Are Photographer's Obsessed With Sharpness, but blind to the bigger picture?

[Bernice Loui]

Many discussions have been about sharpness of lenses, making sharp macro images, how sharpness is affected by diffraction and on and on and on..

Sharpness is only one aspect of image making yet it appears to be a myopic obsession with more than a few image makers to the degree where the definition of a GOOD photograph is driven by it's sharpness.

Yet, there are SO many other aspects of what makes an expressive image. Composition, tonality, form, color, texture, content-subject and much more.


Bernice

[StoneNYC]

Well I think when you're looking for sharpness, it's hard to find.

Lenses with character tend to be easier to find, are cheaper currently etc? So it's less of a difficult subject, if you'll notice only the extremes are often talked about, ultra sharp, and "the petzval effect" etc.

It's always at the extremes that we are particular about.

[Lachlan 717]

Well I think when you're looking for sharpness, it's hard to find.

Lenses with character tend to be easier to find, are cheaper currently etc? So it's less of a difficult subject, if you'll notice only the extremes are often talked about, ultra sharp, and "the petzval effect" etc.

It's always at the extremes that we are particular about.

?

[IanG]

Sharpness is controlled by craft, how you use your skills as well of course by choice of equipment. Good mastery of craft should allow greater freedom to enable you to capture the images you want while also giving you greater controls over " Composition, tonality, form, color, texture, content-subject and much more."

Craft should become mindset and inner hidden toolkit that allows us to pursue our obsession to make images.. The obsession must not be the craft itself or any aspect of it like sharpness.

Ian

[mdarnton]

Technique is easy to quantify and discuss. Art is much more difficult. Most people aren't very good artists, but they can happily discuss and pretty much agree on which photo from two similar ones is sharper, so that's where most of their discussions go.

[Jim Jones]

To present the photograph's subject honestly, the photograph should usually be sharp. Many subjects deserve to be presented honestly. A lack of sharpness in a photograph is often an attempt to present the photographer's view of the subject rather than the subject itself. Sometimes that photographers view imparts knowledge about the subject that may not be obvious in a sharp photograph. Sometimes it is merely an expression of the photographer's character or ego. I find many subjects of photographs more interesting than the photographers' interpretation, and therefore lean towards sharp photographs.

[Dan Fromm]

Bernice, on the one hand yes, sharpness is all. On the other, a strong image will usually survive a lot of fuzz. In most situations composition trumps sharpness. For me the big exception is scientific photography. There accurate representation with as much fine detail as possible is the goal and that trumps composition.

Jim, when I was working I rotated 8x10 color prints through my office desktop. One was pretty damn fuzzy but the composition was good. Passersby loved the picture, often commented favorably on it. I wanted that one to be sharp, unfortunately took it with a camera (Perkeo II with Color Skopar) that wasn't capable of making sharp negatives. It wasn't what I wanted, it was what the gear could give me. And it worked.

[Peter Collins]

Technique is easy to quantify and discuss. Art is much more difficult. Most people aren't very good artists, but they can happily discuss and pretty much agree on which photo from two similar ones is sharper, so that's where most of their discussions go.

+1, amen, etc.

[Bill Burk]

Bernice Loui,

I've been thinking about this a lot lately, and reading a lot of books where the topic comes up.

My instinct tells me that not many photographers concern themselves with sharpness, and those who do, are probably concerned about it "for the right reasons".

In "An Introduction to the Science of Photography," Katherine Chamberlain wrote a chapter "Factors That Influence the Critical Definition of the Photographic Image." In her opening paragraphs she states the obvious about photography, "No other method of pictorial representation remotely approaches it in ability to render fine detail..."

A paragraph she wrote explains exactly why I look for sharpness...

"Often, then, our problem as photographers does not require us to produce all possible detail... it is usually sufficient to render the subject so that the observer will neither have his attention distracted by seeing more than the eye usually shows him nor feel vaguely dissatisfied because he wishes to perceive detail that is not there."

Then later...

"It should be emphasized, however, that deliberate repression of the elements that are not desired is wholly different from the effect produced when detail is missing because lack of technical skill on the part of the photographer causes his picture to suffer from a complication of minor disorders."

I love the way these two phrases describe what I am trying to avoid, having my viewer be "vaguely dissatisfied because he wishes to perceive detail that is not there" because a photograph might "suffer from a complication of minor disorders."

[Jac@stafford.net]

Technique is easy to quantify and discuss. Art is much more difficult. Most people aren't very good artists, but they can happily discuss and pretty much agree on which photo from two similar ones is sharper, so that's where most of their discussions go.

That should be cast in concrete. I told my students back in the day. "Find your photographic vision by making pictures now. Technique and preferences will come about with experience." Certainly, many chose a technical approach from the beginning. One of such became a good documentary photographer. I believe that in the end very few found the art of photography. I'm not sure I did.

[Peter Lewin]

Isn't the concern with sharpness at least partly due to the fact that this is a large-format forum? The whole point of using a view camera as opposed to a different type of camera is that the movements permit precise choice of image plane, and the fact that the camera is usually on a tripod permits greater control over depth of field. I agree that art trumps technique (if you can't have both), but particularly on this forum I'm not surprised at the frequency of discussions about technique.

[Regular Rod]

Sharpness is surely just some technical matter that is determined by the lens? Rather than worry about sharpness I'm more bothered about getting the bits I want in focus.
;)
RR

[Ari]

I worry much more about the content of my photos than whether or not they're sharp.
That said, when the LF photos aren't sharp, I worry more. :)

[Darin Boville]

It goes well beyond questions of sharpness.

Many photographers have confused artistry with art.

--Darin

[Alan Gales]

It goes well beyond questions of sharpness.

Many photographers have confused artistry with art.

--Darin

I used to have a friend who was like that. He shot 35mm black and white and did his own developing and printing. His images were perfectly sharp and perfectly exposed. He was skilled at burning and dodging.

The problem was that his photographs were boring.

[Lachlan 717]

My concern with sharpness of a lens ends once I have purchased/tested it. In addition, I am not generally concerned with sharpness of lenses given the small number of lenses that will cover the format I use.

That being written, I have to admit being continually surprised by the sharpness of the 355mm G Claron I use. I bought this solely based on its coverage (didn't even consider sharpness).

[Maris Rusis]

The story goes that Peter Henry Emerson, the famous landscape photographer of the late 19th and early 20th century, had a painter explain to him why landscape painting was superior to landscape photography. The painter said:

"The photographer may record a scene with one hundred thousand details while the painter faced with the same scene may paint only one hundred details. But the details the painter depicts are the only ones that really matter. All else is rubbish and clutter."

Emerson was apparently shocked by the plausibility of this argument and temporarily lost confidence in his photography. Sharpness is no guarantee of success.

[h2oman]

In answer to your subject line I would say some are (obsessed with sharpness), many are not (blind to the bigger picture).

[Alan Gales]

The story goes that Peter Henry Emerson, the famous landscape photographer of the late 19th and early 20th century, had a painter explain to him why landscape painting was superior to landscape photography. The painter said:

"The photographer may record a scene with one hundred thousand details while the painter faced with the same scene may paint only one hundred details. But the details the painter depicts are the only ones that really matter. All else is rubbish and clutter."

Emerson was apparently shocked by the plausibility of this argument and temporarily lost confidence in his photography. Sharpness is no guarantee of success.

I love it! There is a lot of truth to that statement.

Sometimes it's easier to be a painter over a photographer. I've passed up taking many an image due to rubbish and clutter.

[StoneNYC]

I love it! There is a lot of truth to that statement.

Sometimes it's easier to be a painter over a photographer. I've passed up taking many an image due to rubbish and clutter.

But you can take a sharp 20x24 negative and make thousands of prints of portions of the image that ARE important and ignore the rubbish :)

[Alan Gales]

But you can take a sharp 20x24 negative and make thousands of prints of portions of the image that ARE important and ignore the rubbish :)

Or you could just move in closer and/or use a longer lens on the camera you are using. Of course this will not be the same as the painting.

Good photography isn't easy. I used to draw and paint and in some ways drawing and painting have their advantages. They are not better. Just different.

[Dan Fromm]

I just looked at this thread's title, saw a play on words. Sharpness in the negative matters most when we want to make the bigger print. This is why I won't have my best 35 mm Kodachromes (ISO 25, not that fast stuff) printed larger than 8x10. Bigger prints won't stand close scrutiny.

[joselsgil]

I look at it this way.

You can always make a fuzzy photograph with a sharp lens, but you can't make a sharp photograph with a fuzzy lens.

I leave the fuzzy lenses for portraits. :)

[Alan Gales]

I just looked at this thread's title, saw a play on words. Sharpness in the negative matters most when we want to make the bigger print. This is why I won't have my best 35 mm Kodachromes (ISO 25, not that fast stuff) printed larger than 8x10. Bigger prints won't stand close scrutiny.

Dan, you think like I do. I have taken a few of my Kodachrome 25 images up to 11X14 and gotten away with it but for the most part an 8x10 is the largest I would want to take 35mm.

[h2oman]

This is an interesting question. I have a friend who was completely obsessed with sharpness. The first thing he would do with any print is hold it up to his nose to see if it was sharp enough for his taste. Ironically, he now (at 86) can't seem to see very distracting lack of sharpness in some of his own images when looked at from a couple feet!

I had the pleasure of seeing an exhibit by William Clift in Santa Fe that got a fair amount of discussion here, and I purchased the accompanying book. If you were to ask whether the images were particularly sharp the answer would be no, but the answer would also be no if you were to ask if the images were lacking sharpness. The level of sharpness was such that it was not a distraction in either way. Also, many of the images of Shiprock have a lot of grass in the foreground, and the lack of extreme sharpness effectively eliminates detail there that would be distracting. This seems to be one way in which we can follow the lead of the painter who leaves out detail.

I also purchased a book called "The Villas of Palladio," by Philip Trager after seeing his work in Black and White magazine. The images feel to me like a sort of modern version of Frederick Evans' work. I later discovered an interview with him in View Camera. He commented that "...the photographs are not always super sharp - there is a subtle softness that is deliberate and that perhaps contributes to their timelessness and stillness."

That got me to thinking about how I love Frederick Evans' images of cathedral interiors, but similar images by Bruce Barnbaum don't do much for me. In retrospect, that could be due to in part to the fact that Barnbaum's images tend to be sharper than Evans', at least in the reproductions in books on which I am basing this observation.

All that said, if I were to be making Clyde Butcher or Christopher Burkett sized prints, I would strive for all the sharpness I could get! :)

[Mark Sawyer]

On this forum, one could ask with equal validity, "Are photographer's obsessed with softness, but blind to the bigger picture?"

Sharpness is fairly often discussed (I think) because it's easily definable and recognizable, and with the f/64 aesthetic still very popular in lf, a very important element to many people here. I don't think too many are blind to other aspects of photography (composition, form, light, etc.), but sharpness is something that people can easily discuss and resolve problems with. Composition, qualities of light, and other similar aspects are usually discussed only when critiquing an individual image. Not much of this goes on here beyond a few compliments of posted images, I suspect because people are worried about offending each other, and because there isn't as clear a set of standards like line pairs per millimeter. But I agree with Bernice that we should be more aware of such things, and discuss them more often and more deeply. It's our loss...

[mdarnton]

I took this question much more metaphorically than most respondents, I see. I didn't take the original post as being exactly about sharpness, but as a gearhead vs art query. In that sense, the gearheads have proven the answer!

[Ari]

As my friend Tony would say: "Sharpness is overrated!"

[h2oman]

Composition, qualities of light, and other similar aspects are usually discussed only when critiquing an individual image. Not much of this goes on here beyond a few compliments of posted images, I suspect because people are worried about offending each other, and because there isn't as clear a set of standards like line pairs per millimeter. But I agree with Bernice that we should be more aware of such things, and discuss them more often and more deeply. It's our loss...

Well, it is clearly stated at the top of the Image Sharing thread that "Critiques should only be offered if requested by the original poster."

But there is an "Images for Critique" thread there! (And I am in agreement with your last statement - you've motivated me to post something in that thread!)

[ScottPhotoCo]

I guess I would say that the answer would depend on who you are making your photographs for. This is a personal answer for me as I am lucky enough to make images that make me happy. There is really no one else that I have to please. That would bring and entire new issue to my work and one that I really don't want to deal with.

Sometimes my perspective is sharp and sometimes it is not. My goal is to make an image that stirs some type of emotion in me and hopefully any other viewer as well. My images are really an interpretation of how I see the world and I really don't expect everyone else to see it the same way. If we all interpreted the world the same way this would be a really boring existence and quite an uninteresting forum. :)


Tim
www.ScottPhoto.co

[erie patsellis]

That should be cast in concrete. I told my students back in the day. "Find your photographic vision by making pictures now. Technique and preferences will come about with experience." Certainly, many chose a technical approach from the beginning. One of such became a good documentary photographer. I believe that in the end very few found the art of photography. I'm not sure I did.


It's ok Jac, in today's post modern aesthetic, art is whatever you say it is..(add air quotes and a bit of a sarcastic chuckle as needed)

Erie

[John Kasaian]

Not to start a war, but digital photographers, on the whole, seem to me to be more obsessed with sharpness than anyone else.
I like sharpness, but my 80-60 year old lenses are as sharp as my old eyes can appreciate, even with the aid of a 9x loupe!
A few rather vocal digital photographers I know stress over how bad they need the latest digital camera or lens because it's sharper than what they are shooting now ( like a 2 year old Nikon or Canon SLR)
These aren't professional photographers, btw, but soccer moms and college students.
it's the Indian, not the arrow, I tell 'em.

[RodinalDuchamp]

Many discussions have been about sharpness of lenses, making sharp macro images, how sharpness is affected by diffraction and on and on and on..

Sharpness is only one aspect of image making yet it appears to be a myopic obsession with more than a few image makers to the degree where the definition of a GOOD photograph is driven by it's sharpness.

Yet, there are SO many other aspects of what makes an expressive image. Composition, tonality, form, color, texture, content-subject and much more.


Bernice
OP - this is one of the reasons I detest digital photography. It seems like if a photo is not surgically sharp it is not a good photo. However in the film world we have such delightful phenomena as soft focus, motion, grain, etc that give a picture soul. I'm not talking landscapes but more so in street photography.

[Toyon]

The story goes that Peter Henry Emerson, the famous landscape photographer of the late 19th and early 20th century, had a painter explain to him why landscape painting was superior to landscape photography. The painter said:

"The photographer may record a scene with one hundred thousand details while the painter faced with the same scene may paint only one hundred details. But the details the painter depicts are the only ones that really matter. All else is rubbish and clutter."

Emerson was apparently shocked by the plausibility of this argument and temporarily lost confidence in his photography. Sharpness is no guarantee of success.

What a lot of ignorant hooey. The painter has the luxury of deciding exactly how each object/feature in a scene will (or will not) be rendered. The photographer's job is much harder, because he or she must use angle of the camera and lens, choice of lens and filter, angle of light, time-of-day, weather and cloud condition and choice of film and paper to achieve the same effect as a painter - the rendering of a coherent impression and expression of a scene.

[Jac@stafford.net]

It's ok Jac, in today's post modern aesthetic, art is whatever you say it is..(add air quotes and a bit of a sarcastic chuckle as needed)

Erie

Aw, Erie, I was marinated in academic art so that unlike my peers I became immune and highly tolerant. Some of them hate me because I got out alive.

Still enjoying the 8x10 you sold me. It is a monster but the best.

[erie patsellis]

Jac, check your pm's..

[Bernice Loui]

The f64 aesthetic has driven most of photography in modern post WW-II times with few exception for more than a few years now. IMO, has been so ingrained into the definition of what acceptable photography is that is has just about flatten numerous other photographic aesthetics that those others have been mostly forgotten. Could this be part of the root of why the obsession with "sharpness" to where the expressive core of images has been run under?

Point being, yes, sharpness is important except what the image has to say as an expression humanity is more important. There comes a time when focusing on using these image making tools as a means to an end of expressive images far out weigh sharpness and those technical aspects of image making.


I'll offer up two images made at Stanford's Anderson museum which recently opened using an iPhone.
Sharp or not, that is not what these images are about.

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-TeYWJ_8kFM4/VHv7PGyEaTI/AAAAAAAABJ0/BEVFnwyYZE4/w780-h1044-no/Chairs%2B%26%2Bcrowds.jpg


Another.
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-60kH3gUcrNM/VHv7U4bKBmI/AAAAAAAABJ8/jgpkTfbeopw/w780-h1044-no/Spray%2Bof%2Bwhite.jpg


Let's discuss more about what is art about and how it related to photography, the human condition and less fighting about stuff like Diffraction and how "sharp" this or that lens might be.


Bernice


On this forum, one could ask with equal validity, "Are photographer's obsessed with softness, but blind to the bigger picture?"

Sharpness is fairly often discussed (I think) because it's easily definable and recognizable, and with the f/64 aesthetic still very popular in lf, a very important element to many people here. I don't think too many are blind to other aspects of photography (composition, form, light, etc.), but sharpness is something that people can easily discuss and resolve problems with. Composition, qualities of light, and other similar aspects are usually discussed only when critiquing an individual image. Not much of this goes on here beyond a few compliments of posted images, I suspect because people are worried about offending each other, and because there isn't as clear a set of standards like line pairs per millimeter. But I agree with Bernice that we should be more aware of such things, and discuss them more often and more deeply. It's our loss...

[David_Senesac]

There are many ways to consider image aesthetics and one ought not apply them in equal weight across the several general genres of photography. And within all genres would be a sub qualification for sharpness that is image display ie print size and viewing audience distance. The OP didn't bother to mention that because it is obvious to a community of photographers though it needs to be acknowledged. Bernice questioned whether "the definition of a GOOD photograph is driven by it's sharpness". To that I would say, of course not if considered narrowly because it dumbs down something which is complex.

Tersely, first a subject ought be aesthetically or informationally worthwhile and then such needs to be captured intelligently using light wisely with technical acceptability with sharpness one facet of technical acceptibility. One can also expect that a printed large life size aesthetic image that is also tact sharp is able to have more impact on audiences versus the same printed image but several times smaller. We humans naturally react more positively to imagery at scales minimally similar to what we actually can see with our eyes.

For any image printed so large that at expected viewing distances the subject frame elements are either obviously fuzzy, grainy, out of focus, or pixelated, the resulting audience opinions could expected to be a negative in the majority of cases. As a landscape and nature photographer one of the most important aspects of a printed image will be that in no important areas of a subject is the sharpness soft at the intended display size. And that has always been a prime objective to overcome for this person carrying a weighty view camera in the field. In this era in which we are all swimming in a vast sea of imagery in media, the majority of created images may look perfectly acceptable as small prints or small media displays like computer screens but would fail miserably if printed at larger scales many of we large format enthusiasts are able to, for a public audience.

And it is exactly this person's quest for image sharpness that given new digital technology has led me into a new world of photography subjects and possibilities. With current high end digital cameras using focus stack blending for static subjects, one can combine a set of image captures to create sharpness and depth of field impossible in the past. I can use my sharpest lenses within sharpest aperture ranges taking several captures of every frame eliminating the limitations of depth of field. And one can also then stitch frames together seemlessly. Thus a recent image I made in a redwood forest was a 3x3 matrix of frames each 4000x6000 pixels with each of the 9 frames a blend of 2 to 4 captures or 27 total captures, focused at different distances.

David

[kintatsu]

For me, it's not about sharpness, it's about focus.

A properly focused image usually contains adequate sharpness and detail. Some may have been made without any emotional content or impact, and may lack any meaningful context. The issue of who a photo should be pleasing to is up to the photographer in question. I believe that the photograph should first appeal the photographer, than to others. It encourages a sense of accomplishment and will show in our sharing.

Ansel Adams said it best when he said "There is nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept."

[mdarnton]

I saw an original print of this at the Art Institute of Chicago the other day. It is, of course, a bad photo, because it's not sharp:
http://timedotcom.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/robert-capa-dday-face-in-the-surf.jpg?w=1012

[swmcl]

My wife and I went to India soon after getting married. On the way I purchased a 35mm Nikon camera and a number of quality lenses to record the trip. When I got back I was profoundly disappointed with the lack of detail in wider shots. This was a pivotal moment for me to move into LF. So for me I want lots of detail which might mean 'sharpness'. Another attraction is of course all the controls and the heightened sense of focus that can be achieved - a bit like kintatsu above. If I am shooting a shot for sharpness and it isn't as sharp as I see with my eyes or imagine it should've been I think I get disappointed. A lens purchased for sharpness can never be sharp enough.

[Tin Can]

I saw an original print of this at the Art Institute of Chicago the other day. It is, of course, a bad photo, because it's not sharp:
http://timedotcom.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/robert-capa-dday-face-in-the-surf.jpg?w=1012

Bad photo, unsharp, but very emotional and striking.

Gives me a true currency of presence, even 70 years later. Amazing image.

Thanks for posting, I must see it personally.

Where is it? I mean in ARTIC's building.

[Doremus Scudder]

I'm more obsessed with clarity:

Clarity of vision, clarity of execution.

Doremus

[mdarnton]

Randy, they have an interesting exhibit running right now in the hallway outside the main photo gallery, around the bottom of the stairwell--you know--with the bathrooms. It's historical and has many wonderful things back to the dawn of time. Also, they have a huge Sander exhibit on the back of one of the wall partitions in the new section, sort of hidden and unmentioned, in a public hallway--I guess they couldn't find room for it in the main Modern Wing photo gallery next to it which filled with gigantic blurry stolen photos of people committing suicide; the Real Art of the day. Don't bother to go into the main main gallery or the main Modern Wing galleries, in summary :-(

Sort of symbolic of how the ARTIC feels about photography, maybe? Fill the main galleries with crap, and put the really great stuff out in the basement public hallway with the toilets.

Neither good show is mentioned at all on their web site until you dig very deeply, where they get very passing mention, not bold, not red, no link to expanded explanation, here: http://www.artic.edu/exhibitions/photography

[scheinfluger_77]

... A lens purchased for sharpness can never be sharp enough.

And here lies the premise in the OP's question. It points to a psychological need that can never be adequately satisfied because there is always a desire for "more." Once "more" becomes the goal, nothing will satisfy, not even "more."

Steve

[Bernice Loui]

Does extreme sharpness in the print alone make an expressive image?


Bernice



My wife and I went to India soon after getting married. On the way I purchased a 35mm Nikon camera and a number of quality lenses to record the trip. When I got back I was profoundly disappointed with the lack of detail in wider shots. This was a pivotal moment for me to move into LF. So for me I want lots of detail which might mean 'sharpness'. Another attraction is of course all the controls and the heightened sense of focus that can be achieved - a bit like kintatsu above. If I am shooting a shot for sharpness and it isn't as sharp as I see with my eyes or imagine it should've been I think I get disappointed. A lens purchased for sharpness can never be sharp enough.

[Tin Can]

Randy, they have an interesting exhibit running right now in the hallway outside the main photo gallery, around the bottom of the stairwell--you know--with the bathrooms. It's historical and has many wonderful things back to the dawn of time. Also, they have a huge Sander exhibit on the back of one of the wall partitions in the new section, sort of hidden and unmentioned, in a public hallway--I guess they couldn't find room for it in the main Modern Wing photo gallery next to it which filled with gigantic blurry stolen photos of people committing suicide; the Real Art of the day. Don't bother to go into the main main gallery or the main Modern Wing galleries, in summary :-(

Sort of symbolic of how the ARTIC feels about photography, maybe? Fill the main galleries with crap, and put the really great stuff out in the basement public hallway with the toilets.

Neither good show is mentioned at all on their web site until you dig very deeply, where they get very passing mention, not bold, not red, no link to expanded explanation, here: http://www.artic.edu/exhibitions/photography

ARTIC has terrible information on existing exhibits. Even the front information desk cannot tell you what is hanging. I recently bought another year of membership, when Greg Hindy and I went to ARTIC 2 days in a row. We were looking for specific photographs and there was no information on the house database, yet they were advertised in local papers. The nice people at the main info desk were more confused than I was. I know the museum fairly well as I used to visit it 4 days a week while attending Grad school there.

The Modern wing is a disappointment, as they have so little, displayed over a shortage of walls. Seems the childrens learning center, cafe, and giant hallways are made solely for events and cash gathering. I attended the Modern wing opening, it put me off membership for years. I think they copied blunders that Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art initiated, architecture and children before exhibition space.

Thanks for the tips, I will see the WWII image soon.

[Larry Gebhardt]

Does extreme sharpness in the print alone make an expressive image?


Bernice

Of course not. But some images should be sharp to be expressive.

[John Kasaian]

I'm obsessed with lunch.

[Jim Galli]

I'm obsessed with lunch.

You've got a 2 hour wait.

I'm old. That means I grew up in a world where all my parents could afford was a folding camera with a simple meniscus. That also means when I look at the family album, it was as much the equipment that wasn't getting the job done, as it was the photographer.

So, it was natural when I became an adult to want to improve on quality. I discovered that a Nikon FE with a tripod, a prime lens, and some Fujichrome Velvia could launch you into whole new world. Indeed, our current generation of 12++ megapixel SLR's and their smaller ilk grew out of the over-saturated Velvia look. Reds that drip right off the print onto the floor! Greens from Mars. WooHoo.

I don't get accused of making sharp images very often these days, (although if you look at the core image, it's definitely distinct).

Looking back, I used to take workshops with a guy who was deeper into the Nikon ~ Velvia curve than I was. As time marched on and he more than embraced the digital revolution, his images began to look like a disney illustrator drew them. Oversharpened to the bizarre. Mine began to look like . . .

I'm patient with the folk who are getting all worked up reading J. B. Williams Image Clarity. They're just at a different place in the journey than I am.

[Drew Wiley]

Extreme sharpness is indeed a strategy I often employ in large format prints. But there are other images where I subtly employ selective focus, and still
others, esp small format ones, where maybe there is a "bokeh" out-of-focus effect to the background or whatever. I've never been a true soft-focus lens type like
certain Nevada residents. But I don't believe in any one-shoe-fits-all formula, or any hard-nosed manifesto. It all depends on the subject matter and what I'm trying to achieve in the print. But when sharpness and detail are a priority, large format certainly has its advantages.

[Jac@stafford.net]

I did a fine-grain telephoto 6x6 image of a mountain/elevated island and showed people there that could not be seen with the eye.

An old fellow Vietnam vet who worked with Spooks looked at them and said, "Been there. It's the kind of stuff that gets people killed."

[David Lobato]

I like seeing apparent sharpness in my photos as much as anyone. However, if all one desires is sharpness, at the expense of ignoring everything else, sharpness is only what they will get in their photos. I have seen that happen too many times. The craft and art of photography requires a lot more than paying sole attention to nose-to-the-print sharpness.

[John Kasaian]

It all kind of depends on what you're after, don't it?

[Richard M. Coda]

For the most part I like, and use, sharpness in my LF (4x5, 8x10, 11x14) photography. I rarely print larger than 11x14, printing 8x10 most of the time, and 16x20 only when an image will benefit from the larger print. That said, most of the paintings (oil, acrylic, pastel, watercolor) that I "like" are NOT sharp. More abstract or expressionist in nature. However, once in a blue moon I find myself wanting to photograph something that is not sharp. One case in point... I was out photographing flowers outdoors in color and the breeze was making it impossible and I could not get the depth of field I wanted. I took my glasses off to rub my eyes from the strain of trying to focus and looked at the flowers again. Since everything was now out of focus I decided to photograph them that way and deliberately threw the camera out of focus... I think it made a very nice abstract impressionist type of photograph, concentrating on the color instead of the "object"... http://rcodaphotography.blogspot.com/2009/04/color-without-form.html

[scheinfluger_77]

For the most part I like, and use, sharpness in my LF (4x5, 8x10, 11x14) photography. I rarely print larger than 11x14, printing 8x10 most of the time, and 16x20 only when an image will benefit from the larger print. That said, most of the paintings (oil, acrylic, pastel, watercolor) that I "like" are NOT sharp. More abstract or expressionist in nature. However, once in a blue moon I find myself wanting to photograph something that is not sharp. One case in point... I was out photographing flowers outdoors in color and the breeze was making it impossible and I could not get the depth of field I wanted. I took my glasses off to rub my eyes from the strain of trying to focus and looked at the flowers again. Since everything was now out of focus I decided to photograph them that way and deliberately threw the camera out of focus... I think it made a very nice abstract impressionist type of photograph, concentrating on the color instead of the "object"... http://rcodaphotography.blogspot.com/2009/04/color-without-form.html

There is a variation on the pinhole called the zone plate, with infinate variations of "fuzzy expressiveness" available depending on how you construct the ZP. There are a number of great examples at the f/295 forum.

http://www.f295.org/main/forumdisplay.php?31-Black/White-Zone-Plate-Photographs
http://www.f295.org/main/forumdisplay.php?36-Color-Zone-Plate-Photographs
http://www.f295.org/main/forumdisplay.php?39-Zone-Plate-Infrared-Polaroid-et-al!

And since these generally run anywhere from f/45 to f/90, exposures are relatively easy to deal with.

Steve

[Michael Wesik]

Really interesting discussion...

The process of translating a scene into pictorial space through photographic mechanisms offers countless interpretations. My own interest in the subject of sharpness revolves around the questions of: why is it important? And what do those decisions reflect about the artist?

Approaching the medium in traditional ways forges a physical relationship between the artist and the medium, situating the artist as the filter through which vision and creation are reconciled; and thus rendering the process by which a photograph is conceived and executed a reflection of the artist. In this, the meaning of a photograph and the qualities it displays has less to do with the image itself and more to do with why certain decisions were made to bring it into existence. Obsessing over sharpness becomes emblematic of a much more profound quest, possibly one of recreating the 'real' or the 'ideal' as a way of mediating something personal to the artist.

I don't believe that image production is as simple as making a picture because you like it. Some gravitate towards portraiture, others landscape or still life, and others photo-conceptualism and there are latent motivations for those bents. So when I read about the decisions that people make or see the pictures they create, I see a Promethean quality that we all share in different ways.

So for me, discussions of sharpness is more philosophical than anything else. I've been obsessed by sharpness as well, to the point of working my way up to shooting 11x14 film to project 50x65 inch images and refusing to go larger than 5x enlargement on a pictorial landscape subject because of how the image degrades. I've even hounded Ilford to make bigger paper only to be shot down, several times. But even going that big has been painful at times as 3.5x to 4x seems to be the sweet spot with Tri-X developed in Pyrocat-P Divided. And then I'm often left wondering why it matters if an image is 5 inches bigger or smaller on the short side; it's a huge print, bleach redeveloped, archivally processed, etc. All that is a reflection of me and what I'm trying to reconcile.

It's great to read all this stuff. Thanks everyone.

Happy holidays!

Michael

[blindpig]

I've a friend who repairs cameras professionally and is totally into lens/image sharpness almost to distraction. He will argue long and loud about one lenses resolution over another.With that said here's a short tale about what that cost my brother-in-law.
He and his wife were taking the trip of a lifetime, 3 1/2 weeks in Europe.He was worried about his camera and film for the trip so I recommended he have his camera checked and cleaned before leaving.Also recommended the afore mentioned friend as resource and suggested he purchase a Polarizing and sky-light filters while there.After visiting my friends shop and later picking up his camera,he called me and thanked me for leading him to such a knowledgeable repair professional and said he'd contact me on his return to see his slides.I can't remember how many slides they returned with(100's)and how disappointed he was with about half of them.Seems they traveled buy plane, boat cruises and bus tours all over Europe(great trip!)but all the mountain scenes and long landscapes as well as water pictures were weak or burned-out.You've probably guessed what happened,my friend(the sharpness freak) told him never put anything over your lens but a lens cap when not in use.Sadly he followed this advice,hard to tell if they are needle sharp or not!
Guess I'm partially to blame by not asking about him purchasing the filters before they left.
Don