clarence
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I don't navel gaze publicly, as a rule, but spending 8 hours in the darkroom yesterday gave me much to think about.
I looked through the hundreds of 35mm negatives I've shot and most of them were street shots, taken at a moment's notice with shutter speeds that often rendered the subjects slightly blurred. Putting them in the enlarger, I realised that even on 8x10 prints, the lack of sharpness annoyed me so much that I would not consider printing them.
Sharpness is not the main point of photography, but this crisis bothers me because the photographic process for me is incomplete if the image does not get printed sharply on an 8x10 sheet at least. I may as well take pictures with a digital point and shoot if the quality didn't matter.
I remember looking through books of photographs from Bresson et al, but the pictures are seldom at 8x10 enlargements, so I have no idea if the masters were able to consistently shoot sharp pictures. One day I shall go to a gallery.
I get hot under the collar when people like Stephanie say they get acceptable results shooting at 1/15s with an 85mm lens. I have shaky hands, and nearly failed my marksmanship tests when I was in the army. As a result I seldom shoot at less than twice the reciprocal of the focal length of the lenses I use. This is a personal bugbear, of course, but I want to know whether other photographers are facing similar philosophical crises.
Clarence
I looked through the hundreds of 35mm negatives I've shot and most of them were street shots, taken at a moment's notice with shutter speeds that often rendered the subjects slightly blurred. Putting them in the enlarger, I realised that even on 8x10 prints, the lack of sharpness annoyed me so much that I would not consider printing them.
Sharpness is not the main point of photography, but this crisis bothers me because the photographic process for me is incomplete if the image does not get printed sharply on an 8x10 sheet at least. I may as well take pictures with a digital point and shoot if the quality didn't matter.
I remember looking through books of photographs from Bresson et al, but the pictures are seldom at 8x10 enlargements, so I have no idea if the masters were able to consistently shoot sharp pictures. One day I shall go to a gallery.
I get hot under the collar when people like Stephanie say they get acceptable results shooting at 1/15s with an 85mm lens. I have shaky hands, and nearly failed my marksmanship tests when I was in the army. As a result I seldom shoot at less than twice the reciprocal of the focal length of the lenses I use. This is a personal bugbear, of course, but I want to know whether other photographers are facing similar philosophical crises.
Clarence
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