[blackcloudbrew]

I suspect that ignoring all of this, i.e., rules, is art too.

[biz-engineer]

I would like to apologize if this post is lacking interest for some people because it's not about composition or anything about art. That's why I posted in the "photo technique" section of the forum, as it is about technique and not art. Technique is there to support the creation process, and obviously technique is only a small contribution.


That said, I printed a 30 x 40 image, that ~200 PPI, shot with the K1 at 35mm f10 ISO100, shutter speed around 1/500. The image contains a tree in the foreground acting as frame and lots of trees in the distance. I can see the tree in the foreground is not sharp due to depth of field but details are big so it's looking good. However, tree in the distance are small, we can see branches slightly blurred. Luckily, I had shot several other similar images , framed slightly differently, but at f8. When I compare the trees in the distance side by side, from respectively the f10 exposure and the f8 exposure, I can see the f8 exposure is sharper. So here I have the evidence that diffraction added the blur. Concluding that diffraction already shows up at f10 , and even f8, making the 200 PPI of the print not as good as I would have initially thought.

Further research lead me to conclude that diffraction is getting in the way no matter how much larger is the sensor, unless using a tilt lens, or focus stacking. Focus stacking isn't that great either with focus breathing of the lenses.

---------- Post added 22-04-20 at 18:34 ----------

Scheimpflug doesn't increase depth of field

Yes. I agree. Scheimpflug tilts the plane of focus, so that more of the image is in focus.

---------- Post added 22-04-20 at 18:41 ----------

Massive prints don't need "true" 300dpi resolution. Does any size print?

The perception of detail , of course comes from the viewing distance. The viewing distance has been a major selling argument with analog television post WWII, because at that time the bandwidth was rather limited , as well as the image quality, but sales men had to convince customers to buy. I remember when you bought an analog TV in the 80s, the sales man would tell you to watch it from at least 2 or 3 meters. Now we have folk having 2 meter wide 4K TVs in their living room watching it from less than 2 meters away in the sofa. An image at 300 PPI looks fantastic, even 160 PPI (4K on 27"monitor) still looks fantastic without diffraction and without bayer interpolation.

---------- Post added 22-04-20 at 18:44 ----------

1) The only tilt you need is on the tripod. Tilt the camera up a little and the foreground that you can't get in focus without diffraction goes away!

That's a good idea. I thought about that one, as it borrows from the idea of lens tilt. In some cases , tilting the camera will work, in other cases it won't work because the perspective is changed, the image composition may suffer.

---------- Post added 22-04-20 at 18:49 ----------

With respect, it's not diffraction that's your enemy, but rather your expectations

My expectation went up after I spent a number of visits to check out the works of Clyde Butcher here: Florida Collection Archives - Clyde Butcher | Black & White Fine Art Photography
Also after spending time to look at Butcher's portfolio, I realize I still have a very long way to go to hope produce similar images. But let's not lose faith, maybe some days....


In particular, here is a photo of Clyde Butcher standing in front of one of his prints in a gallery. We can see the print is larger than the size of the man who created it: https://blog.lexjet.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Clyde_Butcher-America_tif.jpg

Some people looking at details in the print.... Explore Florida's beauty through Clyde Butcher photos

What do you think about that visitor having a closeup look on the print (and of the normal viewing distance of a photo print) ?

[house]

True, but I'm not talking about failed stacks. Here's a focus stack (7 exposures) I did 6 years ago. Leaving aside the question of whether or not the composition is any good, looking at the image as a whole I find the lack of differentiation in sharpness from front to back to detract from the image rather than add to it. It makes it look flat, and, to me, unnatural.

I like it! Only wish it could have a liittle bit more of what it has. If you have access to the spot I'd try again with a slightly denser composition, or maybe the uneasy relationships are key. The textures, depth of field and how it changes back and forth from being flat to having depth is great. If slightly unsettling. I've rarely seen such unstable positive/negative space in a photograph.

I understand that you might have tried for something more "romantic", in line with Clyde Butcher linked to above or other black and white nature/landscape photographers. But what you got is more interesting than their more conventional work.

[biz-engineer]

I would say that failed focus stacks, where for example objects near camera are sharp but objects at 10 meter distance are blurred and infinity is sharp, are the worst case scenarios. Or focus stacks where there are spots of blur at unexpected places. It requires extreme care to make it work.

I tried a pano of focus stacks, or a focus stack of panos (depending which one you do first). Both cases completely failed.

Method 1) Focus stack first, then stitch the pano: the focus stack software distorts images to fit all of them in the stack. The kind of manipulation done by the focus stacker (in my case Helicon focus) are foreign to the pano stitcher (tried both hugin and microsoft ICE, both failed), hence the pano stitcher fails to align images to create the pano composite.

Method 2) Stitch panos first, then focus stack of the panos: the focus stacking software gets is not able to align both panos, because the control points, alignment and distortion of the stitched pano don't look like the result of an optical lens.

So basically, I have only two options:
- take a series of focus shifted exposure at f5/6 (eventually enable pixel shift), no panorama making
- take a mosaic of exposures at f16 to gain resolution , but diffraction destroys the details wanted out of the panorama

---

Last edited by biz-engineer; 04-22-2020 at 10:22 AM.

[MJKoski]

Helicon Focus did stacking with sensor shifted & stitched panorama images fine. But those were rather small movements.

[biz-engineer]

3) Post processing can undo the diffraction albeit with some loss of DR.

That's right, de-convolution knowing f number and pixel pitch (diffraction correction) can recover some of the pixel level contrast, but that only works up to a point. When airy disk is significantly larger than pixel pitch, de-convolution doesn't bring back the information that doesn't exist in the original data.

---------- Post added 22-04-20 at 19:27 ----------

Helicon Focus did stacking with sensor shifted & stitched panorama images fine. But those were rather small movements.

Yes, that's understandable. Stitching of frames captured with sensor shift doesn't involve image manipulation, you could even stitch sensor shifted frames manually by shifting layers relative to each other in X and Y directions until they align.

[BigMackCam]

My expectation went up after I spent a number of visits to check out the works of Clyde Butcher here: Florida Collection Archives - Clyde Butcher | Black & White Fine Art Photography
Also after spending time to look at Butcher's portfolio, I realize I still have a very long way to go to hope produce similar images. But let's not lose faith, maybe some days....

In particular, here is a photo of Clyde Butcher standing in front of one of his prints in a gallery. We can see the print is larger than the size of the man who created it: https://blog.lexjet.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Clyde_Butcher-America_tif.jpg

I've had a look through his work, and I can see why you like it. Beautiful indeed.

Of course, he's using a large format view camera, so he can make the necessary adjustments to achieve this near-to-far in-focus result, and ends up with huge, detailed negatives.

One of my favourite photographers is Stephen Shore. Although his body of work couldn't be more different than Mr Butcher's, a subset of it also displays that same near-to-far in-focus look. Again, this was achieved with a large format view camera.

You could try working with a tilt lens. The Samyang / Rokinon T-S 24mm f/3.5 seems well-regarded optically, and it's sensibly priced for what it does.

Or, you could switch to a view camera like Messrs Butcher and Shore

Some people looking at details in the print.... Explore Florida's beauty through Clyde Butcher photos

What do you think about that visitor having a closeup look on the print (and of the normal viewing distance of a photo print) ?

I think, as is pretty obvious from those photos, he's the only one with his nose that close to the photo. Everyone else is stood at a realistic viewing distance. If you want to please him and his ilk at your next exhibition, it's time for a tilt lens or a view camera

[bwgv001]

Is the goal this?:

How a Weird Lens Helped Me Fall Back in Love with Landscape Photography

[Wheatfield]

For landscape photographs, and according to calculations based on human visual acuity, depth of field and aperture diffraction, it is not possible to exceed print size 20" x 30" with truly 300 ppi of resolution without increasing the depth of field by means of the scheimpflug principle [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scheimpflug_principle], also known as "camera movements". Stitching multiple frames from a small sensor wouldn't work because the lens aperture has to be stopped down to increase the depth of field when using a longer focal length on the smaller camera. The only way to beat diffraction beyond ~30 - 40Mpixels, if to use a tilt lens or a camera system that allows camera movements, which is neither the case of the 645z, GFX50, X1D and even Phase One, unless using something like Cambo Actus to tilt lens axis relative to sensor plane of focus.

For landscapes I've had very good success with focus stacking. It allows the lens to be used at best aperture, and allows magnificent depth of field control.

---------- Post added Apr 22nd, 2020 at 12:21 PM ----------

Where is the fun? Ok, there are some people who make a living with their camera. Most of us do it for fun. But these kind of posts take the fun out of taking a picture. I do not want to be confronted by scientific bla bla. If I take a picture and I am satisfied with it, well that is the main objective, not if it complies with any scientific principle. I almost feel guilty taking a landscape and be satisfied with it. I sometimes get the feeling that since we use DSLR it has to be perfect in every way, we have become pixel peepers, everybody has something to say about CA or any other hardly visible abberation with reviewers running in front of us. I never read these kind of things when we were taking pictures with a film camera. Yes there were reviews about a new camera and there were hardly any criticisms about the working of the camera, all brands were kind of perfect (except camera's made in Russia (Zenit)) . Sometimes there were reviews about films and Fuji colourfilm prints complied with the green colour of the box. That was a harsh criticism at that time, or that some films were to grainy. But nowadays almost everybody is "testing" and find the same results as most reviewers. When I buy a new camera or lens I just try them out, or start fiddling with my newly acquired possession. But that is having some fun with something new and enjoying what you have got.

Your view is more that of a working pro than an amateur.

[pschlute]

Why can't pictures just be beautiful?
Over-analysis is the death of art.

Bang on sir.

I mentioned this a week or so ago when pixel shift resolution was being discussed. A sharper picture (whether PS or diffraction limited) will not make a boring landscape any better. However a well planned and executed landscape will stand on its merits even if the sharpness, as measured by a machine is not optimum.

[house]

Bang on sir.

I mentioned this a week or so ago when pixel shift resolution was being discussed. A sharper picture (whether PS or diffraction limited) will not make a boring landscape any better. However a well planned and executed landscape will stand on its merits even if the sharpness, as measured by a machine is not optimum.

Many artists rely on technical perfection for the artwork to stand. The photographer Cadida Höfer is one example.



Then of course there are other who relied on completely different characteristics like for instance Takuma Nakahira



To me it doesn't make much sense to argue than only one the approaches are valid.

[baro-nite]

If you have access to the spot I'd try again with a slightly denser composition

It's a mile from my house, so access not a problem. Not sinking into the mud up to my waist is the problem!

[StiffLegged]

Could you recommend a suitable loupe to view these images at dot pitch resolution? – I feel somehow I'm missing out on proper evaluation of monster prints.

[biz-engineer]

However a well planned and executed landscape will stand on its merits even if the sharpness, as measured by a machine is not optimum.

Ah yeah, that's right. There is a multitude of options available in addition to composition: where to focus, do I want everything in focus or do I want to use blur to guide the viewer to the subject, what aperture do I use. If I want all in focus and use light (real or in post) to guide viewer's eye, what workflow should i use..

[BigMackCam]

Many artists rely on technical perfection for the artwork to stand. The photographer Cadida Höfer is one example.



Then of course there are other who relied on completely different characteristics like for instance Takuma Nakahira



To me it doesn't make much sense to argue than only one the approaches are valid.

What should one's expectations be when using a typical 35mm frame digital camera system? Expectations and desires are clearly different things. The issue isn't whether the OP's desires are achievable (clearly they are), but that he's expecting to achieve them with his current equipment (which isn't going to happen). He's going to have to use focus stacking or invest in a tilt lens - or else, switch to a system that allows the necessary adjustments, such as the type used by the photographer he's referencing.