Yes, I can use Google. No, I still don't know what exactly it is. Gets thrown around here often, it's sort of the new "bokeh" in terms of fashion. I know the difference between sharp and not sharp, and contrasty and not, but what is "microcontrast" that is any different from those two? Reading posts where people use the phrase (such as "my general impression is that the Japanese lenses have more overall contrast but the German lenses have more microcontrast and may in some cases be sharper...") has not helped.
Terminology is often used loosely. Contrast is often used to indicate overall luminance range - the ' 7 zone spread', 'high contrast range' etc language. It is also used to indicate the quality of light - flat vs. strong sidelight etc. Micro-contrast is basically contrast in small areas. Do not confuse this with sharpness in small areas. Sharpness is a psychological sensation that concatenates resolution (lppm) and contrast (to what extent the small areas of black and white reproduce as black and white without merging into shades of grey at the borders).
This is what gives you texture - the feel of snow and sand, the smoothness, roughness - basically surface textural information. It is also easiest to lose - if your focus is off, the little dots of black and white merge into grey. If you enlarge too much, you lose this quality. In fact, I think this is the actual appeal of contact prints, especially with development procedures that emphasize adjacency effects which accentuate micro contrast. The older lenses often used in larger formats are not as sharp as modern lenses but contact printed, they produce wonderful micro contrast, sometimes referred to as tonality. Think of it this way - the 4X surface area of 8x10 compared to 4x5 means you use 4X times sliver halides to capture the same information. In the small areas, you have more information on the negative, which trumps the lower resolution.
Zeiss has two pdf's by H. H. Nasse that talk about micro contrast in relationship to other issues surrounding resolution, sharpness, and modulation transfer functions that are worth reading. They should help you.
I don't know the exact meaning, but I assume that it describes that B/W "sweet spot" where there is a (seeming) endless gradation range of silvery tones, that are nicely divided by a crisp acutance, that give the image a "bone structure" apparent sharpness, with endless tones swirling, weaving through it... (I think it comes from nailing the process steps and finding the "sweet spot"...)
In the old Leica/Contax "wars" of the 30's, I have heard that Contax (later Canon + others) had balanced the tones of their lenses so that they were more contrasty, so as to produce a greater "apparent" sharpness (but not as microsharp), where Leitz (later Nikon), had balanced the tones to be less contrasty, but with much more microsharpness... (Then the jury waits, as one goes into the darkroom, and produces results that one prefers over the other make...) So it was a look/design compromise thing...
So on the lens front, we often have older, classic lenses with a longer, smoother gradation, but not as brutally sharp (and flatter contrast), or newer lenses that are ultra sharp, but sometimes cold and hard looking, and contrasty sometimes at the expense of gradation... Sometimes there are lens examples that balance both of these well!!! So what type works with a individual photographer's working style/process??? (And what is preferred???)
One of the famous LF makers had produced a line of lenses for a long time (I think) that were for mainly shooting products in the studio, that had a cold, hard, contrasty, clinical look that helped items always look VERY sharp (Like trying to photograph a ceramic figure on a white background, where the figure often will look soft no matter how well focused!!!) But might look cold/hard doing a landscape (and printing it on a very cold/hard paper???)
Let me get out of here before I set-off an atomic bomb...
Lenses, type of film, type of developer, how film is developed and many other factors all play a part but, IMO, the biggest players are subject and lighting. Some will say this is a completely different subject but I consider them linked.
From a print perspective I will give you an example that I think applies.
When split printing a long range negative , some workers will flash or even burn with 00 to bring in highlight detail.
Usually this will work and you move on.
What I like to do in this area is to give another burn , but use the 5 filter... This will not affect any of the whites but any region that shows density will darken, thus giving more apparent detail
and basically contrast.
So in a small area we are increasing contrast deliberately .
In PS the soft light tool will give a somewhat same result. different but more effective in the mid tones.
Some subjects are more susceptible to greater acutance (apparent sharpness). For example photos of long grass, or reeds, and hair can look sharper because of the way the brain/eye works. We can see a single hair in a photo (or spider web on a wall) but not a dot or a contiguous series of dots of the same width as the hair. And as Old-N-Feeble points out, contrasty lighting helps as we have seen with a strongly sidelit white chicken's egg.
Both Leitz and Zeiss went for similar optical characteristics with regard to micro contrast, the difference was between the German approach and the Japanese which became apparent after WWII when war correspondents began using Nikon and Canon lenses on their Contax or Leica cameras.
Steve K, before WWII the older thick film emulsions didn't have the resolving power and along with un-coated lenses meant micro-contrast differences between Leitz and CZJ lenses weren't noticeable, differences in lens sharpness as designs improved and newer lenses were introduced were more important.
It shouldn't be forgotten that choice of developer can also increase or decrease the micro contrast. D76/ID-11 at FS will decrease micro contrast while staining developers like Pyrocat HD & PMK etc will increase it.
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