Absent Bokeh-So sharp your eyes will bleed

[venchka]

Jumping in the Wayback Machine last night. I went to visit a friend and RFF member. Our mission was to scan some recent 4x5 negatives. I also took along my binder of ancient negatives. Right on top were pages holding 3 rolls of 120 Tri-X 400 that I shot in the vicinity of Holmesville, Mississippi on November 21 & 22, 1973. The camera was a Rapid Omega 100 and the lens was the normal Konica Omegaron 90mm f/3.5. Processing was D-76, 1:1, 11 minutes at 68 F.

:bang: :bang: :bang: :bang: Why, oh WHY?, did I sell this camera and lens.

Anyway, this is the place to show us your photographs without any regard to out of focus areas. Stop 'em down and go for the tack, razor, needle, clinical, brutal sharpness we know that our favorite lenses can produce.

Here are my first entries in this exercise. "Homage to old wood and weeds"

Thanks for looking.

 

[payasam]

For press photographers in the US in the early 1950s, the ideal photo was one in which everything was sharp. To attain this end they used powerful flash-guns at small apertures. Afraid that approach does not appeal to me: I much prefer the way the Europeans worked.

 

[visiondr]

Very nice images. I really like the second one. While it is possible to get very sharp images in 35 mm (tripod, slow film, etc), nothing beats a big neg... nothing.

There seems to be a bent among a lot of RF users toward shallow DOF as a primary technique. I'll have to admit I'm among that group. I should really reconsider that notion. Thanks for the reminder.

 

[payasam]

I don't know if there's any such tendency, Ron: for some pictures you want more depth of field, for others you want it shallow.