When do we need "sharpness"?

[Brian Wadie]

Recent comments by Peter and Tom (thanks) got me thinking about this much debated question from my own experience so I thought I would share a few thoughts and invite others to do the same.

Over my life I have been using photography in many different ways, some of which have demanded great detail and most which have not

Way back when I was a materials scientist I was using both SEM and light microphotography to record details of structure in polymers, measuring things like rate of crystal growth in them or failure mechanisms in composite materials. In this case forensic style detail and consistency were essential with no room for artistic license or creativity

Then I was using my old works Pentax k1000 + potato masher flash to record faults in materials applied to massive structures, usually for problem solving use or in the extreme, legal evidence. Much the same rules applied

After I retired I took up photography as a hobby and had a hard time forgetting the discipline of the past, so my work was precise, scientific and ultimately boring ,although some of my macro work did and still requires that sort of precision (one of my images of detail of the antenna of a Crane fly species is in the archives of the Carnegie Institute for Natural History)

Eventually I was persuaded to start selling my work and entering competitions and found that most of my successful work and the biggest money spinners were those that told a story, gave the viewer an emotional response or were just images I enjoyed creating

Getting into water sport photography I found that what the riders and their sponsors wanted was impact and the ability to capture the moment, so sequential shooting became much more important

And now I'm old and decrepit what matters is having kit I can still use within my physical limitations, just to have fun

"Sharpness" and "IQ" have a place but for me the real secret is being able to capture the images I want, when I want them

Over to you

(should you be interested in looking at the stuff I have created over the last 10 years or so, there are far too many examples in my flikr albums )


So much to learn, so little time left to do it!

 

[tomhongkong]

Brian

I completely agree with your train of thought. I have recently been digitizing some old family photos. The resolution is terrible, but the value is just the same as if they had been perfect. Does anyone think that our photos will have much value for our family except fr the subject matter?

A few techno geeks might admire a photo for its sharpness and other IQ but I suspect that in 10 years' time our best shots will look pretty poor against then current output in these terms, anyway.

On a related subject, I had decided that I would digitize all my old slides/negatives and with the best of digital images make phonebooks (using an Inktank printer, cost per print only pennies, and metal wire binding. I had sneered at video a bit, looking at photos as the ultimate objective.

Recently I have taken to making short video clips with iPhone and the quality is amazing, viewed on the basis of 'catch the moment' not purist video making. I now wonder whether to build digital albums for each event/subject combining photos and video on the basis that I can much better record the occasion for the future enjoyment of myself and others. In that case the resolution / sharpness needs to be appropriate for the display medium (currently thinking about large tablet)

Any thoughts, anyone?

tom

 

[Brian Wadie]

"Recently I have taken to making short video clips with iPhone and the quality is amazing, viewed on the basis of 'catch the moment' not purist video making. I now wonder whether to build digital albums for each event/subject combining photos and video on the basis that I can much better record the occasion for the future enjoyment of myself and others. In that case the resolution / sharpness needs to be appropriate for the display medium (currently thinking about large tablet)

Any thoughts, anyone?"

One of our team of beach photographers (there are about 6 of us ) has starting using both sequential still and video to capture the action and its gone down well with the riders

I've tried it a few times trying to get slow motion capture of radical moves but no luck so far

 

[Austinian]

"Sharpness" and "IQ" have a place but for me the real secret is being able to capture the images I want, when I want them

Over to you

I need sharpness when I want to be able to discern the fine details in an image. That depends on what kind of image it is; generally I want landscapes and still lifes of natural objects to be sharp; images of people and man-made objects, less so.

 

[PhotonBeam]

I completely agree that telling a story with a photo is so much more important than a few more pixels or a bit of extra sharpness. Photography is an art.

I have seen many posts to beginners and others that imply or outright state that signal to noise ratio is the most important thing to understand about photography. I am fine with people trying to perfect the technical aspects of their craft, but I would argue that composition, capturing the moment, and story telling are much more important. When you look at some of the most impactful pictures in history, they are not technically perfect, but very powerful because of the story they tell.

Quite often I will see someone post a picture of a leaf, flower, or other common object. My thought is often that it is technically good picture (sharp, nice bokeh, good colors), but why should someone care about this leaf or object versus the one next to it. What features of the leaf or object drew the photographer to it, and how can the composition be used to emphasize those features. Is there a story to be told? (e.g. first leaf to fall indicating the start of fall).

Anyway, going back to the original question. You need enough sharpness for how the photo will be used. Using sharp lenses, enough pixels, and keeping noise low can add to an image. I just think it is overemphasized on this forum.

 

[Brian Wadie]

"Sharpness" and "IQ" have a place but for me the real secret is being able to capture the images I want, when I want them

Over to you

I need sharpness when I want to be able to discern the fine details in an image. That depends on what kind of image it is; generally I want landscapes and still lifes of natural objects to be sharp; images of people and man-made objects, less so.

would you place "sharpness" over emotional impact of a landscape scene? (I realise we all have different objectives when we shoot so it is purely for interest)

You are so right about not having too much sharpness with images of people, I had real problems when shooting some studio portraits of more mature ladies on commission yet for some of the more "interesting " old dudes it was the sharper the better

 

[Austinian]

"Sharpness" and "IQ" have a place but for me the real secret is being able to capture the images I want, when I want them

Over to you

I need sharpness when I want to be able to discern the fine details in an image. That depends on what kind of image it is; generally I want landscapes and still lifes of natural objects to be sharp; images of people and man-made objects, less so.

would you place "sharpness" over emotional impact of a landscape scene? (I realise we all have different objectives when we shoot so it is purely for interest)

I see no conflict between the two; if anything, they are in harmony.

To be able to see things like a lone hiker deep in a canyon or a spider lurking in a flower, so tiny and camouflaged as to be invisible in the viewfinder, IMO lends an impact to an image that would not exist if the image was a blurry mess.

 

[Michael Benveniste]

I'm not a pro, and never wanted to be a pro. Photography for me is a hobby, so I rarely have any photographic "needs." I have "wants." My oft -expressed opinion is that so-called "IQ" has surprisingly little to do with the quality of an image.



That said, I agree with Kirk Tuck that photography is "the sloppy intersection of physics and art," and I recognize that striving for technical excellence has always been a part of photography. So a "want" of achieving the highest possible test chart performance is just as valid as any "want" I might have on a given day.

I own quite a number of "prime" lenses, and enjoy using them at times. But this is the "Micro Four Thirds" forum. I bought my MFT gear as a "fast and light" kit because I believe that the "IQ" of a missed shot is exactly zero. Using it lets me put shots "in the can" which I would not have gotten with my heavier gear, and it does so more consistently and with higher quality than any of my previous "fast and light" choices. While I will always have "wants," the GX85 does what I bought it to do, and lenses like the 8-18mm trounce my expectations.

 

[Eightace]

I only want sharpness because its possible.

I like wildlife photos to have nice detail even when slightly zoomed in. I just dont think I've done things right if it's sharp on my phone but doesn't look as good on my monitor.

But I have many photos I took on my phones over the years that are on Google images and I still have a look now and then and enjoy them. And I never really had top of the line phones,so they don't look amazing.

 

[Gary from Seattle]

I think sharpness matters when obvious, as in the way one normally views an image. For me that is on a computer monitor at a distance of around 12-14". Beyond normal viewing (could be a print) who really cares?

Sharpness in landscape images is readily apparent when viewed normally and the scene/detail is sharp in the center but not on the edges. This is a primary advantage of higher quality Pro lenses.

Sharpness in birding (and some other uses) is important because one often wants to see feather detail well on close in bird images.

OOF or blurry images show up like a sore thumb to me no matter the image subject.

 

[David]

Sharpness can be used as a tool, a tool to tell a story such as having 1 person being sharp and then everything else is blurred or in motion, but is used as a companion in telling a story.

If you look at the photographs taken by Vivian Maier, you will often see that some of her most sold photos had some degree of motion blur. And yet, they sell for often a pretty sum. Galen Rowell once did a landscape with a cheap plastic Nikkor 35-80mm that so many people said has too much chromatic aberrations, that distortions, vignetting etc.. Yet, Galen did not focus on the flaws of the lens; he focused on creating images to tell a story about Mountain Light. I remembered attending his lectures and workshops and emphasised that when your images are interesting and captivating, people quickly forget what it was taken from. Galen was a pioneer in using 35mm, when most other landscape photographers at his time spoke poorly of the same format, like we have today with MFT with people who often spoke poorly of its demise, its poor low light performance etc.

Still, when your images are great, people will react in either 1 or 2 ways.

1, They will quickly forget what you took it with, because they are so focused in enjoying the story the images are telling them about.

or

2, They will quickly become so jealous about your success. While they can't deny that you are a good story teller, they can judge your work based on the technicality -- oh look that's not sharp. Oh look, here's chromatic aberrations, distortions. They nitpick, forgetting that the photography is telling a story and they are in denial that it does.

 

[Joe Lynch]

Sharpness mattered to me when shooting for my company, for use in presentations and sales brochures. I planned those shots very carefully and did my best to produce technically excellent photographs. I simply didn't use shots that were flawed. Boring shots, yes.

For my four grandchildren, ages 7 and under, its f/2.8 to f/1.2, high iso, and slow sequential, framed haphazardly, with a relatively low percentage of perfectly sharp photos, sometimes due to motion blur, sometimes due to misplaced focus point. And their parents love the photos, mixed lighting, cluttered background, messy hair, and all. If I catch them playing together and interacting with each other, nothing else matters. I do my best to relax the commercial production standards in order to get a few shots that tell a story that the parents want to remember. I go in to almost a sloppy photojournalist mode when photographing the grand kids.

If I set up a temporary staged studio shot of the grand kids, like I will do tomorrow, then I'm back to getting a technically perfect sharp photo with good expressions and interaction. Everyone expects a sharp studio shot, even of the grand kids. Wish me luck with that task! The standards are lower for run and gun informal shots.

 

[uniball]

Sometimes I get confused about the image, as opposed to what the image captured. The former leads to buying more. The latter on photography and a more satisfying experience.

 

[Jack Tingle]

I learned 35mm SLR photography from hanging out with feral photojournalists in college. As a mechanical engineer, I valued the pros that took our documentary photos. I learned a lot from them. In all of that, tack sharpness & very short critical instants are paramount.

As an amateur, telling a story is paramount. Now, I'll always err on the side of sharpness. I may decide to employ Herr Gauss's famous blur later, when needed. I also pay attention to DoF to separate subject & background, but not at the expense of getting a shot.

MFT gear is fast, light & handy, in aid of all the above.

 

[Brian Wadie]

thanks for the interesting thoughts so far, in my view there are no "right " answers to this.

I also sometimes think that Focus and Sharpness get thought of in the same way or even confused, many images that I have seen do well in competitions have been well focused on the subject of interest with the rest of the image left softly blurred.

Indeed, one of my most successful images in both competition and sales terms was of a flight of three swans, accidentally shot with a 3 sec or so exposure with me hand-holding the weight of a large landscape tripod, full frame camera and pro lens complete with cable release. I had been set for a sunrise over the misty marsh shot when the swans suddenly appeared behind me, I picked the whole lot up and managed to track the lead swans head but exposure was so slow I recorded about three complete wing beats.

The first judge who saw it commented that it was all out of focus and didn't meet any of the judging standards but it was so exceptional he gave it shot of the competition.

When it went up for the first time in one of our annual exhibitions it was the first one out of the door and I subsequently made several thousands of pounds in sales over the years

At the same time, other razor sharp images of birds of prey on metallic paper have also sold very well, so its all in the eye of the photographer and the customer / judge I guess

These days I can't handle the weight of pro cameras or lenses so make do and enjoy using that which I can carry with me

--
So much to learn, so little time left to do it!

 

[loafer]

Sharpness is a critical feature for the style of work that could be considered modern or realistic.

It's critical for wildlife, sports, macro and astro.

It's less critical for romantic style photography (and that includes the style of a lot of portraits.) This style is very popular on instagram.

Landscapes can be romantic or realistic. So can Street.

Personally, I think that sharpness enhances creativity. I'm a big fan of deep focus also.

 

[Humansvillian]

I’m going over all my cameras and even the first and worst MFT lens Olympus ever made, on the first generation 12mp MFT sensor, produces point and shoot tack sharp images, at f10. It would be shaper at f5.6.

Plus you get Olympus colors, such a deal.



--
Humansville is a town in the Missouri Ozarks

 

[Brian Wadie]

just for fun, this image was shot as a reflection and as a counterbalance to lord knows how may razor sharp images that I and far too many other photographers living in the area have shot, exhibited and sold over the years.

I rotated it and presented it in this form at a critique session when it was ripped to shreds for lack of sharpness, focus etc, particularly by a German friend who was all about Leica and the perfection available from German optics, fair comment and accepted as such by me

It was fun though to see the look on her face when she came into the gallery on the first day to see it had a red dot on it (and was the first one sold that day)

The person who grabbed it as soon as they entered the gallery told me they fell in love with it because it wasn't perfect like all the other shots they had seen of this subject - there is no accounting for taste amongst non-photographers :-D

(It was presented as a 30" wide framed print on parchment textured fine art paper in a white box frame)



--
So much to learn, so little time left to do it!

 

[David]

thanks for the interesting thoughts so far, in my view there are no "right " answers to this.

I also sometimes think that Focus and Sharpness get thought of in the same way or even confused, many images that I have seen do well in competitions have been well focused on the subject of interest with the rest of the image left softly blurred.

Indeed, one of my most successful images in both competition and sales terms was of a flight of three swans, accidentally shot with a 3 sec or so exposure with me hand-holding the weight of a large landscape tripod, full frame camera and pro lens complete with cable release. I had been set for a sunrise over the misty marsh shot when the swans suddenly appeared behind me, I picked the whole lot up and managed to track the lead swans head but exposure was so slow I recorded about three complete wing beats.

The first judge who saw it commented that it was all out of focus and didn't meet any of the judging standards but it was so exceptional he gave it shot of the competition.

When it went up for the first time in one of our annual exhibitions it was the first one out of the door and I subsequently made several thousands of pounds in sales over the years

At the same time, other razor sharp images of birds of prey on metallic paper have also sold very well, so its all in the eye of the photographer and the customer / judge I guess

These days I can't handle the weight of pro cameras or lenses so make do and enjoy using that which I can carry with me

I equate focus and sharpness like people's preferences for sugar and meat. Do you prefer real sugar or do you prefer Splenda? Do you prefer real meat or do you prefer Beyond Meat, which is a veggy option for meat. It's a preference, but sometimes we are so over-focused on saying this is the ultimate choice, while neglecting the other choice which is also ultimate to a certain other group of people and then for some people, they go on this epic battle of right and wrong, which eventually I found myself years ago was a complete waste of time. What I was doing was "cherry picking" what I deemed to be right and "cherry picking" what I deemed to be wrong, because it isn't my style. But who is me to say this is wrong? Only myself, because other people like the style that I didn't like. So it's a bias that one can form about sharpness, noise, DR etc, without looking at the whole picture. I think that we can become guilty of focusing on judging this or that and not looking at the whole picture. A great picture is a "sum" of all parts that made that great picture possible.

When I was working commercially many years ago, there are always a certain clientele base that like my work and prefer my work. It's just my style of combining technical sharpness and detail with vigor creativity. Others do the same, but with simply a different style and mix of both technical and creativity.

Speaking of your 3 swans. I took an Eagle shot with an Olympus E-5 and a somewhat broken Olympus 70-300 a few years ago. There was fungus in the lens and so, it makes 300mm look really soft. It's like there's Vaseline on top of the front element and this lens has some of the worst aberrations @ 300mm when the optics are not in the greatest shape. It wasn't, but I didn't pay much either. I bought it used for like $50. Anyhow, I went to the meetup group and the theme was shooting BIF and somehow, I picked a nice vantage point where I could capture a flying bird with a mountain backdrop behind it. Suffice to say, I got a great shot of a flying Eagle soaring above the sky, gliding, but because it was soft and the aberrations made the photo somewhat unappealing at first. The saving grace was that the shot was well framed, that it was the only shot that captured people's emotions. That soaring Eagle symbolizes strength, vigor and success etc over hardship (which was the mountain) and that was the story I wanted to tell, actually telling myself that I'm worth something more..

That was the emotions people told me that they got when they saw my photo and had won the photo over for. Suffice to say, some financial companies actually used that photo, WITHOUT my permission nor ask for one, in their financial promotional brochures which they had conveniently plucked out from Flickr/Meetup photo album. In fact, the latest one was a financial company that used that same photo to invest in "crypto-currency". I didn't need the watermark on the photo, because the imperfections of that lens is so OBVIOUS that I could spot it with my bare eyes. Anyhow, KEH bought that 70-300, out of sympathy of the buyer, for $15 because I needed the cash a few years ago.

 

[larsbc]

Recently I have taken to making short video clips with iPhone and the quality is amazing, viewed on the basis of 'catch the moment' not purist video making. I now wonder whether to build digital albums for each event/subject combining photos and video on the basis that I can much better record the occasion for the future enjoyment of myself and others. In that case the resolution / sharpness needs to be appropriate for the display medium (currently thinking about large tablet)

Any thoughts, anyone?

My video epiphany began with my GH2. I was so impressed with the quality of its video that I began to record more and more short clips during our trips. The 2nd epiphany occurred when I started combining them with my photos into a longer video. I enjoyed the results and the process so much that video is now just as much a part of my travel experience as still photography is.

Fortunately, there are many, many still cameras that can produce great, stabilized video. The only additional non-still camera gear I bring on my trips is a GoPro (which I also use for snorkeling, skiing, etc) and more recently an Insta 360.