Too Sharp?

[Sirius Glass]

Some 'sharp' lenses have horrid bokeh

This is a non sequitor, bokeh has nothing to do with sharpness.

Steve

 

[PhotoJim]

I think one could find a lens too sharp when portraits show very clearly wrinkles, pimples and other 'undesirable things'. Though they're there, a good photographer should try to erase some... to get lots of positive comments from female models (men would probably also value such improvements but not say it...)

If the negs are too sharp, you can desharpen them. It can be done without digital techniques, even.

If they are not sharp enough... well... sorry.

You can work around too much sharpness. Too little is incurable.

 

[benjiboy]

Or print it with a stocking folded over several times. You may need a cigarette to burn holes for the eyes. :rolleyes:

Steve

The old trick was to use the Cellophane that came on the outside of packs of Galois cigarettes and born holes in the middle with a cigarette before fastening it in front of the camera lens with a rubber band.

 

[naeroscatu]

The old trick was to use the Cellophane that came on the outside of packs of Galois cigarettes and born holes in the middle with a cigarette before fastening it in front of the camera lens with a rubber band.

You probably mean Gauloises which is a brand of strong stinky French cigarettes. Don't I know about them... Back to the OP no, I don't think a lens can be too sharp. This is a tool like any other, you just need to use the right tool for the job; if you shoot a flattering portrait you stay away from the Micro Mikkor 55mm/ 3.5 which is insanely sharp.

 

[eddym]

I have seen plenty Holga images that dispute this statement.

I have never seen a Holga image that doesn't.

 

[Sirius Glass]

I have never seen a Holga image that doesn't.

That is exactly what I thought when I read it. I was just being nice by not stating the most honest response that anyone could give. Even a blind man would say that!

Steve

 

[Paul Jenkin]

Many moons ago (1980's) I did weddings om a semi-pro basis - friends, family, friends of family, that sort of thing. I used OM1n and OM2n bodies with Zuiko 28mm/f2.8, 50mm/f1.8 and 85mm/f2 lenses. A friend of mine recommended the new 35-70mm f3.5/4.5 Zuiko which he raved about. He loaned me his and I used it to shoot a wedding.

When I got the photos processed I was horrified as, compared to my original set up, the results were soft - almost to the point of looking as if they'd had a soft focus filter applied. I daren't have shown them to the 'happy couple' or they'd have instantly become the 'unhappy couple'.

I went back and had a chat with the processing lab and showed them some of the stuff I'd got back from them using the previous kit. They agreed there was a big difference but they also admitted they'd been trying out some new enlarger lenses and I wasn't the first person who'd returned some of their recent work. Reprinted on their old kit, the prints were exactly as hoped for. However, I showed the couple the first set of prints and they used quite a few as the softness was just what the bride wanted (she was in her 50's and she was delighted that some of her wrinkles had been smoothed away).

The Zuiko 35-70mm f3.5/4.5 went on to be my default lens of choice for several years. The point I'm trying to make is that the lens on your camera isn't the only lens in the analogue process. Before we commend or condemn a camera lens, it's worth considering whether the enlarger lens is having an effect on the end result.

 

[Q.G.]

I thought long and hard about it, but have decided that i'll let you all in a secret that has been closely guarded within the industry for very long:

Just like it is not your wife's/girlfriend's fault that she has pores, wrinkles, freckles, and what have you, it is not the lens' fault that it shows those pores, wrinkles, freckles, and what have you.
The lens is not too sharp, just as little as your wife/girlfriend is too imperfect.

It's the film ... Film is too sharp.

You may not believe that at first.
But think about it. Why do you think that the industry produced 2 to 3 MP digital cameras first, and not the 20 or so MP thingies you could get today (if you were so inclined)?
Have you never admired the plasticky, perfectly smooth look these machines produced? Or have you forgotten that look already?

It's film. Way too sharp. So they gave us a much less sharp sensor. Problem solved.


Things have changed a bit since then though. Soft focus is as outmoded as David Hamilton.
We now like to see the other half for what it is. Emancipation, and all that. Be yourself, and not how you think others would like you to be. Be wrinkled, and be proud of it!

So not only are lenses never too sharp (never were), film isn't either.
Not anymore. Hence the 20+ MP thingies you can get today.

But it was film, not lenses, that was too sharp.

 

[narsuitus]

“Can you think of any 35mm lenses that are too sharp?”

Yes!

I love to use the 105mm f/2.8 Nikon macro lens for portraits but it is too sharp to use without a softening filter.

 

[keithwms]

One has to define what is really meant by 'sharp.' There are ( at least) two interrelated issues here -resolution and contrast- that are worth thinking about separately. Contrast of course has a lot to do with the perception of sharpness, even at lower frequency; and you can't have high resolution without high contrast, but.... you can have excess contrast. I do think contrast can indeed be too extreme for portraiture, and some lenses do rein it in without sacrificing resolution.

At risk of over-generalizing, I will offer some observations from my experiences with various gear. I'd say that the Fuji MF RF lenses are, to my eye, just about as contrasty as you can get. That makes them really great for landscapes and such, but harsh on faces. The Mamiya 6/6mf/7/7ii lenses are almost as contrasty (not quite, to my eye, but close) and similarly unsuitable for faces and also with somewhat harsh OOF rendering. I find that the Mamiya slr lenses, on the other hand, are really kind to faces and flora and such... quite creamy, even the non-SF ones, with lovely OOF transitions evoking some LF lenses.

My Nikon 35mm lenses are all over the place, some are crazy sharp and contrasty, others not so much. My dreamiest is the 50/1.2, my sharpest & contrastiest maybe the 105/1.8. But it's something one has to go through lens by lens, and aperture definitely does matter. The Nikon LF lenses are all perfect though, to my eye- contrasty but not biting.

Of course, to consider the overall sharpness, one has to convolve the film and the lens MTF, so it is possible to address some of the excess contrast with film/developer choice.

 

[Sirius Glass]

Please define OOF so that I can understand you better.

Steve

 

[keithwms]

OOF= out of focus.

Harsh OOF transitions (which is what I call transitions from 'in focus' to OOF elements) are an obvious deficiency, especially in some 35mm work, in my opinion. A lot of MF and most LF gear will deliver smoother transitions, and the best 35mm lenses will too. But it's a pretty expensive thing to achieve in 35mm: you need high and smoothly varying MTF right across the frequencies and across the whole frame. Overall sharpness (i.e. the absolute limit of the MTF as you read it off a chart) turns out not to be quite as important, I think, as smoothly varying MTF.

What I find particularly objectionable is bubbly bokeh. Some lenses produce OOF blobs about highlights that really look like tight little bubbles- quite distracting. I'd much rather have less of that edge contrast and lower overall resolution than OOF bubbles.

 

[Ian David]

Why do you think that the industry produced 2 to 3 MP digital cameras first, and not the 20 or so MP thingies you could get today (if you were so inclined)?

I suspect the other reason was so they could sell the public 15 different models in turn, each a slight MP improvement over the last, rather than letting everyone just buy the 20MP version straight up...

 

[keithwms]

Why do you think that the industry produced 2 to 3 MP digital cameras first, and not the 20 or so MP thingies you could get today (if you were so inclined)?

Certainly not because anybody wanted lower resolution sensors. It's been a really tough long battle to scale up those sensors.

The reason is/was that the cost of a digital sensor chip scales at least as the square of the resolution, if not worse. This is also the reason why the manufacturers do their marketing in terms of megapixels rather than actual resolution. 20 mp sounds a lot better than 12, even though the increase in resolution is quite minor.***


***P.S. 12 mp = ~4000 pix * 3000 pix; double that resolution would be 8000 pix * 6000 pix =48 mp!

 

[Q.G.]

Certainly not because anybody wanted lower resolution sensors.

Why, yes! Exactly because of that.

If we hadn't forgotten this already, we wouldn't come up with silly questions like "can a lens be too sharp?".

 

[Q.G.]

One has to define what is really meant by 'sharp.' There are ( at least) two interrelated issues here -resolution and contrast- that are worth thinking about separately. Contrast of course has a lot to do with the perception of sharpness, even at lower frequency; and you can't have high resolution without high contrast, but.... you can have excess contrast. I do think contrast can indeed be too extreme for portraiture, and some lenses do rein it in without sacrificing resolution.

The only time contrast would be "excessive" is when it is larger in the image than in the subject.
That will not happen.

This entire thread is about blaming a lens for being able to shows what we put in front of it.
Why are we doing this? It makes no sense.

It is the sitter's fault when she or he has some features that we (or the sitter) do not want to show in the image.

Not the lens is to blame. Not the film.
But reality.


A lens is a tool that tries to do its best to do what it is supposed to do.
We can (must) use what it has to offer to achieve our goals.
And if our goals demand soft focus, we can soften the image the lens produces. We can 'dumb down' the lens.
Great, isn't it?!

Now we only can/have to do that with a lens that shows what we do not want to show. Not with a lens that 'decides all by itself' that we do not need to see bits of reality.
That should be our decision. Not something we are forced to accept by a bad lens.

A sharp lens leaves us options, allows us to be in control. So a lens cannot be too sharp. Never.
But a lens can certainly be not sharp enough, limiting what we can do with it.

 

[keithwms]

Alright now, that is just a bit too cynical for my taste! (post #40)

Over the past decade, the cameramakers went after each other with reckless abandon, trying to put each other out of business at any cost. If any one company had confidence that they had the ability to win the market over with a really high mp sensor then why wouldn't they have done so. But balanced against that competitive aspect is the risk of embarking on an r&d project and costly production line for something that people may or may not actually buy. Kodak certainly learned that lesson with the dcs pro series (which could supposedly provide medium format quality)...

I do see the point that, from a long term marketing perspective, it'd be better to protract the development of the "better" cameras over longer periods. If you are selling just about anything, it is to your advantage to convince people that this is the best there is... and then introduce something miraculously even better a year or so later. The megapixel lingo has been the marketer's main weapon of course... most people who buy digital cameras simply don't know what it really means.

 

[Q.G.]

Alright now, that is just a bit too cynical for my taste! (post #40)

That's because you take it too seriously, and by doing so miss the (admittedly abstruse) point.

People seem reluctant to contribute the fact that a lens shows, say, the pores of the lovely lady they put in front of a lens to the simple fact that this lovely lady has pores, and rather think that it is because the lens is too sharp.

I took that way of thinking (soft focus thinking ) a step further, and blamed the film.
Hoping (in vain?) that that would show that blaming the lens, not the pores themselves, is rather silly (sorry, but it really is that).

The fact that the early digital cameras produced portraits showing skin smoother than plastic, smoother than any plastic surgery junkie could ever dream about, did help 'build the case'.

So if we persist in this silly line of thinking, i must insist, nay, demand we blame the film!
We need soft focus film!!!

 

[IloveTLRs]

Not 35mm, but the Plannar 80/2.8 (Hasselblad lens) is the sharpest I've ever seen. Unreal.

The two sharpest 35mm lenses I've used are the Nikkor AF 50/1.8 and the collapsable Summicron 50/2. Very sharp and contrasty : )

 

[Sirius Glass]

Not 35mm, but the Plannar 80/2.8 (Hasselblad lens) is the sharpest I've ever seen. Unreal.

The two sharpest 35mm lenses I've used are the Nikkor AF 50/1.8 and the collapsable Summicron 50/2. Very sharp and contrasty : )

Then take a look at the Hasselblad 100mm lens.

Steve

 

[Q.G.]

Then take a look at the Hasselblad 100mm lens.

Which enjoys a somewhat mythical fame that doesn't come true in real life.

The 100 mm is better than the 80 mm, at infinity. Get closer and the difference in performance disappears very rapidly.
At close quarters, the 80 mm may even surprise you by being better than the 100 mm.

The only thing that the 100 mm always is better in than the 80 mm is distortion. The low distortion does not get worse when coming closer.
But then the 80 mm's distortion isn't bad at all. Perhaps not good enough for photogrammetry, but how many of us are doing that?

 

[removed account4]

most lenses are too sharp ...
flat and dull is better and lacking contrast
is even better than that ...

 

[Q.G.]

Yes ... Good thing that Brillo pads exist, isn't it?

 

[keithwms]

Use pinholes then

 

[JBrunner]

Some guy once said:

"There is nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept."

There is a lot in that sentence that gear heads can mull.

A lens is an ingredient in a recipe, and you use the right ingredient for the dish.