A release from sharpness

[namelast]

Certainly there must be a great audience for fuzzy photos, but I've never found it. I don't care how famous the photographer, if the photos are out of focus, I still don't like them.

Do you like Robert Capa, Sitemistic?

 

[namelast]

Fair enough. Do you like that photo, anyway?

 

[Roger Hicks]

Are there any general rules to be extracted here? Surely not. Some unsharp pics work; some don't.

To go back to what I think I understood in the original post, yes, I find a Leica mighty liberating next to an 8x10 inch or bigger, or even roll-film, and I certainly felt a flash of recognition when I read the post.

Overall, I get better pics from my Leicas than from all my LF kit (4x5 to 12x15 inch) put together. But there are others who love the whole LF ritual and process. Best of luck to them. Who cares? We're all doing this either for enjoyment, or because it makes money, or sometimes both, and trying to lay one person's trip on another is not very profitable.

I'll often use long and VERY long hand-held shots. Some work. Some don't. Some, I really think "if that were sharp, it would be great." But I get enough that I do like, with long exposures, that I carry on doing it.

Cheers,

R.

 

[kalokeri]

When I posted this thread I was referring to camera motion induced by very slow shutters speeds. Nothing to do with any inherent characteristics of the lens.

...

It is the last piece ---handheld at slow speeds---that I was referring to. There was a time I would not shoot a picture if I knew from the outset was going to be soft. Now I make the exposure and wrestle with the softness later. A mental wrestling for me.

...

First attempt of a contribution:

Even though I try to make pictures that are technically ok, exspecially "sharp" in the meaning of "focussed on the right point", I wouldn´t miss a special moment because I know that it only can be made with slow shutter speed.

So - in this part of the question "sharp or not" I´m with Steve. It doesn´t matter how gorgeous the technical merits of the lens, the camera are. If you don´t take a picture that may be out of focus, blurry and unsharp you miss the picture.

Thomas

 

[kalokeri]

Second attempt of a contribution:

http://www.editionbraus.de/?id=187&aid=208

If you follow the link above you´ll find a describtion of a book by Lorenzo Castore. Most of the pictures are colourful but unsharp, wiggly but transport a depth of feeling and emotion they never gad without technical failures.

(Sorry, the link only leads to a site in german; there must be an english site that promotes the same book)

Thomas

 

[andreas]

Compare a Robert Frank with Ansel Adams. Compare a Gursky to a Todd Hido landscape. Which one is better?
As a professional printer over the last decade i had to make thousands of prints, mostly b/w. Give me a unsharp image with some meaning over a technically perfect without, every day. Sharpness is just technique, everyone can do that.
It`s all about energy.

 

[GeneW]

Are there any general rules to be extracted here? Surely not. Some unsharp pics work; some don't.

Roger, that pretty well sums it up. It's somewhat pointless to debate the issue, though I feel a resonance with the original post. I think what most of us enjoy from time to time is a change of pace -- a different approach to our photography. It can be therapeutic to go from highly sharp to soft -- either with slow shutter speeds, wide open lenses, or with a Holga or pinhole. Experimentation is fun, and healthy, imo.

Gene

 

[tomasis]

Give me a unsharp image with some meaning over a technically perfect without, every day. Sharpness is just technique, everyone can do that.
It`s all about energy.

do you mean this by increasing the contrast? I found that impression of sharpness is much related to contrast.

Say, 50/1.4 lux asph looks painfully sharp compared to predecessor. But since the newer lens has higher microcontrast or/and contrast so the impression of sharpness is bigger if the lens is more contrasty.

Anyway, I would to love take a large sheet with large format camera and ortho film to get that old type picture from year 1850.

 

[namelast]

It's a historical record. It works as that. But I'm sure even Capa wished that it had been sharp.

Cool, I think the same.
Still, do you like that particular fuzzy photo (for whatever reason, and I don't think that the photo was that sharp anyway from the start, it was taken shortly after dawn in amid bullets flying everywhere) of a great photographer? Or not?

 

[kevin m]

I think we're all a bit uncomfortable with too much ambiguity. "Sharpness" is something somewhat definitive, that can be measured, whereas the elements that make a picture "work" often can't.

 

[Al Kaplan]

Tomasis, you can get that look of nineteenth century films by using a blue filter over the lens, and an uncoated lens will give you that bit of flare. Look around for an old Rolleiflex from before World War II. 120 film is lot cheaper than 8 X 10 inch film. (18 X 24 cm? 20 x 25cm?)

 

[namelast]

Thanks for the opinion.
In my opinion the fuzzyness gives better the sense of action and drama than a static sharp photo here.

 

[tripod]

I think the technical "deficiencies" of the image help convey the nightmare-ishness of the situation. It more easily reaches iconic status due to it's lack of fine detail. In a way, it is absolutely perfect, yet accidentally so. It becomes a "room 101" * allowing the viewer to supply their own detail.

*Georg Orwell, 1984

 

[tripod]

But any as good in a non-technical sense?

 

[Sparrow]

there are many sharp paintings of Jesus............. I'd trade them all for one blurred photo, how about you?


PS someone said that but I can't remember who

 

[Roger Hicks]

Had some photographer shot a photo in 2007 with the military storming a beach and it looked like that, it would have gone straight into the trash can.

I find it hard to agree -- or rather, I believe that if it had, it would have been a severe failure of aesthetic judgement on the part of whoever put it there, which probably makes it distressingly easy to agree.

Which immediately raises the question of aesthetics in reporting, especially reporting of war and tragedy...

Cheers,

R.

 

[Sparrow]

there was also a GI who took clear shots of the landings, and the fighting in Normandy but didn't get them to press in time, I also can"t remember his name
he lost a lot of his work to the censor.

 

[bmattock]

Ned - I don't understand your point here. Sorry to have missed your point....

Back on topic - it seems some (especially RF) photographers will accept a degree of, as I see it, technical incompetency as having more "soul" or something, whereas they should just be looking at the pictures and thinking "that's not actually very good"

Conversely I do like the difference in values to be found in RFF compared to certain other forums that only seem to shoot brick walls and newspapers.....

For me, a photograph either works or it does not. Whether it was made with a fixed-lens rangefinder, a Brownie, or a Holga matters not at all. The degree to which it was manipulated in the darkroom or photoshopped do not matter. What matters to me is how the photograph makes me feel. Sharp, unsharp, who cares? What matters is what I experience when I see it.

Has anyone ever complained that a painting was 'not sharp'?

 

[Dogman]

I have to disagree on the Capa photos being only a historical record. Long before I ever shot a picture, I was a kid in school who also looked at pictures in books. Before I knew who Robert Capa was, I remember seeing those pictures and thinking how frightening it must have been to have been there at that time. They were particularly interesting to me since one of my older cousins had been wounded during that invasion. Capa's accidentally damaged photos evoked an emotional response for me. Would the photos have evoked the same response if they had been technically perfect? I don't know--never will know. But I find that Robert Frank's photos communicate on an emotional level as well without the need for technical perfection.

 

[Gabriel M.A.]

Has anyone ever complained that a painting was 'not sharp'?

Yes. Monet's paintings fit the complaint, btw.

I hold the theory that the quest for "sharpness" is proportional to the lack of vision.