OK, apparently my comments were controversial, so allow me to explain. It seems reasonable to me that someone would read Reichman's article and infer that using a wider aperture in the service of greater sharpness is a wise course of action. You are correct that Reichman doesn't say this in the article, so I'm "taking issue" with this idea, not Reichman's argument. My point, which I feel silly for making here for a third time now since it is common sense, is that it is often desirable to use a smaller aperture in the service of increased DOF at the expense of sharpness because the loss in sharpness is likely barely noticeable in the final print. I’m sure we are all in agreement on this so let’s let the matter rest. Frank, I prefer not to stop down to f32 if I can help it but I nevertheless do sometimes because (a) many of my subjects require it, (b) I want as much of the image as possible to appear sharp, and (c) this has little apparent effect on the quality of the drum scanned image. In his book, Jack Dykinga describes routinely shooting at f32 and f45 for the same reasons.
Bookmarks