picture window # 21 ~ how sharp is a rat's ass?
Wednesday, May 27, 2009 at 10:50AM 
Round window at the Binghamton Regency Hotel • click to embiggenNow that the 7800 is up and printing, one "issue" with which I have been struggling ... well, not exactly struggling - more like contemplating and experimenting with - is the uniquely digital domain notion of sharpness. Or, perhaps a bit more accurately, the notion of sharpening.
One of the characteristics of digital image capture and subsequent processing is the fact that sharpness is a very fungible construct. No longer is a picture's sharpness determined solely by optics and film choice - both of which are predetermined by someone other than the picture maker. The only choice a picture maker has in the analog picture world is that of which film / optics (camera and enlarger) to use.
In the digital world there are a zillion options that determine "final" sharpness- everything from a wide variety of sharpening techniques to a host of sharpening software choices, which, in turn, have a host of sharpening techniques. With the exception of the in-camera anti-alias filter, it's up to the picture maker to decide how sharp he/she wants a picture to be.
As seems inevitable in the digital domain, the idea of sharpness has been taken to fetishistic extremes. The pixel peepers in the crowd are positively obsessed with sharpness at the most extreme levels of magnification - truly nose-on-print viewing distances. Viewing distances that have absolutely nothing to do with the practical practice of looking at pictures.
However, from my long and varied experience, it is quite obvious that, with the exception of a very noticeable lack of sharpness in a print (bad focus, camera movement, etc.), the picture viewing public doesn't really give a rat's ass about sharpness. And that includes even the viewing public typically found in the rare-air Art World photo galleries and museums.
Simply put, given a decent level of sharpness - which would be judged by many picture makers to be unacceptably low - the viewing public is much more interested in a picture's content and meaning than they are in its technical merit.
That is why I have a rather cavalier attitude when it comes to the technique of sharpening. I don't own or plan to own stand-alone or plug-in sharpening software. I do apply sharpening in my RAW conversion processing and as a final step in PS processing (always on the Lightness Channel in LAB color space) but I tend to apply it so the final result resembles that of the look of film sharpness rather than that of digital sharpness.
Film sharpness that, by digital sharpness standards, would be considered rather "soft". However, because I view my prints as a member of the viewing public, my prints look much better than fine ... but that's because I am more concerned with the big picture (literally and figuratively).
How about you? How do you look at/view sharpness?
Reader Comments (4)
My view is pretty much in line with yours. Outside of other photographers, I've never had a single viewer say "Wow! Forget the subject of this image, Look at that sharpness!" or "I like the subject matter, but I really needs to be sharper to be a real photograph."
I like when I get a nice sharp images as much as the next guy, but I don't get bent out of shape and throw out the ones that don't pass some arbitrary degree of sharpness. I have a shelf full of books full of images made over the past 100 years that show me that it really doesn't matter.
I take a mongrel approach - sharper if I want to highlight fine detail, and less if I don't. There are some subjects that benefit, IMO, from a sharp look and some that don't (high on my don't list are clouds).
Don't see the point in forking out the stupid prices asked for all the specialist software for the job.
Yes, the digital crowd love excessive sharpness, I find it misplaced in portraits in particular. I don't think it adds to the mood of most photos, and it's downright awful when overdone. It's better to use a tripod anyway.
Yeah, That about sums up the view in Bingo...