"good enough" what does it mean to you ?

[jnantz]

there is a difference ( to me at least ) that something is "good enough" versus it is sub par / junk ..

i suppose we all have our standards. we try to make excellent work, and to us, the work we are proud of and display
meets those standards and is "good enough" but to someone else they might roll their eyes and have a different
set of standards, skill set, understanding of the subject, experience with the subject and materials &c so the same thing
that might have been good enough, isn't to them.
when i was in college i took a class through what was called "the ex-college" ( ex= experimental ) it was a class
designed by and taught by students. one of the teachers came to class late one night with 2 drawings, HIS and one done by his professor.
he had been at the museum of fine arts in boston copying a drawing. i remember him unfurling it and showing our class what he had done
it was a charcoal drawing and i have never seen anything like it since ... he spent hours drawing it and then he unfurled the drawing by his teacher ..
done not in hours but in front of him in a very short span of time. what was good enough for the student, and maybe for the teacher were 2 completely different things.
i still keep in touch with the teacher, and a few months ago mentioned this story to him and he chuckled because he didn't remember any of it ... it was just another day at the smfa ..

[Jim Jones]

In college I would photograph an evening event and next morning present a good variety of 8x10 prints to the publicity department. They would select what they wanted, and I would spot those then and there with a ball point pen. Perhaps no contributor to this thread would consider this good enough for their own work. Yet, in halftone reductions it was more than good enough.

[Michael E]

Thankfully I marked the prints. After many years, I am hard pressed to tell the difference between #4 and #10!

I should do that, too. It has happened way too many times that I just couldn't tell which one was the "final" print and which was hours earlier in the process... After years of striving for perfection, I try to live by the 80/20 rule now. You get 80% of the end result with only 20% effort. If you want those extra 20% result, you have to put in those extra 80% effort.

[BrianShaw]

In college I would photograph an evening event and next morning present a good variety of 8x10 prints to the publicity department. They would select what they wanted, and I would spot those then and there with a ball point pen. Perhaps no contributor to this thread would consider this good enough for their own work. Yet, in halftone reductions it was more than good enough.

This is a good point. Standards often are based on the intended usage of the product, not just high-and-mighty idealistic ideals. At some point no amount of time and money expended to make a photo in this scenario better would be worth it... in any way, shape, or form.

[Dennis]

Good enough is depending on context, but for me in my Pt/Pd printing I jump through several hoops (starting with film exposure and processing) to get the best Dmax I can and the smoothest tones and the proper contrast and avoid mottling and grain. I jump through every useful hoop I can to do the best I can do and if I ever discover another useful hoop I will start jumping through that too.

Dennis

[Drew Bedo]

There is a lot of discussion on this thread about excellence versus mediocrity. With regard to the finished print, I only show what I consider to be my "best" work. However with regard to the process of photography there is compromise in nearly every step of capturing and creating an image.

There are photographers who apply the zone system with meticulous precision; testing and adjusting and keeping extensive notes. This is an effective creative process. Bless them. With all that, there are things beyond anyone's ability to control. One thing that comes to mind is the variability of mechanical shutters. I could be wrong on this, but I understood that acceptable (achievable) accuracy is considered to be plus-or-minus 20% of the marked setting. Please correct me on this if I am mistaken.

The above deals with hardware. Compromise extends into the subjective area of image creation. This is a medium that can respond effectively to the "Sunny Sixteen Rule" for on the fly exposure calculation. I n a limited number of situations, this in fact may be "good enough". When shooting in the field I do not calculate bellows extension corrections. I know my 150mm and 210mm lenses and my Zone VI. For the 150 I allow 1/3 stop of extra exposure for each inch of extension beyond 6". For the 210, this correction is 1/4 stop per inch beyond 8" (yes, I know that 210mm is more than 8"). This method is not exact but is "good enough" for field work. I know of a photographer who set up the camera standards with a measured stick for hyper focal settings and stops down. His work has been published. For him, that was good enough.

[pdh]

I'd expect that many folk here - those for whom an unspotted print, for instance, is anathema - would treat my personal "good enough" with derision and contempt.

I'm not a careless worker, but if a photograph does everything that I want it to - compositionally, emotionally, tonally, whateverly - then a scratch or dust doesn't bother me in the slightest.

Having said that, I was showing an acquaintance some salted paper prints recently and she jumped on the scruffiest one and wanted to buy it. I refused because it had just been a test print on a spare scrap of paper.

Hmm.

Still, a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds as RWE said

[Lenny Eiger]

This is simply an exercise in talking about a cliche. It gives everyone an opportunity to say "I did my best" while printing, or some other part of the process, or "I don't consider that important enough to fuss over it incessantly." I also fell prey to this. I'm not sure anyone learned anything. I'm surprised (and happy) that people didn't start attacking each other mercilessly. I think this evaluation of a cliche is perhaps not so useful...

[Vaughn]

Perhaps an evaluation of a cliche is not so useful...

Vaughn (consistently foolish)

[BrianShaw]

I'm learning something.