For some photographers, sharpness isn’t that important — and this realization can be liberating.
In this thought-provoking video, photographer Alex Kilbee asks why we as photographers have become obsessed with sharpness and why it’s so important to us, sometimes to the point where a preoccupation with image quality can be a barrier, placing a limit on our creativity.
Sharpness is obviously critical to a vast chunk of photographic genres — particularly commercial or editorial work that is typically trying to convey clarity or quality and might be blown up and printed on a billboard. Because these images proliferate, there is a culture of perfection that dominates the industry, trickling down from the professionals and influencers, and driven by companies who need to push a narrative in order to sell their latest cameras and lenses.
I’m honored to have received a small mention in Kilbee’s video, which references an article that I wrote that explains the joy I find in shooting on mediocre lenses. For me, I don’t see everything as sharp from front to back as I walk through a forest, and with my images, I try to create a feeling that is immersive, that conjures that half-hidden/lost sensation that comes from being among the trees. My eyes don’t see the world with the depth of field offered by f/16, and neither do my photos.
Are you obsessed with sharpness? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
Andy Day - Great images mate!
About the video, I think Alex does a great (and riveting) job of explaining that neither sharp nor soft are the one and only way of creating an image. They're both tools of expression.
Sharpness is is always important, and is never a downside (unless you are doing something specific, e.g., a bokeh sample or something abstract for a composite image). Sharpness alone doesn't make for a good photo, but it is needed if the intention is to have any subject detail. For example, imagine a perfectly composed and posed and lighted portrait image, but the the image is totally out of focus, will it still be a good portrait?
Ideally it is good to have as much detail as possible. And since we are in a world where lens and sensor tech is nowhere near what everyone will want, (ideally we would have 50-60 gigapixel sensors with lenses that could deliver on that detail, instead of 50-60 megapixels).
Beyond that, with image detail you can remove data in post, but toy cannot recover detail that was never captured (and making up estimated detail using AI is not truly bringing back the actual detail from the scene).
Outside of things like bokeh, other aspects can be simulated. You can make your take a high end 50mm f/1.8 shot at f/8 lens, and make it look like a $100 50mm f/1.8 that was also at f/8, in post.
When people are not bound by the limitations of current camera tech, they will pretty much always gravitate to perfect levels of detail output. For example, you may do a 4K 3D scene output, but the vast majority of your textures are 16K mega scans of various textures, and model details and mesh counts that are all well above 4K. But by having more detail, the render engine can ensure that for the final output, that light bulb in the distance that has a high res texture of a tungsten filament, but at the view distance, it will only be 8 pixels, you are at least sure that those are the most accurate 8 pixels possible.
In shifting back to cameras, if someone spend a price premium to get a 45+ megapixel camera, then they want to make sure of those pixels, they don't want their lens turning their 45 megapixel camera into 14 megapixel camera because the lens is acting like a low pass filter.
All in all, sharpness is not the only thing, but it is an important thing. Think of it like this:
In a fettuccine alfredo dish, the pasta is important, but if you tried to make that dish where the only ingredient was pasta and nothing else, then the only living creatures willing to eat it would be microorganisms and even then they may at best reluctantly eat it.
I don't think sharpness is always needed and neither is focus. Back before many of y'all picked up a camera, and before many of y'all were born, there were soft focus lenes made specifically for certain types of portraits. They were not meant to be sharp when focused.
And bright lights (bokeh balls) are not the only thing to throw out of focus. Over on the rangefinder forum, there is thread dedicated to out of focus photos. We aren't talking shallow depth of field, with a focused subject. The subjects are out of focus, or blurred due to camera/subject movement. There some great photos there.
"Sharpness is a bourgeois concept." - Henri Cartier-Bresson
FYI, written before viewing video.
"Sharpness is is always important, and is never a downside."
I disagree. There are times when too much sharpness definitely has a downside; at least for my aesthetic. When it comes to photographing people the first thing I do is remove all sharpening in post and will even dumb it down further depending on the lens used. Trust me, most women don't want to see images of themselves in which every pore on their face is presented in hyperreal detail. Too much sharpness on a face just looks weird an unnatural in my opinion.
But I suppose it's all a matter of degree.
That is the benefit of having the sharpness and detail, you can easily remove exactly as much as you want in post, but if you want the detail and the camera didn't capture it due to the lens acting as a low pass filter, then it is impossible to recover it.
I'm not obsessed with "sharpness" in images; I'm obsessed with it in lenses!
A sharp image can always be softened or otherwise de-optimized. It's a lot more work to convincingly sharpen a soft image.
You can do this with a sharp or a soft lens. But you can't "undo" it with a soft lens and get something sharp!
As a people photographer I know some photographers that when culling images will look for sharpness first and then chuck an image that isn't "tack sharp" in the eyes., for my aesthetic, sharpness is way down the list of what makes an appealing image. As it stands now, I completely remove all sharpening in LR when beginning post. In some instances, depending on the lens I'm using, I even have to dumb it down a bit.
If I love an image and it has a bit of a missed focus or some noise, I still love it.
For those of you for whom sharpness is your jam, more power to you. But for me sharpness isn't the end all be all of what makes a great photo.
The problem is, we're in the minority.
Try putting a less-than-sharp image on GuruShots. Hope you have some swaps.
I understand. Fortunately, for me, I couldn't care less what other photographers think about my images. I found out a long time ago to simply make the images that I like and not care about the opinions of other photographers. That did a couple of things for me: 1. It was freeing. 2. It resulted in far more positive responses from non photographers which matters because ,generally, photographers don't pay other photographers to take photos.
What's interesting to me is that is that when it comes to these camera club types, iconic and beautiful images from the likes of Peter Lindbergh, Helmut Newton, or Ellen von Unwerth, etc., would be savaged because they break some rule, missed focus, too noisy, cropped "wrong", or whatever.
Really, I can't think of anything more useless than the aesthetic opinions of other photographers.
Good point about Newton, Lindbergh, et all - So may of the classic photographers and so many of the classic images would receive a very poor reception if they were presented for the first time today.
Sometimes because the image doesn't have the "right" degree of sharpness or contrast, sometimes because there's an imperfection that hasn't been photoshopped out, sometimes because the aesthetic is simply not in vogue.
Also, bloody good point about not caring what other photographers think!
Personally I'm curious about what my peers think, particularly when I feel their work is good. Curious doesn't mean that I care, especially if they start being negative instead of helpful.
The power of nuance seems to be something that escapes more and more people these days.