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Is sharpness overrated?
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Seems that everyone likes sharp-
everywhere I look, people are being complimented for having sharp pictures-
which leads me to a few questions-
such as,
in the digital age, with mostly small sensors, and modern lenses optimized to cover them,
should we not expect sharpness to be the norm?Using wide angles on those sensors,
isn’t it really difficult for a picture not to be sharp for a static subject?ok, so there are exceptions; a sharp subject on a long pan,
a fast moving subject anywhere,
or even sharpness distributed in unfeasible places, using ridiculous lenses,
but for the most part, is it really remarkable?Of course, sharpening is something we should be concerned with,
and some people’s techniques are to be commended-
but surely the question of scale has to be considered-
sharpening for a picture posted here is quite a different thing to sharpening for print,
especially for the larger sizes-
and this is a subject rarely, if ever, touched upon here-On the contrary, pictures posted here are discussed as if they were final finished product-
Are they?
Depth of field is a related issue, since critical sharpness is proportional to the degree of enlargement,
and in real terms, unless somebody here is posting pictures taken on a 5 year old phone,
all the pictures on these pages are reductions from the originals-Sharpening in film, or acutance- making use of edge effects in the developing stage,
can be an interesting subject too,
but is seldom mentioned here-
I suppose because the film needs to be enlarged in order for the viewer to become aware of it.So is it overrated?
Or am I just feeling sour grapes, since nobody tells me my pictures are nice and sharp,
because I stopped sharpening for the web a long time ago?
(though to tell the truth, if the only comment that could be made on one of my pictures was that it was nice and sharp-
well, we wont go there…)There are exceptions to this sharpness thing-
many people are switching to bigger formats, faster lenses, longer tonal gradations, film even,
perhaps even as a reaction to the universal sharpness possible these days.
I’ve been guilty of doing a bit of experimenting with big bokeh myself,
but that’s another conversation-
or is it…Anyway, it’s been a while since I had a little rant,
and as always, feel better for having that one out of my system-Just ignore me, I’ll be fine-
j
Glad you are feeling better :) I must say I like sharp……….probably because my eyesight
has gone so bad. I am guilty of saying “nice and sharp” but there are quite a number of
“soft” shots and nearly all comments say it needs sharpening so I guess sharp is important.
I promise the next shot you put up I will say it is “NICE AND SHARP” :)I like something to be sharp, when I expect it to be sharp for example:
Eyes
Other than that I’m not fussy. :roll:
Do you mean ‘sharpness’ or ‘detail’ or ‘in focus’.
To me they’re all very different aspects of an image.You’d expect images from digital to be sharp but invariably they’re not – unless you have the ‘sharpness’ whacked up full on your camera settings.
They also can lack detail in the midtone/shadow areas; you can certainly get more detail and sharpness from them with some minimal processing and even more from some selective post processing. Or less.From my experience there’s better mid/shadow tonal range in film, but digital seems to have better highlight tonality.
Working on scanned transparancies requires less work on tones than with digital, where I always seem to have to do something to bring out ‘hidden’ detail.
Digital also doesn’t seem as punchy as film – having a scan of a neg/transparency alongside a digitally shot version makes this quite obvious.‘Sharpness’ is different to what’s ‘in focus’ though.
With a 24mm at f8 almost everything is in focus with say a landscape, but I still do considerable work to ‘sharpen’ images.
For me ‘sharpness’ is a stylistic thing, a way to get more edge detail out of an image.
I shoot with quite a shallow DoF when using the 70-200, which I mainly use for portraits; somewhere around the 150mm mark at f2.8/f4 and be pretty close to the subject. DoF can be quite slim, a few inches, but I’ll still sharpen the image so that what’s ‘in focus’ will have more defined detail.I’ll work on full size images first, sharpening them to get the look and the detail I want – as if i was working on them for 12×16 or 20×16 prints.
I’ll then reduce them in size to 1000px wide for the web and work on the sharpness/detail again, simply because once you reduce the original you lose all that nice edge detail. So, I guess, I work on images with both web and print in mind and do a version for each.Steve (stcstc) did a print for me recently at 16×20(ish) and I was well pleased, but I’m still curious to see how much further it could go before it falls apart. Certainly it seems comparable to what I’d expect of a print from 35mm film…though it’s been a while since I’ve been in a darkroom.
I recently saw a doc on James Natchway, travelling the world’s trouble spots and photographing with 35mm film and then doing big prints 3 or 4 ft wide. I’m guessing they’d be sharp as hell and in focus, but grainy enough so that if you stood close enough edge detail would be far less distinct. But that wouldn’t matter in reality because no one is going to be admiring his 4 ft prints from the same distance as they would while staring at a monitor. He did seem to acknowledge that digital 35mm has come a long way, and if I’m not mistaken at one point he was shown using a 1D.
people do seem to be obsessed with sharp at the moment. i have seen examples that i think are not right, where others have commented on how amazing they look.
i do agree though, here really isnt the place to judge, prints are the only real way to judge these things. Being able to do decent sized prints, like i have some in some of my museum clients, (5 meters wide) and it really does make a difference
I sharpen, often, and then sharpen more, on full size images that I intend to
print, because of course that’s where it counts. If I decide to post something here
I resize and sharpen once more to bring back the lost edge detail. I suppose, at
the scale and resolution required for web viewing, sharpness is overrated, but it
does give an ‘impression’ of what a print might be like…I’m sure that would make a lovely print…
Rob.
well sometimes it’s well worth going off on a rant-
I think you might be winning me over-Mick’s insight into the way he works was a wholly unexpected bonus,
and much appreciated-I do less processing than you, Mick,
far worse,
in case you might have been worried to say-I suppose I work at similar sorts of resolutions to you,
but will re-size and sharpen for a particular print size-I don’t have much experience of printing chromes as big as that-
I think the largest I got was around 16 x 12,
but the prints were a beautiful quality, printed optically, by hand-
with that mirror gloss and deepest blacks,
and unbelievably,
absolutely spotless.
A wonderful printerI look forward to checking out the photographer you mentioned,
hadn’t heard of that show-I’ve printed digital to larger than the sizes you mentioned,
and it’s very different-
much easier too-
no need to keep a double sealed clean room handy,
when a coffee stained laptop will do-16 x 20 (ish) is the most I print myself,
and for anything other than glossy,
I’d get better prints from Steve-
and maybe even glossy too, come to think of it-Mick: I’m still curious to see how much further it could go before it falls apart
Well, that’s a difficult question-
Really large prints look better with more actual definition, I find-
although that’s also an absurd and irrational generalization, I hasten to add-But a stitched pano of vertical d200 frames looks much better at 1m high, than a single frame at 1.5m long-
up close-I think that for me, the largest I’d print from a single frame would be 900x600mm,
although I have gone bigger-
6.3m x 2.4m being the most ridiculous so far,
though some others come close-All were well printed, for what they were-
overblown images falling apart up close,
but holding it together at the scale at which it makes sense.Shiny, I’d tend to agree about the eyes- sharp, as in focus-
I suppose the thing I’m getting at is the idea of sharp, as in sharp-Rob, I know you sharpen, you like sharp, commendable-
the print you sent a while back was beautifully done-
and I take your point, it’s about projecting the quality of sharpness onto what you might imagine be the print-I’m sure that would make a lovely print…
:lol:
yes Alan, we’ve been there before, will be there again, I’m sure-
It is a sliding scale, and everyone will be somewhere up or down it-
Martin’s image (but not only that one, or the other) is no different-Just as prints are different sizes, so are monitors,
and pixel pitches on them.
I suppose, as sharpening is resolution dependent,
a monitor at 72 dpi might need more sharpening than one at 110 dpi? maybe-Both Martin’s images (for example) look fine to me,
but I might prefer the first, from those two,
and knowing that it could probably be sampled at 1000 spi,
I don’t think commenting on the sharpness of the image is all that appropriate in this instance-Anyway, good responses to my rant, was worth having it-
j
ps, away from computer for a bit, so last word for a while-
Sorry JB – I deleted my earlier response you referred to just before you clicked on submit. My reply, as you gathered, was rather dismissive but tended to agree with earlier posts so became a pointless addition. Sometimes it’s better to input your opinion at other times than first thing in the morning or last thing at night, I find.
I’d agree, a worthwhile rant…even if it is looking under old stones to be revisited.
Alan.
I do think some people are too caught up in sharpening. Sometimes it make no sense at all, sometimes DoF is really critical in minimise what is sharp, sometimes detail is what is meant, but more often than not, I think the selective sharpening is much more important than wholehearted “Sharpen More”.
Slightly off topic but Mick, is your 3rd link to download War Photographer a legit copy? I don’t understand these torrents.
Its an interesting film, I saw it once.
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