The Never-Ending Quest For Sharpness

i think the only place this "quest" is never ending is in the digital world. You can see endless examples of it in various equipment threads around the internet of people pouring over charts and data and simply wont touch a lens if its a few marks down on where they consider it should be. When they do find one they're too nervous to buy it because they've spent so long analysing everything to the n'th degree that they think it will be made utterly redundant in 6 months because of new gear on its way. Rince wash and repeat.

With the sort of cheap film camera you pick up from a charity shot we're just happy it doesn't have a light leak.

Some scenarios do demand the best, landscapes, macros etc some actually demand a bit of "life" in the image, some portraiture, street work etc Horses for courses.

Just to side track back on to HIFI im actually looking into getting a record player again. I miss the old hiss and crackle when pin meets plastic. And im getting all wrapped up in gear snobbery and reviews when i really don't need to be. The cheapy old player i owned in my teen years belted out ZZ Top and Brothers in Arms to a sufficient degree so why am i getting all picky now. Funny old world.
 
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@essexash I still love vinyl, I currently have a bit of Steely Dan from 1977 on the go here. It's quite strange now to think what I'm listening to has never been digital at any time in it's existence! :)

Thinking more about the sharpness thing, I used to do a lot of aviation photography and many people who do that are really only interested in technical quality. I kind of did get a bit wrapped up in all that until I eventually had a body and lens combination that actually did give me crazy sharpness (5Dmk2 and 70-200L), at which point I realised I didn't really need it quite as much as I thought. A few years ago my primary photographic interests changed to more photojournalistic-type stuff where getting the subject across to the viewer is the primary goal, the big lesson there being outright technical quality isn't really always needed in order to achieve that goal. I also started getting more into film at which made me realise how the image 'felt' was more important to me than how sharp it was.

Don't get me wrong, I like having things sharp if that's my aim and I consider being able to get the maximum sharpness from your gear to be a part of good photographic technique, but I very much don't think it's the be all and end all these days. An image can still convey a tremendous amount of mood/emotion/feel without being pin sharp.
 
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RedRobin said:
....So where can I see these fishnets? It's been a long time since I have seen any and I fancy a perv ...
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Do what I did and google Moriyama, we're not here to enable your indulgences, you filthy beast! :eek: ;)

essexash said:
i think the only place this "quest" is never ending is in the digital world. You can see endless examples of it in various equipment threads around the internet of people pouring over charts and data and simply wont touch a lens if its a few marks down on where they consider it should be.
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On the contrary, I've seen it on manual focus lens forums and rangefinder forums, though in the case of the former it's more about using them on mirrorless digital cameras and the requisite extraction of maximum detail from the sensor while the latter often seems more like a meeting of the Leica collective. Loads of information, some fascinating stories but can easily switch to an argument of Canadian vs. German built lenses or critique of an image being biased by which M-model you took it on.

PMN said:
Thinking more about the sharpness thing, I used to do a lot of aviation photography and many people who do that are really only interested in technical quality.
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I wonder how much of that comes from the historical need to know which bit to drop bombs on?

PMN said:
... I like having things sharp if that's my aim and I consider being able to get the maximum sharpness from your gear to be a part of good photographic technique, but I very much don't think it's the be all and end all these days. An image can still convey a tremendous amount of mood/emotion/feel without being pin sharp.
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:agree: Very much this (emphasis added to clarify what I'm agreeing with).
 
PMN said:
Chromatic aberration can be a pain but it's surprisingly easy to fix with software. I've played with Hooley's old Helios (50mm I think) on my 5D2, when I didn't mess the focussing up it was remarkably sharp and had less CA than my 24-105L!
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It can, but it often tends to show up as odd fringing when manipulating the image digitally, especially in B&W conversions.
 
Strappy said:
Do what I did and google Moriyama, we're not here to enable your indulgences, you filthy beast! :eek: ;)
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Don't it might scar you forever you might never see fishnets in the same way again! Lol
 
Sharp is just one element in a mirriad of elements that form a picture.
Bottom line is, if a photo doesn't provoke a reaction, negative or positive, if the photo doesn't move you or engage you in some way, sharpness is irrelevant.
Sharpness never made any photo I've seen, engaging.........a very small contributory factor maybe but it can be just as big a turn off.
I think we've all on a quest for performance one way or the other, there are lots of high end film cameras and glass being shot here, if performance wasn't important we'd all be runnin round with holgas, pinholes and bake'o'lite boxes.
The quest for sharp to the exclusion of everything else seems like a pretty narrow route to trek.
 
joxby said:
I think we've all on a quest for performance one way or the other, there are lots of high end film cameras and glass being shot here, if performance wasn't important we'd all be runnin round with holgas, pinholes and bake'o'lite boxes.
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I do!!! Lol
 
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essexash said:
Just to side track back on to HIFI im actually looking into getting a record player again. I miss the old hiss and crackle when pin meets plastic. .
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Missed this earlier.

With a well set up turntable, a decent cartridge and clean records you shouldn't get any hiss and crackle.
 
I've been away for a few days, and come back to this very interesting thread! I particularly liked the audio diversion, apart from the very un-f&c ad hominem stuff.

I've been worrying a little about sharpness, though I expect for the wrong reasons. I recently went to an exhibition from the Leamington Spa photographic society (of which I'm not a member). Many of the prints on display had something which I'd call "clarity" about them, which I very very much admired, but felt I could never approach. Maybe this is "sharpness"? Maybe it's something else. I'd also say that many of them were really excellent photos, good strong composition with impact.

I'm reminded of something I saw on a forum, strongly recommending the higher resolution "retina-style" screens on some Macs and iPads particularly when viewing at 100%. His point was that showing the pixels at such coarse detail makes them unnatural and highlights artefacts, whereas with the better screens at 100% the result is still more natural. I'm not sure I'm describing this right, but it made sense to me, and was the first real argument I could see for paying more for such high resolution (I've not been convinced that images look sufficiently better when viewed at normal scale to justify the higher price). When I look at many of my images (scanned usually at around 2000 dpi at the negative) at 100%, the combination of grain structure and my older Macbook screen and my relatively poor eyesight means that nothing looks "critically sharp" to me. The idea of obsessing about a portrait where the focus is on the eyelashes rather than the eye itself is weird to me (though I generally do like to see the nose as well as the eyes in reasonable focus). Yes, there are pics where sharpness is really important and yes, there are wonderful pics where lack of sharpness is really important (as in Carol's wonderful example). Yes, I'd sometimes like greater sharpness, and no, lack of sharpness isn't what really matters in my pictures; fuzzy concept and lack of skill and attention have much greater impact.
 
Called away before I could review finish the ramble above properly, and foolishly pressed send. I think what I'm saying (as have others) is that some people love the gear and for them sharpness is a nice gear-related criterion. I'd like to make better pictures, I don't mind spending a bit of money on lenses and other bits of equipment (like, say, an L bracket to let me put my old Pentax on a monopod in portrait) that might help with the picture I'm thinking of. But mostly, I need to get my technique much, much better, try to make my pictorial imagination work much, much better, and learn how to use the first in the service of the second!
 
ChrisR said:
I'm reminded of something I saw on a forum, strongly recommending the higher resolution "retina-style" screens on some Macs and iPads particularly when viewing at 100%. His point was that showing the pixels at such coarse detail makes them unnatural and highlights artefacts, whereas with the better screens at 100% the result is still more natural. I'm not sure I'm describing this right, but it made sense to me, and was the first real argument I could see for paying more for such high resolution.
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Interesting, my experience of Retina screens has actually been the opposite. I find them utterly useless for photography for the exact opposite reason to what's described above - they make it impossible to see artefacts that sometimes you really need to be able to see. I've played with them, changed resolutions (incidentally the last time I played with a Retina machine maybe 6 months ago there was no way to view the screen at native resolution so regardless of the settings you're looking at a processed version of the image), and generally tried to make them work for me but to no avail.

My next laptop won't be a Mac for no reason other than the screen.
 
Stuart M said:
So am I.Try reading up on it ... you might actually learn something that changes your ill-conceived prejudices. And who said anything about rectification ... I certainly didn't mention it. Why would I need to apply rectification to a turntable with an AC motor? It strikes me that you're talking crap on matters you know nothing about.
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If it's an ac motor, a voltage fluctuation will have no effect as it will synchronise to the frequency. And that is very stable.

Stuart M said:
Yeah OK! You could have fooled me. A professional sound engineer that doesn't seem to have come across frequency clipping before. That's different.
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Please explain frequency clipping to this semi- professional sound engineer too. Clipping is the result of trying to deliver more power than the equipment can supply or handle more voltage than the equipment has headroom for.

Frequency clipping? No idea!

PMN said:
I've played with Hooley's old Helios (50mm I think) on my 5D2, when I didn't mess the focussing up it was remarkably sharp and had less CA than my 24-105L!
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If it's a Helios 44, that's a 58mm lens. I liked it so much that I modified one by putting a Nikon lens mount on it.


Steve.
 
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steveo_mcg said:
I always find a layer a aluminium foil applied to the top of ones head helps with that.
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aluminum-foil-hat.jpg
 
I found this set from someone I'm following on flickr, it kind of says it all for me.... here
 
Maybe I should let dead threads die - but I was reading The Minds Eye by Henri Cartier Bresson today, and something that HCB wrote, reminded me of this thread:

"I am constantly amused by the notion that some people have about photographic technique - a notion which reveals itself in an insatiable craving for sharpness of images. Is this really the passion or an obsession? Or do people hope by this trompe l'oeil technique to get closer grips with reality? In either case they are just as far away from the real problem of those of the other generation which use to endow all its photographic anecdotes with an intentional unsharpness such as was deemed to be "artistic"."​

I think that he wrote that particular comment around 1952.
 
Good point (that I suspect might be otherwise overlooked) reminding us that 'artistic' photographs all have to be, to some degree, blurred.
 
This forum needs a Poe's Law warning at times...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law

Poe's law, named after its author Nathan Poe, is an Internet adage reflecting the idea that, without a clear indication of the author's intent, it is difficult or impossible to tell the difference between an expression of sincere extremism and a parody of extremism.
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robhooley167 said:
This forum needs a Poe's Law warning at times...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law
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I didn't think I'd need to add smilies etc because my comment referred directly to the HCB quote from XA2inmypocket's post immediately above.
" In either case they are just as far away from the real problem of those of the other generation which use to endow all its photographic anecdotes with an intentional unsharpness such as was deemed to be "artistic"
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I can't help but think we're being a bit up our own arses here. ;) (wink smilie added to make it obvious I'm not being literal).
 
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PMN said:
I think it's fairly evident your meaning didn't come across with quite the clarity you think. I had absolutely no idea you were being sarcastic, no idea whatsoever.
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And I presume that the connection with the post immediately above to which I was replying wasn't obvious either? In that case, sorry for the misunderstanding. :(
 
ancient_mariner said:
And I presume that the connection with the post immediately above to which I was replying wasn't obvious either? In that case, sorry for the misunderstanding. :(
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If it were obvious I'd have understood it, wouldn't I? ;)

It's hardly a big deal, it's just sometimes if you're being sarcastic doing so in an absolute deadly serious way doesn't always come across as intended in writing. Especially in F&C, we're not used to seriousness in here! :D
 
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Do I need to call the seriousness police or shall we just go for a nice walk?
 
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