[magkelly]

I was sitting here tonight comparing various images here and there from various 50's I have in prep for using them on my Pen and it got me to wondering how most of you feel about lens sharpness in general. Are you in the camp where you always want a lens that's as sharp as you can possibly get one or is it sometimes better to sacrifice a bit of sharpness for other qualities like bokeh, interesting color rendition, or how it renders skin tones...

As an example when I was looking at the Nikon E-series pics I noticed that while it's probably not as sharp as some of the other 50's I have it's still respectably sharp and it can also have a nice soft glow effect which seems to be very flattering on skin tones. A lot of the portraits and nature shots that I'm seeing on flickr look very nice (to me anyway) because they are pretty sharp but not so much that it's unflattering to the subject's skin or to the light on plants etc. It's not the best lens for close up photography but as a portrait lens I think I am really going to like it. It's like the lens has just a touch of a digital portrait filter but it's not done so much it's overkill.

I personally do not care much for high def portraits where you can see every pore on someone's face. I think it's unflattering and I tend to like older lenses that allow for a bit of smoothness, a bit of a glow. A lot of flower and foliage shots, same thing. I like a little bit of softness to the petals and the light, and not quite so much detail that it looks like a macro shot.

There are times for sharp, sharp. But overall I don't necessarily want the sharpest lens in my kit on my camera all the time. Sometimes I feel that sharp is just a little too sharp for me. It's like watching a video on a new TV versus the old ones. Yeah, technically the specs are better on the newer TV but sometimes watching people on the screen I just miss the old one and not being able to see every little blemish. Maybe it's because I grew up really loving all those old Hollywood glam shots and old movies but I just don't want to see quite that much detail all the time. If I can see every little dot and wrinkle on someone's face? That's just a bit too sharp for me....

You?

[JohnBee]

I never really liked the way most screens project images myself. Though I've been craving better prints or... should I say, something that is more true to life in terms of rendering and detail with prints these past few. And though I haven't actually seen it with my own eyes, an acquaintance of mine introduced me to the wonders of aluminum prints which are(according to reviews), one step closer to what we could call the next best thing.

At any rate, I'm sure as technologies continue to develop that pixels and color quality will eventually match and even exceed real world conditions in time, but... I guess there's no harm in trying to stay ahead as things continue to move forward.

Whatever the case, I've always found such things as sharpness to be either highly overrated or misunderstood. ie. I see so many pictures on the net the days that are so artificially sharpened that they seem to loose all sense of realism. Granted there is always the element of intent to consider and I'm sure many people are okay with the concept of surrealism when we consider the popularity of such things as the dragan effects and the likes. Though whenever I look at sceneries, I just can't help but wonder if they wouldn't be better off reflecting what was captures as it were rather than being turned into some overamplified hybrid or reality. Then again... that's just me and I'm sure others will feel differently.

[DSims]

Ultimate sharpness is not always better. The K50/1.2, FA77, and FA31 are good examples of lenses I've had/have that have fantastic qualities but don't always look quite as sharp as some others.

I also can't decide whether yet I like the K-5 IIs or K-5 shots more often. The K-5 IIs is fantastic in revealing details, and (probably because of this) images tend to look more 3D. But I really like the K-5 images. Perhaps the JPEG colors are coming out a little more flat on the IIs. I'm waiting for Capture One v7 to add IIs support. I'll probably be able to make a better RAW comparison when they do (I don't use the Pentax or Adobe RAW editors much, and Capture One tends to have better camera color profiles than Adobe).

[Chaos_Realm]

You?

I think Sharpness is something I put at the top of the preference list, but i also weigh the bokeh and colour rendering in as well. When it comes down to it though, you can always reduce the detail in an image, and you can use software to adjust colour and even smooth the bokeh. You just can't pull details from an image that just didn't capture them due to lack of sharpness. I guess I see PP to be a subtraction process than addition process. Needless to say I had the K50 1.2 which I feel is sharper at equal aperture than the A 50 1.4, yet I prefer the A 50 1.4 in more situations, probably something which I should investigate to find out why this is..

Just my two-bobs worth

[MetteHHH]

I agree with JohnBee that some of the post-processing sharpening you come across on the net are downright scary. An annoying example of this was when a photographer visited my son's kindergarten: The prints he sent us were so oversharpened that the kid's eyes look like they had been taken over by aliens. I still can't look at that print!

All the same, detail rendition by your lens doesn't "dictate" the end result: By using a narrow focus plane, you can choose to prioritize bokeh over detail where you want it - and even if you get too much detail in some shots, such as portraits, it is definitely easier to "lose" details you don't want by post process filtering than to _get_ details out of processing that you didn't manage to capture because of the limitations of you lens.

I think you have a good point, magkelly, that there is more to great photography than detail rendition. But I don't think I will ever find myself in a situation where too much detail becomes a problem for me as a photographer...

[Barbarosa]

from soft photo only can be soft photo or heavy postprosessed oversharpened photo, from sharp photo we can make anything we want so if we have two images with same colors, same composition it is better to have sharp than soft image, but this is not mean that soft photo can't be beautiful straight from camera.

[ihasa]

For landscapes I really do want sharpness, across the frame too. Colour, contrast and flare resistance are also important though! For people shots and other forms of close ups, as long as they're reasonably sharp (in the centre of the frame) I'm not so fussy. Bokeh and colour are more important.

[Na Horuk]

I think you nailed it. For landscape, I want sharpness across the image, but for portraits you might not want unflattering sharpness. There are probably other nuances, like colour rendering, distortion, bokeh, and aberrations. These can be more important than just sharpness.

[boriscleto]

I'm waiting for Capture One v7 to add IIs support. I'll probably be able to make a better RAW comparison when they do (I don't use the Pentax or Adobe RAW editors much, and Capture One tends to have better camera color profiles than Adobe).

Why not just use DNG?

[aurele]

You?

at the beginning i was like many "noobs" : i wanted sharpness more than anything.

So i bought sharp lens : DAL 35f2.4/ DA40 / DA*55.

And one day i opened a rock-climbing magazine : picture weren't tack sharp, sometime grainy, sometime slightly out of focus ... well, picture that were kind of missed when i was pixel peeping.
I step'd out a bit, then i realize "and so what ?" they still are beautiful. the framing, the exposure, the subject, the feeling : all was fine.

I do lots of pictures of rock-climbing now, either film or digital (both have their charms), and probably 10% of them are tack sharp, but guess what ? friends buy me some enlargement from time to time when they really love the picture, but they don't like the tack sharp ones ! it's unreal for them, like overprocessed, even if i did nothing !

i don't do landscape so i can't tell.

a good wide aperture is more likely something i would like now, or unusual lens like the 10-17.
Sharpness, i don't really need it.

[GibbyTheMole]

I'm not a "noob", (25+ years doing this stuff) but sharpness is a biggie for me. It's not the only thing, of course, but it's right up there. I'm not too worried about unflattering sharpness, since I can soften it in post if needed. But you can't put back detail that wasn't there to begin with. Bokeh & lack of aberrations, also are up there on my list.

[TheOtherRob]

Well, I am a noob and the best thing I have done so far apart from buying a Pentax over Canikon is joining a camera club (and Pentax Forums, of course!). However, one word nearly put me right off that club from the first night: "Sharpness". They are a great bunch of wonderfully generous people and I am learning lots from their cumularive decades of expertise... but jeez do they bang on about sharpness.

I come from an art background, and to my eye sharpness is a technical tool to be used. It is just one characteristic of an image. Sometimes its appropriate, sometimes its not; but I really get the feeling after about a year or so of snapping with a DSLR that photographers generally place too much emphasis on it. Someone above made a great point that once you have a sharp image you can always soften it. Better to have a good image to start with than than a bad one. But I also think that the pursuit of sharpness and other forms of technical correctness actually define the way many people shoot. You can't alter that with photoshop.

Of course, that's fine from the image maker's perspective; the artist has the final call on how they make the image. Neither am I detracting from the techical skill and artistic merit of breathtakingly sharp images (to which i can currently only aspire or occasionally achieve through luck). But I do feel that the merits of otherwise great shots can tend to be overlooked in the quest for sharpness when judged by other photographers.

[k0og]

This is a good question Magkelly, and thought provoking answers.

Maybe absolute sharpness is not such a big deal, but a "contrast of sharpness" is more important (I'm not speaking of contrast of light). For instance if the subject of interest is fairly well focused, and there is some bokeh outside of that, providing what I would call contrast of sharpness, or sharpness differential. Usually I like enough depth-of-field to be somewhat natural looking, and provide enough in-focus subject to keep my interest. Of course, there are exceptions to all "rules" when it comes to art (like some shots that are ALL bokeh, and become like light paintings).

I've found that some images where I missed the focus on the subject a little bit look better if I simulate lens blur in the area outside the subject. That seems to trick my eye to think the subject is a little sharper due to the contrast of sharpness.

Also, I like the comments that if a picture has a choice of being too sharp or too out-of-focus, it's better to make the error on the side of too much sharpness since it can be softened in post-processing.

-Joe-

[Parallax]

A member here used to have a signature line that read: "We live in an over sharpened world" (or something very close to that.)
He's right.

[normhead]

The image that sold for 250 million, highest amount on record.



I can't even read what cards the guy has in his hand... how is that good?

Now what was that you were asking about sharpness?

`Sharpness is a bourgeois concept.` - Henri Cartier-Bresson

I've been a leftist since the 50's and even I have no real concept of what "bourgeois" means, but I think it's bad.