I suppose this also depends on how you define acutance. Are you talking about traditional acutance (edge sharpness) or including edge effects? The other thing is emulsions have changed since the old rules were codified.
They don't make Mackie lines like they used to in the good old days. The Efke thin film emulsions, Plus-X, Agfa APX and others that gave strong edge effects are replaced by films that have a higher native acutance but give less adjacency effect. I believe FP4+ still shows the effect of acutance developers pretty well.
HP5 does, as well.
They don't make Mackie lines like they used to in the good old days. The Efke thin film emulsions, Plus-X, Agfa APX and others that gave strong edge effects are replaced by films that have a higher native acutance but give less adjacency effect. I believe FP4+ still shows the effect of acutance developers pretty well.
And, emulsion characteristics have changed since the days of Beutler, pyro etc. The old rules about solvency and such do not necessarily apply when it comes to acutance/sharpness. Sometimes an increase in graininess can be mistaken for increased sharpness.
Yep that's a good list. But there are hundreds are very sharp lenses out there, especially considering that some of the current ones designed for digital cameras with 50MP sensors can be mounted on film SLRs. I never saw the need to buy Leica stuff, even the Soviet copies of German lenses are pretty good optically most of the time. As are quite a few Japanese designs... with a lot of third party lenses included. My sharpest 28mm lens is an Osawa... who ever heard of them? When it works it works.
When going through my last pieces of Fomapan 100, I ran into something pretty extreme. I can imagine this being a fairly old-fashioned type of emulsion and therefore probably a little more prone to this sort of thing.
Full 35mm frame (scan)
Zoomed in a little.
From here: https://tinker.koraks.nl/photography/to-a-crisp-an-extreme-example-of-edge-effects/
Pyrocat HD 1+1+100, 12 minutes with an agitation cycle every 3-4 minutes.
HP5 in Ilfosol-3 is very crisp.
Perfectly well said Ian! I'll just leave it here.The right shutter speed to avoid camera shake, or mirror lock on a tripod
Correct exposure and development
The right film/developer combination
The right choice of lens
The optimal aperture
It comes down to craft, Geoffrey Crawley stated that the best lens for high acutance work was the 50mm f2 Summicron. My experience backs that up, I was amazed when I shot my first images with a Leica M3 & 50mm Summicron in the late 1980s, I showed some photographer friends some prints and they thought I'd bought a new MF camera.
What's missed is there are sweet spots in film/developer combinations.
Ian
That’s an interesting example. Extreme, indeed. Is this the negative or an inversion? If it’s inverted (positive) it’s even more surprising since it would mean we’re seeing very pronounced “fringe” effects.
It is important to remember that acutance is not the same as resolution. In many cases, procedures that enhance acutance actually result in reduced resolution, because the emphasis on the factors that increase the perceived sharpness relate to the edges of detail, rather than the entire contents of that detail.
That is why Tri-X in Rodinal looks "sharper" than T-Max 100 in X-Tol.
It is important to remember that acutance is not the same as resolution. In many cases, procedures that enhance acutance actually result in reduced resolution, because the emphasis on the factors that increase the perceived sharpness relate to the edges of detail, rather than the entire contents of that detail.
That is why Tri-X in Rodinal looks "sharper" than T-Max 100 in X-Tol.
I would agree with that , my problem is Ilfosol is not on the shelf in these parts so I use ID11.
I have to ask ; in the pursuit of accutance are other features lost such as film speed or shadow and highlight detail?
Is accutance the holy grail of film exposure and development?
Ilfosol is, IMHO, the forgotten developer.
FX-39. Easily!
It's inverted; scan from negative and then flipped in GIMP. Here's a bit from the same negative:
View attachment 383180
It's the most extreme example I've had on hand; I'm still not quite sure why it came out this extreme.
if nothing else it’s great for illustrating what is meant by edge effects or unsharp masking.
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