Avotius
Some guy
One of the topics my photography teacher loves to laugh about is how so many chinese photographers (and I think maybe all over the world) subscribe to the idea that "sharp is a good image". At my photography school a embarrassingly little amount of time is spend on how to print, darkroom, photoshop, self development of film and all those things. Im talking about really short time...maybe a total of half a semester barely touching all of the subjects I just mentioned. In fact our total darkroom time was just one single class and a total about maybe 10 hours. Our photoshop class was one week long and it shows in many of my classmates who look on in amazement as I use the channel mixer in photoshop to change black and white photos or this magic thing called USM that makes your photos.....sharper!
I like a good sharp photo just as much as the next guy, but I dont believe you need to obsess so much about it. Recently in pingyao china I met a guy shooting with a contax 645 and a phase one p25 back. I asked him if he was a studio photographer. "No". Landscape photographer? "No". What do you shoot? "life snapshots" (loosely translated from chinese, the word means that he takes everyday photos the same as most people who go buy a small point and shoot use when they go out to eat, go on vacation, and the sort"). I asked him why in the world would he need such a large and expensive setup for shooting snapshots and he replied rather rudely "sharper is just better".
The other day I was in "computer city" here in my town and there was a guy in the camera store buying a 1dmk3. He didnt know anything about photography which as apparent by him asking the clerk why canon or nikon is better, what the numbers on the lens ment, why was the camera so expensive...but when the clerk took that camera out of the box and handed it to him the guys eyes lit up like a flash, it was big, heavy, and it made his ego run like crazy. Next he bought the biggest lens he could afford, a 70-200 2.8 IS and mounted the camera and took off happy as a clam, only to return a few minutes later to ask why he couldnt take any pictures, oh....he forgot to buy a memory card. He gets the biggest one they got then takes off again....low and behold a few minutes later here he is again..."the camera keeps shutting itself off, I think its broken" the guy starts getting hostile, the clerk explains to him that the battery needs to be charged up, best over night. The man gets very angry and says the clerk has cheated him and slams the camera down on the glass case breaking the lens hood off his new expensive lens and the glass case in the process. Anyway, I think you get the point.
This brings me back to my school where a teacher used our departments horseman 4x5 rail camera to shoot photos at a guys birthday then held an exhibition of these photos blown up to over 80 inches. The pictures were the kind you would see flipping though a friends birthday photos. Poor lighting, odd colors, lots of half blurred people drinking with those awkward looks on their face. When I approached the teacher and asked him about the necessity of using a 4x5 camera to shoot such photos around the table he said "the photos need to be sharp to be good" which I went on to ask how he could say that when most of the people in his shots were heavily blurred from moving after using such long exposure times with a slow lens, surely a big aperture lens on a digital camera or at least a flash could have helped a lot to which he replied "a digital camera isnt sharp enough to blow up so large and large aperture lenses are expensive, flash is not required, you can see whats going on." Well.....there is that "artists perspective" of course but not in what he was doing. Shooting snapshots of your drinking buddies around a table with no care to composition, lighting, effect, or even color balance doesnt cut it for me as art let alone huge gallery prints.. Using a 4x5 camera on a tripod at a situation like that is just annoying. Just.....why?
We have probably all ran into these situations or discussed them here and else ware but really, what do you think?
Well it comes down to this for me: So many photographers or wannabes are so obsessed with image quality that they dont realize what they have now is so much better then what most people had 10 years ago and that as technology marches on as with photography and much of the rest of the world, people have forgotten the values of what they are doing. We buy cameras to take pictures, recently I find myself humbled once more by my yashica gsn though a photo that I took over a year ago on a recently developed "lost" roll of film. For the very small few of us absolute image quality truly is necessary, for the others like hobbyist thats fine too, but for the rest (especially those folks over at the dpreview forums) who buy every evolution of a digicam or dslr or their "prestige" lenses and the complain about image quality and the such.....get a life. Image quality takes a huge step every decade from lens design to film emulsion to sensor technology, you never are going to see the end of it and the grass will always look greener on the other side so just live with it, and if you cant....take up botany.
I like a good sharp photo just as much as the next guy, but I dont believe you need to obsess so much about it. Recently in pingyao china I met a guy shooting with a contax 645 and a phase one p25 back. I asked him if he was a studio photographer. "No". Landscape photographer? "No". What do you shoot? "life snapshots" (loosely translated from chinese, the word means that he takes everyday photos the same as most people who go buy a small point and shoot use when they go out to eat, go on vacation, and the sort"). I asked him why in the world would he need such a large and expensive setup for shooting snapshots and he replied rather rudely "sharper is just better".
The other day I was in "computer city" here in my town and there was a guy in the camera store buying a 1dmk3. He didnt know anything about photography which as apparent by him asking the clerk why canon or nikon is better, what the numbers on the lens ment, why was the camera so expensive...but when the clerk took that camera out of the box and handed it to him the guys eyes lit up like a flash, it was big, heavy, and it made his ego run like crazy. Next he bought the biggest lens he could afford, a 70-200 2.8 IS and mounted the camera and took off happy as a clam, only to return a few minutes later to ask why he couldnt take any pictures, oh....he forgot to buy a memory card. He gets the biggest one they got then takes off again....low and behold a few minutes later here he is again..."the camera keeps shutting itself off, I think its broken" the guy starts getting hostile, the clerk explains to him that the battery needs to be charged up, best over night. The man gets very angry and says the clerk has cheated him and slams the camera down on the glass case breaking the lens hood off his new expensive lens and the glass case in the process. Anyway, I think you get the point.
This brings me back to my school where a teacher used our departments horseman 4x5 rail camera to shoot photos at a guys birthday then held an exhibition of these photos blown up to over 80 inches. The pictures were the kind you would see flipping though a friends birthday photos. Poor lighting, odd colors, lots of half blurred people drinking with those awkward looks on their face. When I approached the teacher and asked him about the necessity of using a 4x5 camera to shoot such photos around the table he said "the photos need to be sharp to be good" which I went on to ask how he could say that when most of the people in his shots were heavily blurred from moving after using such long exposure times with a slow lens, surely a big aperture lens on a digital camera or at least a flash could have helped a lot to which he replied "a digital camera isnt sharp enough to blow up so large and large aperture lenses are expensive, flash is not required, you can see whats going on." Well.....there is that "artists perspective" of course but not in what he was doing. Shooting snapshots of your drinking buddies around a table with no care to composition, lighting, effect, or even color balance doesnt cut it for me as art let alone huge gallery prints.. Using a 4x5 camera on a tripod at a situation like that is just annoying. Just.....why?
We have probably all ran into these situations or discussed them here and else ware but really, what do you think?
Well it comes down to this for me: So many photographers or wannabes are so obsessed with image quality that they dont realize what they have now is so much better then what most people had 10 years ago and that as technology marches on as with photography and much of the rest of the world, people have forgotten the values of what they are doing. We buy cameras to take pictures, recently I find myself humbled once more by my yashica gsn though a photo that I took over a year ago on a recently developed "lost" roll of film. For the very small few of us absolute image quality truly is necessary, for the others like hobbyist thats fine too, but for the rest (especially those folks over at the dpreview forums) who buy every evolution of a digicam or dslr or their "prestige" lenses and the complain about image quality and the such.....get a life. Image quality takes a huge step every decade from lens design to film emulsion to sensor technology, you never are going to see the end of it and the grass will always look greener on the other side so just live with it, and if you cant....take up botany.
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LocoDuck
Wind, Click, Capture
I like this ^. I don't really have much interesting to say in reply, but thank you for giving me something to think about.
Steve B
Established
That's funny!
That's funny!
I love the mental image of a 4x5 at the party. Wow! But I bet he had very high res images of blurry people.
I think you have a good perspective. A good image is more than the sum of its parts, relative sharpness being only one part. And equipment overkill can be a really limiting factor. I just hope people have as much fun laughing at me as I have laughing at them.
That's funny!
I love the mental image of a 4x5 at the party. Wow! But I bet he had very high res images of blurry people.
I think you have a good perspective. A good image is more than the sum of its parts, relative sharpness being only one part. And equipment overkill can be a really limiting factor. I just hope people have as much fun laughing at me as I have laughing at them.
Chris101
summicronia
Ya. You what they say... Sharpness is for those who have nothing interesting to photograph.
dnk512
Well-known
Everybody seems to admire a sharp photo. But, no photo endures the passing of time solely on sharpness.
I think sharpness has a necessary minimum, same as exposure, same as composition. As long as all those are within acceptable range, I can manipulate/improve them at print time.
Capturing the right moment, from the right point of view, has no alternative.
I think sharpness has a necessary minimum, same as exposure, same as composition. As long as all those are within acceptable range, I can manipulate/improve them at print time.
Capturing the right moment, from the right point of view, has no alternative.
Attachments
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c.poulton
Well-known
Great essay, Avotius,
I think that you should introduce your teacher to the Holga - that should get his head spinning.
I think that you should introduce your teacher to the Holga - that should get his head spinning.
buckpago
Established
[SIZE=-1]`Sharpness is a bourgeois concept.` Henri Cartier-Bresson [/SIZE]
pvdhaar
Peter
Sharp has got nothing to do with a good picture.
The key word is 'focus' ..
The key word is 'focus' ..
Chaser
Well-known
Maybe the teacher with the 4x5 was trying to be like Eggleston and his 5x7. Though sounds like the teacher forgot the strobes and assistants.
http://www.mensvogue.com/arts/books/slideshows/2007/01/william_eggleston
http://www.mensvogue.com/arts/books/slideshows/2007/01/william_eggleston
V
varjag
Guest
Is your photography class mandatory?
maddoc
... likes film again.
Sharp is the ONLY correct ...
Sharp is the ONLY correct ...
... and only the latest ASPH glass is good enough for snap-shots...
Good essay ! Carrying a 4x5 camera to a birthday party and taking "snaps" of the drunken bodies to get some large prints made me smile. Personally, I do not care so much about "tack-sharp" photos, good composion and contrast / tonality are more important for me.
Sharp is the ONLY correct ...
... and only the latest ASPH glass is good enough for snap-shots...
Good essay ! Carrying a 4x5 camera to a birthday party and taking "snaps" of the drunken bodies to get some large prints made me smile. Personally, I do not care so much about "tack-sharp" photos, good composion and contrast / tonality are more important for me.
Paul T.
Veteran
There's a great photographer called Bill Steber,. who shoots what looks like reportage using a Hassie. Does he do it because it's sharper? No! For him, it's simply the lovely tonality you get, which to me makes more difference than any improved 'sharpness'.
If you have no aesthetic sense, and have no idea if a photo is good or not, you can still comment on whether it's sharp. Hence the attraction.
If you have no aesthetic sense, and have no idea if a photo is good or not, you can still comment on whether it's sharp. Hence the attraction.
S
StuartR
Guest
I agree that sharpness is not a be-all end-all in photography, but the converse is also true. That is that being blurry for the sake of being blurry isn't any good either. If you don't have a good reason to make a photo blurry then it shouldn't be blurry. Sharpness and blur are just aspects of photographs, not ends in and of themselves. If you don't have a clear idea as to what you want your photograph to be, then all the sharpness or softness in the world won't save you.
As for the 4x5 80 inch party photos...it sounds like a wonderfully surrealist venture. Glorifying the banal party photos that we always see. Of course, he probably did not mean for them to be that way, but who knows.
As for the 4x5 80 inch party photos...it sounds like a wonderfully surrealist venture. Glorifying the banal party photos that we always see. Of course, he probably did not mean for them to be that way, but who knows.
Pherdinand
the snow must go on
technical quality will never compensate for lack of emotions, or valuable content.
mfunnell
Shaken, so blurred
Well, this isn't sharp but I like it:
[Hexar RF; M-Hexanon 35/2 @ f5.6-ish; Kodak BW400CN, lab scan]
I like this too, but its even less so:
[dSLR, so look at the EXIF]
This is sharp enough to look sharp (scanned then printed at A4):
[M3, (modern) Elmar 50/2.8 handheld at 1/5th f2.8 so probably not ultimately sharp, but sharp enough]
Hmmm... There are things in all of the above that are, in fact, sharp or at least "sharp enough". But only the last has the ostensible subject as the "sharp" part.
So if "sharp is the only correct", then which bit is supposed to be sharp?
...Mike
(I hope its obvious that the question is general, rather than directed at the OP.)
[Hexar RF; M-Hexanon 35/2 @ f5.6-ish; Kodak BW400CN, lab scan]
I like this too, but its even less so:
[dSLR, so look at the EXIF]
This is sharp enough to look sharp (scanned then printed at A4):
[M3, (modern) Elmar 50/2.8 handheld at 1/5th f2.8 so probably not ultimately sharp, but sharp enough]
Hmmm... There are things in all of the above that are, in fact, sharp or at least "sharp enough". But only the last has the ostensible subject as the "sharp" part.
So if "sharp is the only correct", then which bit is supposed to be sharp?
...Mike
(I hope its obvious that the question is general, rather than directed at the OP.)
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Finder
Veteran
I think it was Adams who said there was nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy idea.
lZr
L&M
Gabriel M.A.
My Red Dot Glows For You
I like your teacher already.Avotius said:
V
varjag
Guest
Wait.. it's not the same teacher who printed wall-sized party snaps?
chikne
Well-known
dnk512 said:
Oh dear