Any technical explanations as to how or why film sharpness looks different from digital sharpness ??

[warden]

Show me one digital printer in the world who can achieve the kind of tonal sophistication and luminance that Julia Cameron did in a converted chicken coop in the Victorian era,

You could have picked other shot of hers.

Choose literally any of them at random, Alan. It doesn't matter. Cameras, lenses, paper, printing technique and overall print quality has improved since the 1800s. This is not news.

This is entirely separate from the merit of her artistic output, which isn't the issue. The issue Drew raised is the ability of modern printers to equal the excellent chicken coop quality of her prints. Of course they can.

 

[DREW WILEY]

That kind of actual tonality I've only seen from masters of very expensive industrial quad presses, who themselves had a very serious background in platinum printing, or else, other exceptional Pt/Pd printers. You only seem to be looking at the hand-coating flaws. Ironically, it's the random flaws that so many wannabee artsy current printers try to mimic. It's like criticizing the cave painters of Lascaux or Altimira because ordinary art students today can do it smoother on canvas. But where is the same genius factor? The stone age masters chose rough or rounded stones surfaces on purpose. Oh well. It is what it is.

Another exceptionally nuanced medium of the 19thC process was Woodbury type. There have been modern attempts to revive that; but there are a lot of potential health and enviro negatives hindering a modern commercialized version. I believe a commercialized form lasted a little while in the NYC area. I've been involved in some of the "what if" discussions, and sooner or later, they all revolved around the health risks and hazmat zoning headaches.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Choose literally any of them at random, Alan. It doesn't matter. Cameras, lenses, paper, printing technique and overall print quality has improved since the 1800s. This is not news.

This is entirely separate from the merit of her artistic output, which isn't the issue. The issue Drew raised is the ability of modern printers to equal the excellent chicken coop quality of her prints. Of course they can.

Her photos have a special glow about them and they're very artistic. It's not about pixel peeping.

 

[warden]

Her photos have a special glow about them and they're very artistic. It's not about pixel peeping.

Did “special glow” and “very artistic” end in the 1800s? Can they not be achieved today with modern printing methods? Should I start albumen printing from glass negatives?

 

[DREW WILEY]

I have no idea what you can or cannot personally do. But what I'm contending for is that esthetic ends CAN'T be isolated from one's own concept of sharpness. Even in technical fields, microfilm applications need one kind of sharpness, machine vision its own kind, or rather specified kinds; surveillance and astronomical applications, likewise. In microscopy, one kind of visuals sharpness often transpires at the expense of another kind, and different lens varieties are tailored to each. Now we come to artistic applications, and you have companies like Cooke Optic making cine and still lenses with different types of sharpness, or even variable sharpness, all oriented toward esthetic nuances.

Even debates over the latest Zeiss versus Nikon 35mm lenses often revolve around different types of perceived sharpness. Throw in a Leica enthusiast and it become a dueling issue. I've had large format Dagor lenses prized by some for a certain "roundness" to their edge rendering, sharp as it was, while you get something different with some tessars, and yet something else in the latest plasmats. Call it obsessive if you wish, but every bit of it factors into the inherent variability of the sharpness question itself. And a lens which responds one way with a particular film might respond quite differently with a particular digital camera. Let the engineers tell you why, if even they can. I judge the endpoint; otherwise, you go nuts, just like this thread itself.

 

[warden]

I have no idea what you can or cannot personally do. But what I'm contending for is that esthetic ends CAN'T be isolated from one's own concept of sharpness. Even in technical fields, microfilm applications need one kind of sharpness, machine vision its own kind, or rather specified kinds; surveillance and astronomical applications, likewise. In microscopy, one kind of visuals sharpness often transpires at the expense of another kind, and different lens varieties are tailored to each. Now we come to artistic applications, and you have companies like Cooke Optic making cine and still lenses with different types of sharpness, or even variable sharpness, all oriented toward esthetic nuances.

Even debates over the latest Zeiss versus Nikon 35mm lenses often revolve around different types of perceived sharpness. Throw in a Leica enthusiast and it become a dueling issue. I've had large format Dagor lenses prized by some for a certain "roundness" to their edge rendering, sharp as it was, while you get something different with some tessars, and yet something else in the latest plasmats. Call it obsessive if you wish, but every bit of it factors into the inherent variability of the sharpness question itself. And a lens which responds one way with a particular film might respond quite differently with a particular digital camera. Let the engineers tell you why, if even they can. I judge the endpoint; otherwise, you go nuts, just like this thread itself.

The three questions to Alan were all rhetorical Drew. I have no personal interest in printing like they did when Grover Cleveland was president, as fun as it may be.

 

[Steven Lee]

To those who are currently contributing to this thread, please be mindful that your comments are edging toward the possibility of having this discussion locked and reinforcing the decision to disallow comparisons between the two realms. Let's refrain from it!

Agreed! I will be the first to admit being overly harsh on Drew. And I'll be the first to admit that the extreme/maximalist views and the individuals behind them make the world a more interesting place to live in.

 

[Pioneer]

I have no idea what you can or cannot personally do. But what I'm contending for is that esthetic ends CAN'T be isolated from one's own concept of sharpness. Even in technical fields, microfilm applications need one kind of sharpness, machine vision its own kind, or rather specified kinds; surveillance and astronomical applications, likewise. In microscopy, one kind of visuals sharpness often transpires at the expense of another kind, and different lens varieties are tailored to each. Now we come to artistic applications, and you have companies like Cooke Optic making cine and still lenses with different types of sharpness, or even variable sharpness, all oriented toward esthetic nuances.

Even debates over the latest Zeiss versus Nikon 35mm lenses often revolve around different types of perceived sharpness. Throw in a Leica enthusiast and it become a dueling issue. I've had large format Dagor lenses prized by some for a certain "roundness" to their edge rendering, sharp as it was, while you get something different with some tessars, and yet something else in the latest plasmats. Call it obsessive if you wish, but every bit of it factors into the inherent variability of the sharpness question itself. And a lens which responds one way with a particular film might respond quite differently with a particular digital camera. Let the engineers tell you why, if even they can. I judge the endpoint; otherwise, you go nuts, just like this thread itself.

So you are saying that the different look of the sharpness between the two is entirely in the response of the recording material/developing method.

With analogue it is the film, which is randomly covered with silver particles or dye clouds, and then developed chemically. And different development chemicals and techniques can effect the result and frequently does.

With digital it is the sensor, which has a necessarily orderly arrangement of pixels, which are then interpreted (developed) using digital algorithms. And different algorithms can effect the results and I am sure it does depending on what the manufacturer wants to do.

Digital manipulation, such as edge sharpening only enhances the effect, similar to what analogue manipulations like edge masking does with film.

Is this right? Is this the only technical reason for the different look of sharpness between the two? Using the same lens, the same optical printing method and the same paper this would be the only point of difference. It is all down to the recording medium and how it is developed.

 

[snusmumriken]

For those interested in actual technique with visual results, rather than trying to dumb down both the esthetics and the craft of this alleged topic to some interminable debate over which one of two hundred varieties of apples to compare the which of forty varieties of oranges, well, that kind of thing is better addressed on specific relevant threads rather than here.

This thread was about a very specific question, which some have addressed tidily and concisely. It is you who has dragged it all over the place, without - I must add - any visual results to support what you say.

 

[BrianShaw]

Thanks for allowing the discussion Matt. It is interesting. I still think there is much more to learn here. At one point in time what Ms Cameron was doing was also a new toy and we continued to learn and develop.

… if only she could have mastered proper focus, imagine how different her images would be.

 

[Helge]

This thread was about a very specific question, which some have addressed tidily and concisely. It is you who has dragged it all over the place, without - I must add - any visual results to support what you say.

If you find satisfaction in a tidy and concise explanation, your curiosity might not have been particularly piqued to start with.

 

[snusmumriken]

If you find satisfaction in a tidy and concise explanation, your curiosity might not have been particularly piqued to start with.

My curiosity about most things photographic is enormous. I just wish folk would keep to the subject or make a new thread; and avoid long rambling posts.

It would also make the thread easier to comprehend if folk quoted the point they were responding to, instead of assuming we can guess - I sometimes wonder if everyone knows how to do this.

 

[BrianShaw]

My curiosity about most things photographic is enormous. I just wish folk would keep to the subject or make a new thread; and avoid long rambling posts.

It would also make the thread easier to comprehend if folk quoted the point they were responding to, instead of assuming we can guess - I sometimes wonder if everyone knows how to do this.

In some cases the posts without quotes truly are posts without immediate context. Readers of forum threads really need to read all/most of the posts to decipher the the posts that may be interesting but only peripherally related. Just like one needs to read all of the posts to identify those that are so silly or insignificant that they need not be read.

 

[pentaxuser]

… if only she could have mastered proper focus, imagine how different her images would be.

pentaxuser

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Did “special glow” and “very artistic” end in the 1800s? Can they not be achieved today with modern printing methods? Should I start albumen printing from glass negatives?

I was commenting on the fact that her photos were very artistic and not dependent on modern equipment and methods. In fact, that's what gives it such a nice look. I suppose people can get the same affect today, but most won't bother. It's why so many pictures today look so sterile because of modern film, sharp lenses, and other exacting tools. Frankly, I'm guilty of that sterile look as well. There's a lot to be said for imperfection.

 

[BrianShaw]

What’s missing today, Alan, seems to be a general lack of appreciation for soft focus as well as that pre-Raphaelite mindset. Sure, could be done. Sara Moon comes to mind…

 

[warden]

I was commenting on the fact that her photos were very artistic and not dependent on modern equipment and methods. In fact, that's what gives it such a nice look. I suppose people can get the same affect today, but most won't bother. It's why so many pictures today look so sterile because of modern film, sharp lenses, and other exacting tools. Frankly, I'm guilty of that sterile look as well. There's a lot to be said for imperfection.

Ditto to all that, Alan. Lately I’ve been using the old family Brownie Autographic which focuses at either 8 feet or 100, and leaks light too. I love that thing.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Dan - even with the same film, we can alter development for very different kinds of acutance and grain "tooth". For example, for smooth complexion portraits I develop TMax100 in a completely different manner than I do for bold crisp highly textured landscapes. All of this is a malleable sliding continuum if we take all the available variables into account.

It's unfortunate that some try to devolve this into an either/or topic. You're either an cloying antique Pictorialist (or Fuzzy Wuzzy as AA called them, a bit hypocritically, having worked in that same genre himself), or else the only thing you can think of its the highest possible mtf lens in existence, or the most conceivable number of little pixelated mice running around. That's not how it works, and how boring the world of photography would be if it was!

And yes, there are probably hundreds of individuals or even thousands still doing pictorialist photography, or attempting to do so.
Some people pay huge prices for classic old soft focus lenses. But that's only around one extreme end of a long sliding scale all the way to critical scientific and recording photography too sharp for the unaided human eye to even see.

Most of us are somewhere in the middle, and in my case, a lot of it is strategized per specific image. No, you'll never find a single soft focus or out-of-focus shot in my entire personal venue; but there are a lot of nuanced plays on edge effect which sometimes even differ in different portions of the same image. Flare, glare, layering, differential edge rendering, are all part of my tool kit, precisely because perceived sharpness has inherent esthetic connotations for me - it's part of my overall compositional strategy.

Digital printers have analogous options, but are actually more confined in certain ways. Real silver papers or UV alternatives have a more nuanced character. But regardless, I prefer a relatively tactile workflow anyway.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Brian - she did master "proper focus" because she focussed to exactly that spot where it felt just right. Otherwise, Cameron would have never been Cameron. There was nothing careless about it. But if you want to study a career transition between actual soft focus lens portraiture and more modern hard focus portraiture, Steichen was a master of both in his successive phases.

It reminds me of how Timothy O Sullivan was handed a 35mm camera in his old age, and he remarked if that been around, it would have been what he would had taken along, down the Colorado River rapids. Sure he would have, because it would have been a thousand times easier than managing a wooden dory filled with big fragile glass plates. But if that had been the case, there never would have been those iconic almost timeless compositions we prize him for, but "just more of the same" as everyone else. Restriction is often an asset.

And if you study some of O Sullivan's classic river images, and their almost graphic cutout effect of bold features against white blue-sensitive emulsion skies, you'll recognize how he was a master of hard edges and perceived sharpness long before modern lenses. He knew how to choreograph with what he had available at the time, far better than many today with all their new toys. And the most sophisticated optical device any of us has is our own pair of eyes.

 

[faberryman]

It reminds me of how Timothy O Sullivan was handed a 35mm camera in his old age, and he remarked if that been around, it would have been what he would had taken along, down the Colorado River rapids.

Timothy O'Sullivan died in 1882 at the ripe old age of 42. Needless to say, there weren't any 35mm cameras around at that time.

 

[bluechromis]

FIlm sharpness depends only on the lens and resolution of the film. Digital sharpness depends on the lens, resolution of the sensor, plus the camera's program is artificially sharpening the image file.

Is not the perceived sharpness of film images based upon resolution and acutance, i.e., boundary contrast? While the resolution may be baked into the film, acutance can be influenced by development. Was not the original analog unsharp masking intended to enhance boundary contrast?

 

[bluechromis]

Sharpness isn't a strictly objective phenomena, it is a perceptual phenomena. You can have two similar images where one appears "sharper" than another, but the less sharp appearing image resolves more detail.
We tend to gravitate toward sharp appearing edge details. There are all sorts of ways to enhance the appearance of those edge details. Unsharp masking is one such approach.

Right about the edge details. It is not impossible that an image that on a micro level was more grainy, or otherwise had less resolution than another image of higher resolution could appear sharper if it had stronger boundary contrast. Perception is context-sensitive, it uses cues from how one part of an image looks compared to another part.

 

[DREW WILEY]

It's much like color contrast, and not a simple thing. For example, two squares of intense opposite hues might be precisely the same size, yet be perceived by us as differently sized, and with one advancing toward us, and the other, receding. That is a physiological as well as psychological phenomenon. But instrumentation would tell you something quite different.

Analogously, in black and white work, much of what we perceive as sharpness is due the nature of the adjacency itself, not only the differences in contrast, but also more subtle things harder to quantify, but very useful in compositional strategy nonetheless, because the intended endpoint is not a film densitometer, but human viewers having complex interactions of physical and psychological properties.

bluechromis - unsharp film masking CAN be used to enhance edge acutance, depending on how it is applied. But in color pre-press work, it's main function was color correction along with overall contrast control. Sometimes different masks controlled different aspects; sometimes a single mask could accomplish dual or even multiple purposes. With dye transfer printing, it could get complicated. Ciba was generally a one-mask problem if one knew how to effectively control more than one issue in as single mask, but it too could potentially get complicated, requiring multiple masks to achieve an ideal endpoint. Even some black and white printers use more than one mask relative to some special trick or another. But in terms of edge effect, the nature of the diffusion sheet in relation to the angle of incidence of the exposing light, allows a considerable range of fine-tuning edge options : how far the halo spreads, how harsh or gentle the transition, etc.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Is not the perceived sharpness of film images based upon resolution and acutance, i.e., boundary contrast? While the resolution may be baked into the film, acutance can be influenced by development. Was not the original analog unsharp masking intended to enhance boundary contrast?

I don't know enough if what you;re saying is accurate. But if it is, it confirms my point even greater. Since developing can change accutance (boundary contrast) and a digital camera can add it's own unknown to us and different amounts of sharpening to digital captures, it's nearly impossible to compare the two because each is applying different kind of sharpening affects.

 

[Mike Lopez]

Timothy O'Sullivan died in 1882 at the ripe old age of 42. Needless to say, there weren't any 35mm cameras around at that time.

56.78% of statistics are made up on the spot.