I print to 24 x 36 inches. I currently going through a bunch of recent work from Death Valley, quite a bit of which includes near/far compositions that worked better with larger DOF.
I can produce excellent large prints from full frame originals shot at f/16. While you could perhaps detect a difference in sharpness via side by side careful comparisons of 100% crops on the screen, you would most certainly not look at one of my 24" x 36" prints from an f/16 original and remark, "Looks soft to me!"
So, my definition of negligible is that the effect on prints at the sizes I produce is either invisible or so small that no one but me will even notice it, and thus worth using the smaller aperture for
gains in other areas of the image such as increased DOF in images that require it.
The notion that I am being illogical by claiming that resolution loss is negligible and then not always shooting at f/16 is just silly. There are a number of factors that go into selecting an aperture for a particular shot, and the selection of an aperture is always a compromise of one sort or another. Shooting at
any aperture other than the one you deem to be sharpest might, I suppose be "illogical," but I don't look at it that way. Maximum resolution is not always my reason for selecting aperture, but when those other considerations don't apply I typically shoot at f/8 or f/11 by default.
I generally avoid f/22 unless my subject is one in which absolute sharpness is not the highest goal and/or lengthening the exposure or getting a bit more DOF trump the resolution issue.
Arguing "theory" and "logic" is pretty pointless when my decisions are made on the basis of photographic results in prints. And I can say without reservation that f/16 works great on full frame DSLRs.
(For those whose tastes run more towards "tests," I have one for you:
http://www.gdanmitchell.com/2007/04/12/sharpness-and-aperture-selection-on-full-frame-dslrs - and, yes, the difference between f/11 and f/16 in the 100% magnification crops I show there is
negigible .)
In the end, I shoot photographs and make prints - I don't shoot tests and make hypotheses.
Take care,
Dan
With full frame the image degradation at f/16 is negligible. I have plenty of quite large prints done on FF at this aperture that do not have resolution issues.
I would not generally shoot at that aperture without a good reason, but if I need a bit more DOF or a longer exposure time I don't hesitate to use it.
Uhm, that's not very logical is it? If the resolution loss is negligible, then why do you hesitate to use f/16? In fact the resolution loss is quite visible, however I also do use (as mentioned) f/16 when needed for DOF. Otherwise I use f/8 and f/11 which are most of the time plenty.
See also
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/resolution.shtml where you can see that at f/16 the resolution at best will be 7MP on FF. At f/11 it is 16MP which is acceptable, but in 100% view it is quite visible that you loose resolution also at f/11 compared to f/8. At f/16 this corresponds to the difference between a very good lens and a mediocre lens.
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If you choose f/8 or f/11 then it is that you judge or calculate that the DOF is covering the entire landscape you are photographing and not selective DOF (I assume). So in that case it would simply be easier to choose f/16 to be on the safe side, right? But you don't, so I assume the reason is that you know you loose over half the resolution of your 21MP at f/16. Remember that on the 5D you only lost from 13MP down to 7MP which would not be much. But on the 5D mkII you loose all the extra resolution.
