Sharpness is a bourgeois concept?

[Eric Rose]

It's all bourgeois BS. Just do what you enjoy and don't look to others for validation. If others like it and want to buy it, great take their money, if they don't who cares.

 

[blockend]

View attachment 193993

Without wishing to critique that work, it suggests to me that the pipe brackets in the foreground have some aesthetic or technical importance the rest of the machinery does not. If you look at old technical manuals, they often employed a technique of bleaching out the background to emphasise a specific detail in an otherwise complex picture. As a teaching aid, wide aperture photography may have a role. Mostly its dew drops on spiders webs in the corner of a rusty gate. Or a detail on a fashion accessory used in advertising. Which is why I reckon its a novelty or advertising trope. I'd ignored its potential as a instructional device, but it's probably been surpassed by digital emphasis techniques.

 

[MartinCrabtree]

One could likely make a substantial amount selling rocking chairs around here.

 

[removed account4]

It's all bourgeois BS. Just do what you enjoy and don't look to others for validation. If others like it and want to buy it, great take their money, if they don't who cares.

thank you eric, as usual spot on with no fluff.

 

[blockend]

One could likely make a substantial amount selling rocking chairs around here.

That's because it's film. Any picture that takes half an hour's alchemy and another half hour in a darkened room to even see, is bound to attract words to justify the effort. Otherwise we'd be using phones and sending them to Instagram in 3 seconds flat, and attracting three letter words of approval. Like Wow.

 

[cowanw]

One could likely make a substantial amount selling rocking chairs around here.

And sharpness makes you sigh. One might conclude you are a comical curmudgeon.
Seems a pity to diss thoughtful comment based on knowledge.

 

[faberryman]

One could likely make a substantial amount selling rocking chairs around here.

Last time I checked, neither the young nor the experienced had a monopoly on aesthetics, though I would give a nod to the young for fad and fashion.

 

[E. von Hoegh]

Which highlights why this thread belongs in the "Ethics and Philosophy" sub-forum.
I see the question of the roles of resolution, edge contrast and macro-contrast (the components of what we subjectively perceive as "sharpness") and tonality as being more of a continuum - all just parts of a whole.
Choose a different tool, or a different setting on a tool that offers them, and change where your results fall on the continuum.
I am often quite happy to use a lens at its widest or smallest aperture, even if the performance at those extremes doesn't give me the same resolution and contrast as using it at a middle setting. In fact, I am often looking for results that would be impeded by that sharpness - at least in every part of the image.
An example where I wanted both "sharpness" and the lack of same:

View attachment 193993

Your picture is a good example of what I expect a lens to provide, and a good example of using a wide aperture to isolate and emphasise a part of a scene. I would not expect that performance from a pinhole, which has different virtues.

 

[removed account4]

Bokeh is a hipster concept.

tell that to jim galli,

he is as far from hipster ville as one could get.
he unleashed the bokeh movement with his website about IDK 12 years ago

the average age of people collecting and using these lenses is probably 65.
you could probably do a poll on the large format photography forum to do the math.

 

[CMoore]

tell that to jim galli,

he is as far from hipster ville as one could get.
he unleashed the bokeh movement with his website about IDK 12 years ago

the average age of people collecting and using these lenses is probably 65.
you could probably do a poll on the large format photography forum to do the math.

 

[blockend]

he unleashed the bokeh movement with his website about IDK 12 years ago.

My Taylor-Hobsons are squinting in disapproval.

 

[removed account4]

i know what you mean !
they can squint away at proper viewing distance
=
thanks cmoore!

 

[alanrockwood]

Dealing in absolute is poor practice, it can lead to disastrous results.

Tongue in cheek re-phrasing "Dealing in absolute... always leads to disastrous results."

 

[71M]

Bourgeois is a sharpness concept.

 

[Vaughn]

Bourgeois is a sharpness concept.

Discussing sharpness as a Bourgeois concept is a Bourgeois concept.

 

[Sirius Glass]

Discussing sharpness as a Bourgeois concept is a Bourgeois concept.

Well said!

 

[removed account4]

Last time I checked, neither the young nor the experienced had a monopoly on aesthetics, though I would give a nod to the young for fad and fashion.

LOL they just recycle old fads and fashions
was told by youngin's IDK 7 years ago ripped jeans are lame
then the same ones go buy preripped jeans
as larcen e whipsnade said -- never give a sucker an even break

My Taylor-Hobsons are squinting in disapproval.