[jsherman999]

A friend of mine used to post (link) images in some "photography" forums, in such a manner that the author wasn't apparent (he would mention that later). Invariably, people would complain about the IQ - lousy, lots of "noise" (grain, actually), no details in shadows... a total failure.
And so we would find out that Henri Cartier-Bresson, Brassai and others like them were incompetent fools who couldn't make a good picture even if their life depended on it

This has been done often, with usually hilarious results, people lecturing the H.C.B poster on composition, focus, etc. The Online Photographer did the original article on that IIRC.

H.C.B and his ilk are doing something different, though. 'Art photography' for lack of a better term generally is not overly concerned with IQ. Most other types of photography are, with the exception of maybe some reportage and tabloid style gotcha shots.

Even street shooting can benefit from sharpness and good dynamic range - these things enhance a great composition, not detract from it. Most new, amateur OOF or noisy street shots seem like forced lomo, slightly obvious. HCB's out of focus shots weren't usually by design, they were that way because he was trying to very quickly grab the shot using his MF rangefinder and didn't quite nail it (he has admitted this, but thought that the composition and 'event' did not warrant perfect focus anyway.)

And before anyone sniffs that they are concerned with 'art', and not 'regular' photography that depends on such bourgeois concepts as sharpness, contrast, bokeh, lack of chroma noise and dynamic range... know that you are not HCB, and these things will probably matter to other's enjoyment of your photography more than you think.


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[baro-nite]

I guess you haven't looked on Flickr, or horrible sites like 500px recently. Bad HDR, hipstamatic crap, iPhones, camera phones, Lomo, bad Photoshopping, cross-processing, hipsters using time-expired film in old SLR's, and other low IQ vulgarities have been dominating the photographic world recently. High IQ certainly isn't what it is all about today by a long shot ...

You're right, Flickr and 500px had much better work, on average, back in HCB's day.

[johnmflores]

And before anyone sniffs that they are concerned with 'art', and not 'regular' photography that depends on such bourgeois concepts as sharpness, contrast, bokeh, lack of chroma noise and dynamic range... know that you are not HCB, and these things will probably matter to other's enjoyment of your photography more than you think.


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Oh no, I better cancel my order of HCB monogrammed Polo shirts!

[jsherman999]

Oh no, I better cancel my order of HCB monogrammed Polo shirts!

Me too

Although I still may be him for halloween.

[rawr]

some of us would like that extra bit of edge, that stop less DoF, that extra 25% on on each side of the frame, that cleanliness from noise that a larger sensor would provide.

LOL. But still, the 5D2 is the third most popular camera on flickr ...

What I am saying is that probably a good proportion of the Photoshop/HDR etc horrors on flickr, and out in the world generally, are based on 5D2 and other FF images. Also look at all those FF-using wedding photogs out there who use their FF Canon's and Nikons and even Phase One's and Hassies, and then *routinely* apply horrible vignetting, filters, do some weird cropping and other stuff in PP that destroys IQ.

So what does that all mean? Only in a 'pure' laboratory sense does FF have the IQ advantages you specify. But it seems no one today - least of all most professionals (and probably 99% of PFF forum members too) - presents their stuff straight out of camera anymore. Even FF bearing photo-journalists out in Libya or somewhere will often run their stuff through a Lightroom preset or two before submitting their work.

This all kind of weakens the case for the IQ advantages of FF, I think.

[jsherman999]

...
So what does that all mean? Only in a 'pure' laboratory sense does FF have the IQ advantages you specify. But it seems no one today - least of all most professionals (and probably 99% of PFF forum members too) - presents their stuff straight out of camera anymore. Even FF bearing photo-journalists out in Libya or somewhere will often run their stuff through a Lightroom preset or two before submitting their work.

This all kind of weakens the case for the IQ advantages of FF, I think.

The less NR needed, the better for detail retention and skin texture/tones. And of course you can't fake DOF control, at least without weird, bad results.

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[rawr]

The less NR needed, the better for detail retention and skin texture/tones. And of course you can't fake DOF control, at least without weird, bad results.

But it all comes out of someone's RAW or JPEG engine, where a lot of the decisions about what good IQ means will have been made for you already by the developers of the software. And a lot of pros who (for example) run their high-end FF lens/body combos through DxO or LR or C1 are more than happy with that aspect of the technology nowadays.