the 'feel' that can be obtained, particularly as the popularity of mirrorless cameras increases with the associated rise in price of old lenses to be used on adaptors?

What do you think about it? Is sharpness valued above artistic merit? Is there a middle ground we should look to achieve? Or does none of it matter provided you're happy with your results?
 
Strappy said:
Is sharpness valued above artistic merit?
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Yes, I believe many togs are obsessed in achieving the ultimate clarity and sharpness with their shots

Strappy said:
Is there a middle ground we should look to achieve?
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If the achievement is an attempt to satisfy ourselves then perhaps yes, if to please others then no !

Strappy said:
Or does none of it matter provided you're happy with your results?
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You've hit the nail on the head......If I relied on sharpness to be the be the decisive element in keeping / printing / sharing a photograph then I may as well give up now.
 
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It's entirely dependent on the subject for me. Some things I want pin sharp, others I'm not too fussed about sharpness, and sometimes I think blur helps get across what I want the image to say. Personally I think the sharpness obsession kinda misses the point of what photography actually is (at least what it is to me) which is a means of communication. You don't need sharpness to communicate, as @Crtm's wonderful image proves. :)
 
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Strappy said:
Are old lenses only sharp enough for film or should digital manufacturers look at reproducing the 'feel' that can be obtained, particularly as the popularity of mirrorless cameras increases with the associated rise in price of old lenses to be used on adaptors?
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I use a on OM Zuiko 50mm/1.8 90% of the time on my digital kit (Sony NEX5) and the results are as sharp as any modern AF lens equivalent (assuming it's focussed correctly). These are a couple from the zoo at the weekend;

https://www.dropbox.com/s/1l92ow0y5b1e487/DSC05257.jpg?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/rlq5okb463l07a8/DSC05251.jpg?dl=0
(taken using a 2x teleconvertor)

I also took a few with a Tamon 80-200 F4 lens that's worth about £10 but still delivers acceptable results;

https://www.dropbox.com/s/5w4qjzwtmkleayt/DSC05286.jpg?dl=0

I'd definitely agree that a lot of older lenses are more than sharp enough for digital sensors hence the massive rise in popularity of adapted lenses on mirrorless kit, including the new full frame cameras from Sony. With regards to the quest for sharpness, I think that's a curse of digital sensors being able to deliver higher quality results (not higher megapixel!) and photographers naturally getting a little obsessed.

I've generally found the beauty of film is it being a little more lenient when it comes to biting sharpness but admit to chasing those levels of sharpness anyway!

Cheers
Steve
 
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I like the photo,again it all depend on what you are shooting,photojournalism, street,is often more about the moment than sharpness,but say you shoot a lot of Marco or landscapes maybe sharpness count more :)
 
Cartier Bresson famously said that sharpness is a bourgeois concept. Still not sure exactly what he meant, but obviously a quick look at his photos suggests that his concept of photography was very different to that of Ansel Adams or others to whom sharpness was a matter of great importance, or at least usually.... Adams himself said that there's no use taking a sharp photo of a fuzzy concept, or something like that. I have to say the obsession with sharpness is a particularly boring feature of digital photography...as ever improved sensors deliver ever sharper images, so sharpness becomes a kind of badge of honour, with far more importance than it deserves. I notice particularly when discussing the merits of one lens over another, people these days seem obsessed with discussing its sharpness, often without a care for distortions, contrast, field curvature, colour rendition, or other equally valid measures of quality. The ability to pixel peep doesn't help much either. To me, like any feature of a photograph - sharpness can be important, but it doesn't have to be, and is often no more important than other features. And sometimes a lack of sharpness can help convey the message that the photographer is trying to convey, for instance with a sense of mystery or dreaminess.

Of course all of that blether could just be my excuse for not nailing focus half the time. :D
 
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Personally I'm not too fussy with sharpness on its own but I think its still important, there isn't much point in dragging an RB or a 54 around if you're going to take fuzzy images you might as well use a hoiga. Not that there is anything wrong with using a holga I've played with plenty of box cameras in the last few years but it is important to realise what you're going to get with them. Nor is taking soft images inherently a bad thing mind...
 
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Most things in photography are valued above artistic merit :(

Since this was a question about our personal take, and given that artistic merit is my primary aim, and also given that the type of photographs I produce need sharpness as part of their raison d'etre, then, yes, sharpness matters a great deal to me. Others will have different objectives (and lenses :D) and hence a different valuation. In passing, I've been perfectly satisfied with my OM lenses on a Sony a7r.

Do remember though that many types of photography (or photographers) don't care too hoots about artistic merit and need to have something to care about :).

And finally - apparent sharpness depends on a lot more than resolution - contrast matters more.
 
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I wholeheartedly agree with what has been said about an obsession with sharpness. For me it's about an image being evocative rather than just technically sharp.

Some photographers over sharpen their images to the extent that they cease to look even vaguely real. Personally I generally prefer camera images which better reflect how human eyesight actually sees but those sharper-than-sharp microscope macro shots of miniscule creatures are fascinating.

Bottom line though is that each case depends on what the photographer wants to express. It's perhaps a different matter if someone doesn't care enough to even attempt a sharp result.
 
StephenM said:
And finally - apparent sharpness depends on a lot more than resolution - contrast matters more.
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....Yes, I have recently discovered in post-processing RAW images how a wee bit of mid-tone contrast can tighten up the apparent sharpness.
 
It isn't something that I have thought overly about. Before I would criticise my lenses for lack of sharpness I would have to ask myself whether my technique (or lack of) & choice of film stock is a factor?

The only film lens that I have tried with a digital sensor is my Tamron 500mm Mirror. Was more than happy with it. Surprising as it is a mirror & not reckoned ot be the greatest starting point anyway.
 
"It depends", as always. If you're taking a macro photo of a fly's eye, "almost sharp" probably isn't sharp enough. On the other hand, Carol's photo above would merely be a nice photo if it was sharp all over, instead of something that has had a lot of us thinking how great it is.

I think the key is knowing why you want it to be sharp, in which circumstances, instead of wanting everything to be super-sharp, at all times.I know I've been frustrated with a lack of sharpness with a lot of my shots (although see also the thread I posted a couple of weeks ago about increasing viewing distance), but also that that one of my favourite images I've taken is this one, on a Kershaw Penguin, which isn't very sharp at all.

Shed, Rhydyfelin by Arfonfab, on Flickr
 
What do they say? Amateurs worry about gear, pros worry about money, but masters only worry about light. Something to that effect. I doubt Cartier-Bresson, William Eggleston etc. ever gave the tiniest crap about how many lines per millimetre their lenses could resolve. (Although I concede that Gursky probably spends three hours a day worrying about it!)

The whole subject reminds me of people who spend £900 on their hi-fi speaker cables and claim they can hear the difference. Actually, they are probably the same people. Sitting at home, stressed out because they are sure they could hear a little more detail on that guitar track, if only they had the £2000 cables. Staring up at the oh-so-sharp, but oh-so-boring photos hanging on their walls ;-)
 
abdoujaparov said:
Unless we stay entirely in the analogue domain, at some point we're at the mercy of a programmer's implementation of a computer scientist's algorithm chosen by a software designer.
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As an old programmer I'd like to point out that in the vast majority of cases, the development team are working to a brief provided by a creative team, they're not putting their own interpretation on the output otherwise they're likely to have an argument when the invoice is due to be paid. :)

I've spent a lot of time thinking about what it is that I look for in a photograph and I've bought a lot of equipment to try and achieve that specific "something" and I'm still struggling to say what it is exactly. A properly sharp photo on film leaves me cold - it's too clinical, too close to what I can get from a digital camera. I want a sense of the moment, a feel of the situation, which is exactly what Carol's captured in the image in the OP.

Similarly, for me at least, this has that feel, that indefinable (by me) something.



While this one, same camera, same film, same day, just around the corner, doesn't.



I don't doubt that there is a never-ending quest for sharpness as it's a numbers game. It's like cars and motorcycles, the manufacturers give us new models with 0.5bhp more than last year and everyone gets excited because a bigger number means it must be better because we've forgotten what it's like to simply go out for a blast and see where the road takes us.

Lenses will be promoted as being sharper than their predecessor, they have to be because otherwise why would you bother buying the new one? Compact cameras and even smartphones have more megapixels than professional cameras because the numbers are what counts. It's a rare beast for a lens to be promoted for its feel or its muted colour tones or its rendition of skin tones - I'm aware of the Sigma Art lens range and the new Lomo brass lenses but what else is there?

Until people start looking at their results and deciding for themselves whether they're happy with them, sharpness will continue to be the quantifiable goal. And maybe I should accept that for some people, ultimate sharpness is exactly what they're looking for.
 
You raise a nice point. The rise in number of people using DSLRS - and the pixel-peeping internet culture we live in has meant that people buy camera equipment as a means to attaining technical excellence. They aren't really so much interested in expressing their artistic vision as showing the world how close they can make their photographs to technological marvels and in order to this they resort to measurements which help them compare. Read any forum and you will find the equipment sections are by far the most popular. Also look at many of the "big shots" who are experts on diffraction, line pairs per millimetre, the science of colour profiling, RIPS, and showing screenshots of pixels at 200%, etc etc etc etc ........... and then check out their pictures. It's quite revelatory and will show you where their attention lies.

It's analogous to the hi-fi buffs who value sound quality and graphs more than music.

It isn't only a recent phenomenon. As we know, since the earlier film days people have chased faster lenses, poured over chemical formulae, film characteristics and drooled over equipment and engineering quality more than they cared about what they shot.

In fairness, it's a reasonable way to view photography. It's just a different sort of pleasure to that an artist or even a humble craftsman like me, would get from using a camera.

In the meantime artists, ( and/or craftsmen ) will be happy with what tools they have and concentrate on the product of their imagination. You don't need rulers to measure art but them most people never have and don't now care about art anyway.

Just looking at another thread about Fuji RAW files and their shortcomings reminded me of the hop-hah this "deficiency" produced online. Most people who use Fuji for its intended purpose just got on with it and made great pictures. Some agonised over various convertors discussing each and every pixel and arguing about the quality of each one. All good fun but best ignored if your primary interest is taking pictures.
 
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Strappy. It seems to me that the reason the first picture is more compelling might lie simply in the contrast of colours and they much greater weight noticeable in the first one due to the dark centre background. The first one also has a much stronger structure made largely of rigid upright blocks with lines at 90 degrees. Angled lines tend to draw the eye to the central area of conrast, whereas the lines of the second are mostly weaker angles leading the eye away to nothing

Now it's way past my bedtime and I'm very tired so I'm maybe just rambling here ;)
 
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I did buy my sigma dp s because of their amazing sharpness and increadible detail, and sometimes that matters and sometimes it doesn't, and I do like my holga stuff and kit stuff
 
I think that what we are all talking about here is the difference between photographs and pictures where....

- A photograph is as pristine and sharp as you can get it.

- A picture is an image using photography and is evocative.

Neither is 'better' than the other but rather how we each individually want to express ourselves and share what we see and experience.

I know my two definitions above are a bit over concise and simplistic but hopefully you get my drift.

"The camera takes the photo, but the photographer makes it" - Ansell Adams, 1902-1984 < Still true today.
 
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FujiLove said:
The whole subject reminds me of people who spend £900 on their hi-fi speaker cables and claim they can hear the difference. Actually, they are probably the same people. Sitting at home, stressed out because they are sure they could hear a little more detail on that guitar track, if only they had the £2000 cables. Staring up at the oh-so-sharp, but oh-so-boring photos hanging on their walls ;-)
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If you sat in front of yours and then sat in front of mine ... believe me, you would be absolutely bloody amazed at the difference.
 
FujiLove said:
What do they say? Amateurs worry about gear, pros worry about money, but masters only worry about light. Something to that effect. I doubt Cartier-Bresson, William Eggleston etc. ever gave the tiniest crap about how many lines per millimetre their lenses could resolve. (Although I concede that Gursky probably spends three hours a day worrying about it!)

The whole subject reminds me of people who spend £900 on their hi-fi speaker cables and claim they can hear the difference. Actually, they are probably the same people. Sitting at home, stressed out because they are sure they could hear a little more detail on that guitar track, if only they had the £2000 cables. Staring up at the oh-so-sharp, but oh-so-boring photos hanging on their walls ;-)
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Without wanting to side-track a very thought-provoking thread, I've found it interesting that there's a noticeable correlation between film photographers and those who listen to analogue music (vinyl, basically). As well as being a photographic luddite, I also have an extensive record collection and still fire up the Linn turntable now and again. I know I'm not alone (though I don't have £900 speaker cable, before anyone asks). :cool:
 
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Stuart M said:
If you sat in front of yours and then sat in front of mine ... believe me, you would be absolutely bloody amazed at the difference.
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Your assuming @FujiLove has an inferior sound system to you despite having never heard it, thats practically the definition of audio gear head!
 
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TheGreatSoprendo said:
Without wanting to side-track a very thought-provoking thread, I've found it interesting that there's a noticeable correlation between film photographers and those who listen to analogue music (vinyl, basically). As well as being a photographic luddite, I also have an extensive record collection and still fire up the Linn turntable now and again. I know I'm not alone (though I don't have £900 speaker cable, before anyone asks). :cool:
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This made me laugh. There's more vinyl in my house than HMV in 1983 :)
And they're played through a vintage Audiolab amp, which sends the sound to my lovely B&W speakers...with £7.99 cables. He he!

Would £1000 cables make a difference? Possibly, but an absolutely tiny one.
Are my ears good enough to notice? Nope.
Would I get more pleasure from spending the money on good music? Definitely.
Does obsessing over audio quality/lens sharpness/your car's horsepower/numbers of megapixels/the size of your stupid mobile phone's screen etc. etc. detract from the pleasure of listening to music/taking great photos/enjoying your damn life? After extensive research, I can exclusively reveal: Yes, it does.

And in the words of Lester Burnham, "You have no idea what I'm talking about, I'm sure. But don't worry... You will someday."

:D
 
Strappy said:
There's loads of vinyl in my house too. That's a downside of renting, cheap sofas.
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Does make them easy to wipe down though :eek:
 
Strappy said:
is that because of the level of detail that can be captured on a sensor where it might be softened by the grain structure of film?
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No.

A big piece of film can out resolve any digital sensor in existence today.

TheGreatSoprendo said:
though I don't have £900 speaker cable, before anyone asks
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Good. Because it's no better than £3.50 cable.

Some people even spend money on ridiculous mains extensions leads because they think it will change the way their amplifiers work (it won't).

Try this for a mere $3,995! http://dagogo.com/hb-cable-designs-powerstar-horizon-high-end-power-distribution-review


Steve.
 
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I think a lot of it is driven by what is easier to discuss. Feelings, emotion and art don't translate well to text but a spec-sheet is easy for anyone to understand, cherry pick their favourite figure from and then argue over.

Personally I like sharp lenses just like I like fast lenses - they give me more options. It's bordering on an obsession, but it's not a crutch my photographs rely on.
 
TheGreatSoprendo said:
Cartier Bresson famously said that sharpness is a bourgeois concept. Still not sure exactly what he meant, but obviously a quick look at his photos suggests that his concept of photography was very different to that of Ansel Adams or others to whom sharpness was a matter of great importance, or at least usually.... Adams himself said that there's no use taking a sharp photo of a fuzzy concept, or something like that. I have to say the obsession with sharpness is a particularly boring feature of digital photography...as ever improved sensors deliver ever sharper images, so sharpness becomes a kind of badge of honour, with far more importance than it deserves. I notice particularly when discussing the merits of one lens over another, people these days seem obsessed with discussing its sharpness, often without a care for distortions, contrast, field curvature, colour rendition, or other equally valid measures of quality. The ability to pixel peep doesn't help much either. To me, like any feature of a photograph - sharpness can be important, but it doesn't have to be, and is often no more important than other features. And sometimes a lack of sharpness can help convey the message that the photographer is trying to convey, for instance with a sense of mystery or dreaminess.

Of course all of that blether could just be my excuse for not nailing focus half the time. :D
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Again to very different type of photographer and also to very different subjects they took photo of :)
 
Not wanting to sound like a grumpy old geezer, but I do think a lot of the obsession with sharp lenses comes down to people trying to find a quick and easy fix. It's the temptation of being able to improve your photography by simply buying a new bit of kit. For a lot of people, it's much easier to spend (or fantasise about spending) £2000 on camera gear than put in the weeks, months and years of hard graft that will really improve their images. I'm yet to read an article about a great photographer where they say that their work was mediocre before they bought x lens, or vastly improved when they bought y camera.

And on a slightly different note...unless you're talking about medical imaging or photos from satellites, who really wants to look at photographs that are so sharp they cut your retinas? What on earth do you actually gain from such tiny incremental changes in detail?

Has anyone ever said, "I love Turner, but I wish he had used a smaller brush"?
 
Steve Smith said:
No.

A big piece of film can out resolve any digital sensor in existence today.
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True; but....

For the same size of film and sensor, and the same size print, the digital image will look sharper than the film one regardless of the amount of detail resolved. At least in my experience. Sharpness is affected by lots of things other than resolution. I mentioned contrast earlier, but there are other things. A crisp focused grain structure will make a print look sharper than one where the grain isn't visible even if the faster film resolves less detail.

Back in the 1960s there was a pair of photos of a stained glass window that demonstrated (I think they were produced by Zeiss) that a lens with inferior resolution but higher contrast would produce a sharper photo than a higher resolution/low contrast one. It was about this time that reviewers started switching from lppm to MTF for lens tests (MTF takes account of contrast).
 
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FujiLove said:
It's the temptation of being able to improve your photography by simply buying a new bit of kit. For a lot of people, it's much easier to spend (or fantasise about spending) £2000 on camera gear than put in the weeks, months and years of hard graft that will really improve their images.
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I think that there's a lot of truth to this. For most folks, I really believe that sharpness and the aesthetic aspects of photography are often far more limited by personal technique/skills, and even one's own personal (mis)conceptions of what photography is, than they are by any shortcomings or deficiencies in their photographic equipment.
 
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FujiLove said:
Not wanting to sound like a grumpy old geezer, but I do think a lot of the obsession with sharp lenses comes down to people trying to find a quick and easy fix. It's the temptation of being able to improve your photography by simply buying a new bit of kit. For a lot of people, it's much easier to spend (or fantasise about spending) £2000 on camera gear than put in the weeks, months and years of hard graft that will really improve their images. I'm yet to read an article about a great photographer where they say that their work was mediocre before they bought x lens, or vastly improved when they bought y camera.

And on a slightly different note...unless you're talking about medical imaging or photos from satellites, who really wants to look at photographs that are so sharp they cut your retinas? What on earth do you actually gain from such tiny incremental changes in detail?

Has anyone ever said, "I love Turner, but I wish he had used a smaller brush"?
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They did at the time, question Turner work :)
 
Steve Smith said:
No.

A big piece of film can out resolve any digital sensor in existence today.



Good. Because it's no better than £3.50 cable.

Some people even spend money on ridiculous mains extensions leads because they think it will change the way their amplifiers work (it won't).

Try this for a mere $3,995! http://dagogo.com/hb-cable-designs-powerstar-horizon-high-end-power-distribution-review


Steve.
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I am side-tracking the discussion again here, but to be fair, decent cable will be noticeably better than £3.50 cable, if you have a system capable of making the difference count (and you don't have to spend huge amounts to get there). My setup is decidedly low-end by comparison, though I did once spend a couple of hundred quid on a moving coil cartridge (a long time ago before I had kids etc to eat up every penny I earn :mad:), and yes, the difference from the one I had was like night and day.

Comparing with photography, I would say that the difference in results between a £100 Nikon FM + 50mm and a £1,000 Leica + 50mm, is far less significant than the difference between a £100 hifi and a £1,000 one, though the fact remains that all of these things largely do the job you need them to. Take that to the next level, comparing a £1,000 camera with a £10,000 one, and the same with hifis, and you're well into the realm of having more money than sense, whichever is your favourite hole for pouring money into :eek:. At the end of the day though, if you enjoy it and can afford it, why not?
 
simonblue said:
They did at the time, question Turner work
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I'm not a terrible photographer, I'm misunderstood and only time may judge my work. Thanks, that's worth remembering (y)

I jest, of course. Though I doubt that critics of Turner's time were pointing out how he could get more brush strokes per square inch with a new brush rather than questioning the nascent concept of impressionism that he was introducing through his later works.

Anyway, moving to the under-subject in this thread, does anyone know where I can get the headphones for my Walkman re-foamed? And where I can buy cassette tapes to play in it?
 
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