No doubt, the internet is quite obsessed with pixel-peeping. It ruined everything.
Coming to you from Camera Conspiracies, this hilarious video lampoons how pixel-peeping has changed the way we think about lens design and usage. A lot of photography culture obsesses about pixel-level sharpness and uses it as a golden standard by which to compare different lenses. In recent years, we have seen an explosion of very large, very heavy, and very expensive lenses that do push the boundaries of sharpness more and more, but at a cost. While this has produced a range of very impressive optics, there has also been some pushback over the size of the lenses and their clinical character. A lot of photographers have embraced vintage lenses for their smaller sizes, lower costs, and character, and some manufacturers have responded with lines of portable f/1.8 primes and the like. No doubt, there is an admittedly imperfect correlation between image quality and size, and it seems we are starting to look for more of a balance between the two.
Regardless of which side you fall on, the video is well worth watching if you need a good laugh or two (just beware that there is some profanity).
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17 Comments
I've been known to pixel peep but I was laughing so hard at this I had tears in my eyes — which caused chromatic aberration and boke balls in the corners!
This was honestly probably my favorite video of his!
There is nothing worse than a sharp picture of a fuzzy concept.
Camara companies, lens manufacturers and publications have been, for decades, making money from your insecurities.
Boy ... I needed this
Someone takes time to scout a location, get there at a specific time in specific conditions to then use their years of experience to perfectly compose and capture the shot only for some cretin on the internet to say 'erm that top left corner with the leaf is rather too soft for my eyes when zoomed in at 400%'...... thats art in its purest form!
I must admit, I was really looking forward to a serious discussion that pitted the pros of pixel-peeping against the cons. After watching 3 minutes of the video, it was clear that I wasn't going to get what I was looking for. Personally, I'm not really into humor, so the value of this is lost on me. Disappointed.
The link has 'humor' in it... So does the to tag say. And the 8. word in the second paragraph says 'hilarious'. And you expect a serious article.
Also.. You must be fun at parties 🙂
I expected some humor, but I expected at least enough serious stuff along with the humor to sustain a discussion about the pros and cons of pixel peeping.
Within the humor, there are some very serious truths. Sorry you missed them.
Not into humor? You need an intervention. Somebody send him a link to a Marx Brothers movie.
Please, plaese, NO!
I love movies, but not comedies.
I love action and adventure movies and scientific documentaries about wildlife and nature and classics like those by Hitchcock, and crime thrillers. But I don't get any enjoyment from comedic movies, with the exception of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and the Chevy Chase Fletch movies ... and perhaps one of the Mr. Bean movies. But those are the only comedy movies I have seen and enjoyed. I have watched many other comedy movies, but not enjoyed them at all ..... they weren't entertaining in the least.
Next to Adorama/Daniel Norton/Seth Miranda....Camera Conspiracies is the fourth channel I never skip. Gotta get some of that 'toneh'
Thank you, Alex for posting this. Are these the same pixel peepers who want tack sharp corners and beautiful background bokeh? What's usually shown in the corners anyway?
I could do this with Photoshop. Imagine a nice portrait of my sweetie with great background bokeh. And in the corners I stamp a closeup of Cupid drawing his bow aiming at my sweetie's head.
One type of composition that I really love is to put my wildlife subject on the far side of the image, right agains the left or right edge, with mostly "negative space" filling the rest of the frame. But I often don't shoot the way I want to, because when I do that, the subject isn't resolved with enough fine detail because the far edges of the frame just aren't as sharp or as bright as the center of the frame. So I shoot wider than I want to, and then crop the image to get the composition that I want. This kinda sucks because I am giving up the extra hair or feather detail that I could get if I didn't crop ... and that limits how large the image can be printed at.
So really the only way to get the image the way I truly want, with no compromises, it is if the lens has excellent resolving ability and brightness along the far edges and in the deep corners.
In fact, one advantage of crop sensor cameras is that when used with full frame lenses, the corners of the frame are always beautifully bright and tack sharp!
I thought this was brilliant! Was laughing the whole way through. It's funny because it's true! Ha.
That dude is weird yet captivating. He's very aware of his own awkwardness to have it come across in videos. "B Roll Is Not Content" was the first video I saw of his so that part of him cringing had to be genuine. All in all, it was entertaining and he brought up some good points.
The technonerds are so wrapped up with pixel peeping that the forget it is all about the image. They can't see the image forest for the pixel trees. I actually get a good laugh at most of there obsessive stupidity.