Does sharpness matter?

[VinceC]

>> HCB meant that as a joke<<

That makes sense.

He does discuss the subject a little in his introduction to "The Decisive Moment" (a title chosen by his publisher from a phrase he used in the introductory essay):

"I am constantly amused by the notion that some people have about photographic technique -- a notion which reveals itself in an insatiable craving for sharpness of images. Is this the passion of an obsession? Or do these people hope, by this 'trompe l'oeil' technique, to get to closer grips with reality? In either case, they are just as far away from the real problem as those of that other generation which used to endow all its photographic anecdotes with an intentional unsharpness such as was deemed to be 'artistic.'"

 

[ray_g]

Here's the story:

From Newsweek, 5/25/2003:

It was Newsweek's radical idea to have Helmut Newton, known for his erotic and extremely composed photographs, shoot a portrait of Cartier-Bresson, master of the wholly natural Decisive Moment. Cartier-Bresson loathes having his picture taken, and when he must, he insists the photographer be a member of Magnum, the cooperative he cofounded half a century ago. Newton is not.

Yet they met up in Paris last week for the shoot. "He looked good, very good, says Newton, 83. ?He did everything I wanted, and was so sweet. I shot two rolls in color because he has very beautiful blue eyes, and four of black-and-white, because, being Cartier-Bresson, it has to be black-and-white. Though their approaches are so different, Newton has long admired Cartier-Bresson. His pictures are about truth, Newton says. Real people, like the picnic by the Marne. I like that one best. They first encountered each other 25 or 30 years ago, in a Paris cafe. I felt he turned his nose up at me, Newton recalls. A few years later Newton said in a television interview that, although he loved Cartier-Bresson's work, he believed the feelings were not mutual. Soon after, Newton received a postcard from Cartier-Bresson. It read: I like you very much.

Newton finally saw Cartier-Bresson again last year, when Vanity Fair asked Cartier-Bresson to shoot a portrait of Newton for a portfolio by photographers older than 80. Cartier-Bresson invited Newton and his wife, June (known by her nom de camera, Alice Springs), for lunch at his flat in the rue de Rivoli. Then they walked to a nearby park to take the picture. He had his little Leica, Newton remembers, and he simply would point and shoot. Since Cartier-Bresson's hand isn't as steady as it used to be, some of the pictures were a bit fuzzy. Sharpness is a bourgeois concept, he told Newton. Newton sits back and laughs: I thought that was just divine.

 

[kestas]

Well, let's just put this another way. There is no good excuse for bad technique. If your lack of sharpness is from poor technique alone, then it is not a good thing. But if your unsharpness is an aesthetic tool to make your photo, then it is fine.

indeed. and this is a reason why people own hogas, dianas and old russian zenits with ugly helios-44 lenses along with super modern leica, nikon, zeiss etc. gear

 

[Spyderman]

Thanks for the quotes. Interesting reading 😉

Kestas: do you mean that Helios is as poor a lens as Holga ? you must be joking...

PS: this picture by Kestas is just beautiful... Thanks for sharing...

 

[kestas]

Kestas: do you mean that Helios is as poor a lens as Holga ? you must be joking...

no, Ondrej. i like helios-44 wide open for old-fashioned, soft look, very different from holga. btw i own both and enjoy both. but i don't think the helios-44 is very sharp and technicaly perfect lens for todays standards. but anyway i like it

 

[rogue_designer]

For me its an issue of control. If I feel like the softness was a choice on the part of the photographer, it bothers me less than if I feel it was a mistake (no matter how good the mistake is). I like to know that lens, or that setting, etc, was a choice.

But then I'm a control freak. I'm working on it.

 

[Avotius]

no, sharpness is a tool of the photographer, he uses it to signify things that he wants noticed or to bring out. When using sharpness and sharpnesses together with all different parts of his craft he can manipulate a person in such a way to see something that it bends their reality.

 

[GeneW]

All things being equal, I prefer sharpness in my photographs. But I'm not obsessive about it and often use lenses like an M42 Industar 50mm L/Z or Helios 44M 58mm. I like Jupiter 8's too, even wide open. I keep thinking about getting a Holga just to explore the 'imperfect' side of things and keep loose about technique. Having said all that, I really love the sharpness of my Hexanon-M 50/2.

Gene

 

[NL2377]

sharpness is one aspect of a photo that makes it what it is.
sometimes sharpness makes the photo, you look at it and immediately think 'man, that's sharp' and wonder what lens/film was used.
it's not a bad thing or a good thing, just part of the process.

I totally agree...

It's like lens signatures.... having a 50mm CV, a 50 Canon, and a 50 Leica... they all have different purposes and can make or break the photo, just as sharpness or the lack there-of...

 

[nightfly]

I think Bresson though joking with Newton really did see sharpness or at least obsession with sharpness, as a bourgeois concept as the other quote indicates.

Really though, most photographs that have had a great impact on me aren't sharp or technically perfect, or even good, I'm thinking "The Americans", anything by Daido Moriyama and many others by photographers I admire Bresson included.

All this technical stuff is secondary to the content. I think in many cases, I'm thinking of Ansel Adams in particular, that sharpness and focus can often result in lifeless, boring, though technically perfect photos. The obsessiveness of the photographer comes through in the stultifying photograph he produces.

There are probably more bad blurry photos on the whole, than bad sharp ones but I don't think sharpness is really a tool of the photographer, because many photographs could not be sharp and still be made at the moment they were. So much of photography is about the moment and that moment isn't always brightly lit with a tripod standing by.

But boring pictures of cats are boring pictures of cats, blurry or sharp.

 

[Keith]

This is a digicam shot take recently and the lack of sharpness caused by the fact that it was hand held @ 1/2 sec and very noisy due to the Canon being crap @ 400 ISO gives it something I hadn't expected. I was actually only using the digicam as a lightmeter to set up my film camera which was on the tripod beside me. The film shot which didn't turn out the way I wanted anyway ... was intended to be sharp! I finished up with a photo I love taken with a crap camera that I don't particularly revere. 😕

 

[NL2377]

sharpness is important sometimes. It is sometimes not important.


This image relies on sharpness for its composition.
http://www.rangefinderforum.com/photopost/showphoto.php?photo=41601&ppuser=2147

this one does not.
http://www.rangefinderforum.com/photopost/showphoto.php?photo=33027&ppuser=2147

It's telling me that I do not have permission to view Images in your second example's category... any idea why????

 

[40oz]

IMHO, this is kind of a silly question. If it is acceptable to use DOF to isolate the subject, then how can one ask if sharpness matters? Of course it matters. So does the lack thereof. It's kind of like asking if proper exposure matters. As has been stated already, the way it is used certainly has an impact on the photo.

As far as the "pursuit of sharpness," I have many inconsequential shots taken from the door of my apartment building with all of my cameras. I am familiar with the way the trees in the distance look from each one. The first shot with my Kiev 4/J-8 combo left me speechless. Mostly as the lens had rather low expectations attached, but mainly because the detail and appearance was superior to what I considered my "big gun," a Minolta SLR. It was just a bit of a jolt to see such superior results from such an unassuming package from the Ukraine. Yet that doesn't render all my other cameras useless. Just that the Kiev I can depend on for capturing the details in shots where that is important. The others, only to a varying degree. I'm sure someday I will have a similar experience with another lens.

Sure sharpness matters. But just because it matters doesn't mean nothing else matters.

 

[John Camp]

I don't have any fanatically held position on this, but I went to a photo show the other day that had key photographs by most of the famous American art photographers of the twentieth century. I may have missed one or two, but I believe that all of the photos except one was sharp, and with the one that wasn't ("White Night" by Adolf Fassbender), it's hard to tell whether or not it was deliberately unsharp. I thought of another famous one that seems unsharp, "Running White Deer," by Paul Caponigro, but if you look in the background of that one, the leaves of the trees *are* sharp, so I don't know what that means. It's both sharp and unsharp, but the unsharp part is what makes the photo.

JC