The Value of Sharpness

My ratio isn't too good... I've shot maybe 20 rolls in the M3 so far (in 3 months, I intend to shoot at least that much in a month during the summer and when I move to a city where I can shoot street more), and 2 of the photos are good enough for me to get them framed and show them in a civic center show. I might have picked an average of 2 per roll to upload to the internet, but I didn't get prints of most of them.
 
i'm not nearly as steady as i used to be and it bothers me too.

last sunday, with my first sitting for the one light portrait project, i put the panasonic digital on a light tripod knowing i have difficulty holding a lighter camera steady. the shots were impessively sharp. when using the zeiss ikon i hand held the camera thinking i would do better because it's a bit more weighty that the plastic panasonic. the zi shots were not nearly as sharp, ok but not really sharp.
what the zi had going for it was that i could move around and take shots without alot of time spent setting up.
i will have to decide what to do for the next session and what is more important.
 
Here's a thought:

it's not about sharpness, it's about focus..

A picture can have motion blur and be effective. But as soon as there's a hint of incorrect focus it immediately looses impact, even if the subject is frozen at 1/1000..
 
KBG32:
Many of the most well known street photographers - Frank, Klein, Louis Faurer, Moriyama, etc., their images were not always tack sharp.
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Moriyama and Frank and Fauer focused on the grain, so using films such as Kodachrome 200 or 400 BW, such as the late, great APX 400, with good hard grain, helps deceives the eye, and keeps at bay a bit the perfectionists and overly fastidious in the crowd...Photography already is too anal, we all need to loosen up and live a bit.

And take a look at the great, underated Sergio Larrain whose book London 1958-59 is still available. Not a sharp picture in the bunch, but what engagement with reality, and what poetry.
 
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also check out gilles peress "the silence" for examples of blurry things that are amazing. I would suggest my own book, because I use blur a lot, but that would be self-serving. Also, for a little more shadow detail, try a borax bath after the main developer. 3 minutes, and a tablespoon of borax to a liter of water for the solution.
 
clarence said:
Sorry Peter. Nope to what? How do you work miracles with an unsharp print? I already use a condenser enlarger.
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Sorry Clarence, it was late at night. That was simply a nope to whether I was facing a similar philosophical crises. I've had plenty of pics either a bit unsharp or off focus so my response has been to increase DOF in certain situations, sometimes in conjunction with using a faster film.
 
summaron said:
KBG32:


Moriyama and Frank and Fauer focused on the grain, so using films such as Kodachrome 200 or 400 BW, such as the late, great APX 400, with good hard grain, helps deceives the eye, and keeps at bay a bit the perfectionists and overly fastidious in the crowd...Photography already is too anal, we all need to loosen up and live a bit.

And take a look at the great, underated Sergio Larrain whose book London 1958-59 is still available. Not a sharp picture in the bunch, but what engagement with reality, and what poetry.
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I agree with a lot of what you say. Frank and Faurer used what film they could at the time. They didn"t focus on the "grain". Moriyama has used it to his best advantage though.
 
I saw this Capa image several years ago in a museum printed over six feet wide...It is not about the sharpness, it is about the image.
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What's great about the Capa image is that it broken up in at least five places all over the frame. It's in the corners as much as in the center. It's a visual battlefield of its own.
 
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clarence said:
I get hot under the collar when people like Stephanie say they get acceptable results shooting at 1/15s with an 85mm lens.
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I won't show you the ones I've shot at 85-90mm at 1/15 or less, then. You'd have to run out into a blizzard 😉
 
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I don't believe that your instinct for sharpness is incorrect. However it should not control the reason you shoot. Surely you don't shoot to produce sharpness.
8" is a rather large enlargement for 35mm, perhaps you should print smaller initially to see if there is any 'image value' before printing larger to look at 'technical value'. Printing large will probably cause you to focus on technical quality 🙂

The shot above was damaged by my seeing and taking it too quickly. It features camera and subject movement, badly chosen shutter speed and probably more. I don't think the damage ruins the shot completely though.

BTW, I would suggest that exploring deliberate un-sharpness might be a way to work through the sharpness fetish. Not just subject movement but camera movement as well. There is a huge range of creative possibilities there. I have a special folder of unsharpness on photo.net where I keep my weird stuff. It seems that different cameras do different things with blur 🙂

Good luck!
Thanks,
James
 
I took a photo the other night when some friends were over for dinner and the focus was way off due to red wine and lack of attention ... but when I looked at the pic I soon realised that the blurriness was what made it appeal to me. The same photo with that typical digital sharpness that my D70 normally produces would have been an instant delete! 🙂

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Just check the portraits in the critique thread #65. The shot of the geisha there is anything but sharp, yet it's interesting and has a certain beauty to it that might not have been there if it had been tack sharp.
 
Thank you very much for all your replies and advice.

Today I printed one blurred 35mm image on purpose, just to see how it would look like at 8x10, and it is not unpleasant, though I have to say that I personally prefer my sharp photographs.

It was also therapeutic, printing my medium format negatives at 8x10.

Clarence
 
I find that 8x10 is the usual enlargement limit of a typical 35mm neg if you are looking for high technical quality including sharpness. If the camera was on a tripod, or you got lucky and held it very still at the moment of exposure, you can get more enlargement out of it. This is with examining the print at arm's length, and with 400 sped film that I usually use.
 
i prefer sharp hi-res images too. i have a 6x7 rangefinder, and 35mm rangefinder. when i'm in a situation where i'm not intruding with the camera (with friends, family, as a tourist), i use the 6x7 and am very strict with my shutter speed and aperture (for DOF reasons). for all other situations, the 35 from the hip is fine. Clarence, you may find you're not using the best camera and film set up for a given situation. i've just recently started thinking ahead to which camera/film fits the situation i expect to be shooting in, and this has helped me get a few more keepers.
 
To an extent I don't worry horribly at how sharp a lens is. I do worry about focus vs camera movement but I've been thinking. If I don't care much about how "sharp" a lens can be, why am I spending so much for a leica lens instead of a russian copy? yes I know there is bokeh and construction but how many russian lenses can I break before I get to the price of the Leica glass? So I guess sharpness is important to me in some respects! I loooove a tack sharp image. But I don't use it as my criteria for printing!

Have you ever looked at Ansel Adams prints. Amazing how unsharp a good portion of his prints are simply because he was using 1930's technology!
 
Like they say, you can only get the full character of a lens when it's mounted on a tripod. Having said that, good modern glass can get you contrast or a certain colour rendition even when there is motion blur. They also tend to work better at large apertures.

RdEoSg said:
To an extent I don't worry horribly at how sharp a lens is. I do worry about focus vs camera movement but I've been thinking. If I don't care much about how "sharp" a lens can be, why am I spending so much for a leica lens instead of a russian copy? yes I know there is bokeh and construction but how many russian lenses can I break before I get to the price of the Leica glass? So I guess sharpness is important to me in some respects! I loooove a tack sharp image. But I don't use it as my criteria for printing!

Have you ever looked at Ansel Adams prints. Amazing how unsharp a good portion of his prints are simply because he was using 1930's technology!
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even in small book size, many classics of HCB are rather blurry. He did'n't care too much (but still he used no cheapo point and shoot!).
It's up to you. If you can't tolerate unsharpness in 8x10 (inch, i guess), there are some ways to walk but will mean compromises.
 
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