Why so many photographers are anxious about sharpness?

clayne said:

What he really meant was "brightness" of sound. Music (sound) is actually a damn good metaphor for light and how it works.

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There is a big difference between "brightness" and "clarity"... as it relates to midrange and treble performance. But we're veering off into sound reproduction. The same could be compared to imagery though.

Sharpness is nothing else but frequency range.
That's why, for instance, it is measured in modulations per unit.
It's so fitting a comparison that it even isn't a metaphor. Don't understand that, and you don't understand the basics of it.

Dull, unsharp lenses, fail to deliver the high frequencies. The high tones.
The sharper a lens, the higher the maximum frequency it is able to transmit to whatever it is that is going to record it.

No reason to be rude, Q.G.

There are different "personal" definitions of audio sharpness. If you like brittle bright sound, that's fine... go buy an Adcom, Rotel or similar system. If you like defined/refined sound go buy an old Forte' or Threshold system. The average Krell is somewhere in the middle, IMO, with a compromise between bass/midbass definition and high-mid to treble harshness. This is why I bi-amp.

When we define visually "brittle" or "defined"... some just don't like razor sharp images and bokeh is the prpbably the defining issue here.

Landavid,

You hit the nail on the head! Many years ago I gave up a promising career in photography for an engineering career and here I am trying to recapture that artistic bent, forty years later!

Q.G.,

Sharpness in a lens is quite simply NOT in any way like frequency range in a piece of music. Frequency and sharpness are measured in cycles per unit, yes, but not frequency range. Being measured in the same way does not make them the same. Frequency range is a range of tones that is used, from lowest to highest.....like tonal range in a print. Any one frequency in music is akin to any one tone in a print. No. You are way wrong. You are not often, but here, you definitely are. Sharpness in its effect on the final print really has no musical equivalent, but the closest thing would be the manner in which you strike each note or play each phrase. Do you ease it in dully, or attack it sharply? Do you play it sloppily, or do you play it precisely?

No, 2F.

Frequency range is frequency range. The thing a frequency range is a range of is frequency. Which is meassured in modulations per unit.

What you are talking about is dynamic range. Which, of course, is something else.

Sharpness is a frequency thing. The smaller the detail, the higher the spatial frequency.
The sharper a lens, the higher the spatial frequency it can resolve. Or conversely: the higher the frequency a lens can resolve, the smaller the detail it can transmit, the sharper it is.

It's exactly like i said: it's so fitting a comparison, that it even isn't a metaphor. Frequency in both sound and image are the same thing.

Y'all are way too technical for me.

In my work, I'm a lot less concerned with how an image looks than how it feels. Sometimes razor sharpness works, and sometimes it doesn't. I do whatever is best to convey the moment.

- CJ

Photography is the Fourier transform of music. It's really that simple

Cheryl is right, why dress a simple question up in some much technicality.

Cheryl Jacobs said:

Y'all are way too technical for me.

In my work, I'm a lot less concerned with how an image looks than how it feels. Sometimes razor sharpness works, and sometimes it doesn't. I do whatever is best to convey the moment.
- CJ

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Yes. Like that!!

Cheryl Jacobs said:

Y'all are way too technical for me.

In my work, I'm a lot less concerned with how an image looks than how it feels. Sometimes razor sharpness works, and sometimes it doesn't. I do whatever is best to convey the moment.

- CJ

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thanks cheryl

i think you hit it and hard .
the point isn't to obsess about technical aspects
but about what it does afterwards.
there are lots of techniques/tools we can use
and we should use whatever tools we can ...

john

Q.G.,

A frequency range is a range of frequencies. It is not a single frequency. It is not measured in modulations per unit. It is a range of frequencies, each of which are individually measured in modulations per unit. It is "frequencies from this frequency to that frequency are in use for this particular application". It is not akin to dynamic range at all, and I did not mean to say that it is. I said it is akin to tonal range of a print.

I am not talking about dynamic range at all, though dynamic range in an audio system is a frequency range. An audible frequency range can exist anywhere within or without a certain listening system's dynamic range. When it tries to exist outside of it, it does not, because it cannot. It becomes compressed by the ceiling or floor of the dynamic range, and distorts on its way out toward inaudibility. The visual equivalent is under or over exposure of a print. Tones either get sucked up or sucked down to maximum white or maximum black, respectively. Again, not a perfect metaphor, but quite similar.

The dynamic range of an audio system is akin to the black through white that is available to a printer when using a piece of photo paper. You cannot get any blacker than maximum black, and you cannot get any whiter than maximum white, just as your audio system cannot transmit anything above or below certain frequencies.

It is possible to print a tonal range that uses anything from one of these available tones to an infinite number of in between tones. Your tonal range of a print with a given contrast filter in place may be (and I am going to use zones to make this easier to type) ten zones. It may be two zones. It may be three, and so on and so forth. You may, via under or over exposure in printing, position these ranges into any point within or without the dynamic range of the paper. What I mean is that you can print a picture with, for example, a three-tone range to either zone 0-III, III-VI, V-VIII, etc.

What I said was that tonal range and frequency range are the same in the metaphor. Similarly as with the prints described above, a piece of music may have a range of tones that is narrow, and mostly localized near the bottom or the top of the audio system's dynamic range. The frequency range may be wide and may make full use of the system's dynamic range. Most music will have a fairly wide span from low to high tones, but will not hit either "edge" of the dynamic range. (Though the edges of the dynamic range of amplitude - not frequency - are purposefully brushed or even smashed into in most recorded music. In the same way, most printers will do the same with a paper's dynamic range. They have little tidbits occasionally hitting maximum black or maximum white, but most people print so the tonal range of the picture matches the dynamic range of the paper.)

Now, the idea that a musical pitch is anything other than equivalent to a tone in a print makes no sense to me, simply speaking "artistically" as a musician and a photographer, regardless of the technical fact that frequency and sharpness are measured the same way.

QG/2F/2F, let me humbly suggest starting a new thread on this analogy. I think it is interesting but... it's becoming increasingly difficult to make sense of this thread.

Anyway I think you guys are going about it the wrong way, the real issues are continuity of tone and gamut

Also anyway, some time ago I wrote a little APUG blog post on the similarities between (there was a url link here which no longer exists) that may (or may not) interest you.

Yes, Cheryl, you are right. Feeling, IMO, should drive the photographic approach to be constructive.

OK, Keith. Arguing an imperfect analogy has no end anyhow. It is just arguing over how this or that is right or wrong, in a framework that is incorrect anyhow, and thus will not allow anything to be right or wrong in the first place.

Cheryl Jacobs said:

Y'all are way too technical for me.

In my work, I'm a lot less concerned with how an image looks than how it feels. Sometimes razor sharpness works, and sometimes it doesn't. I do whatever is best to convey the moment.

- CJ

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Agreed - but this is pretty much the entire gist of the thread in the first place really. It's what we've been discussing - i.e. why do some people care about extensive sharpness when it's not absolutely necessary to convey the imagery any standard piece of equipment can do.

2F/2F said:

Q.G.,

A frequency range is a range of frequencies. It is not a single frequency. It is not measured in modulations per unit. It is a range of frequencies, each of which are individually measured in modulations per unit. It is "frequencies from this frequency to that frequency are in use for this particular application". It is not akin to dynamic range at all, and I did not mean to say that it is. I said it is akin to tonal range of a print.

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A final reply to this (would be a good topic indeed for another thread):
Thank you for repeating what i said about fraquencies and frequency range. If only you would understand.

And tonal range = dynamic range =/= sharpness.
Would also be good if you understood that.



The analogy, by the way, is perfect.
Sound and light, for our intents and purposes, only differ in medium.
Why, i have even used sound to create images many moons ago. People still do on a regular basis.

Cheryl Jacobs said:

Y'all are way too technical for me.

In my work, I'm a lot less concerned with how an image looks than how it feels. Sometimes razor sharpness works, and sometimes it doesn't. I do whatever is best to convey the moment.

Click to expand...

I completely agree.

And to be able to have a free choice of what to do to make our images work, we need tools that allow us that freedom.
And that means that you sometimes have to consider the capabilities of those tools. Have to look for the ones that can do what we want them to do.

Sharpness is to photography what frequency range is to music.

I’m not sure, but I think the analogy to frequency is pretty good. However, I don’t think it is fair to punish the audience with ear wax, or, to extend the analogy to photography, with a blindfold. Let’s assume a happy and unhindered audience, and look at the image a musician or photographer wants to share.

First, when we talk about music,or sound, are we talking marching band or chamber music ?

There is a big difference to the qualities of the sound that either produce. An analogy limps or walks depending how we set the limits, so I’m going to come down on the side of a string quartet, or even a duet of some sort. But the fiddle, certainly comes first.

Secondly, I’m going to beg you to disqualify the interesting electronic violins being used to such wonderful effect today; this IS an analogue forum.

One of the performance questions that has always been interesting to me has been the process of choosing an instrument that will help the fiddler make the sound he or she wants. We hear a tremendous difference in ancient violins and baroque violins; between modern and contemporary fiddles.

As a listener, I prefer sitting in a small room with the musician to being in a hall with a symphony. Music made for friends is simply more enjoyable to me than in a ‘performance’. Whether ancient, traditional, or classical fiddle music, it is more satisfying to me. My own musical friends tend, therefore to share the qualities of music and sound that are meaningful to me - that is the reason we became friends, I suppose. The expressive potential of the instrument needs to suit the player. And then there are bows, one more suited for playing an air than a reel. Most importantly, though, I kinda think that familiarity with a kindred violin might be the most important contributor to the sound made by a musician. A friend and mentor played a good violin for decades and played it “in all kinds of weather”. AS it warmed up, he naturally adjusted his playing to suit it. As the humidity or temperature in the room changed, he could compensate, and he could pour a range of emotion from it, and even the most technically staid were more than content to sit with him, and listen to the tunes, being washed in the sound like swimming in the sea.

The fiddle was battered, and seemed at times to be falling apart, but it was the perfect instrument for him. My friend was a musician, and an artist. And I mean artist from a very old school point of view, that an artist makes work that gives life. Baudelaire said “Art is technique charged by emotion”; St. Francis taught that work done by hand was labor, by hand and mind was craft. But done by hand, and mind, and HEART is Art..

Art, therefore, depends upon being fully human, the ultimate challenge of living a life. Perfection depends not upon physical constraints, being rich or poor, but what one does, and how. Technique -certainly- needs to support the art, but never is a substitute.

Thank you. I think the analogy works perfectly. Like music, technical perfection is not necessary for photography.

To come back to the OP's question, "...why so many people are anxious about sharpness?"

I think it is because we recognize, at some level, that making art requires a transformation of ourselves (see St. Francis, above). It is easier to use a perfect machine than it is to face our own limitations.

At least it is for me.

Peace.

[frequency range... from the lowest to highest we can hear] is to [print tones... from the lowest to the highest we can see]
as [sound clarity... transients and timbral accuracy] is to [print sharpness... being able to see/count the hairs in one's eyebrows the the leaves of a tree... or just fuzziness]

I want to hear/see the full range and the full clarity when/where I want them to be. I always strived for a more realistic look unless the intention was for an abstract. Others prefer a Monet-like impressionistic approach. While I DO like monet, I prefer the more realistic painters like Michelangelo.

Thank you for those words. They felt good to read.

df cardwell said:

I think it is because we recognize, at some level, that making art requires a transformation of ourselves (see St. Francis, above). It is easier to use a perfect machine than it is to face our own limitations.

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Q.G.,

I did not repeat what you said. You said frequency range is measured in cycles per unit. It is not. It is a range. Each frequency is measured in cycles per unit, but not the range. The range would be the highest frequency minus the lowest frequency. It is stated in cyles per unit, but it is not measured in cycles per unit. It is measured, simply, in range; difference, or better yet, cycles per unit apart.

Frequency in music in the end means how low or high a tone is. This is equivalent to a tone in a print; how high or low the tone is.

How sharp something is in a picture has no real music equivalent, but how it affects the final picture would be most similar to how a musician's attack on a note or phrase is made. A hard and staccato over all style of phrasing has a similar affect on the listener as does a sharp picture on a viewer. A smooth and legato over all style of attack has a similar affect on the listener as a not-so sharp picture has on the viewer.

The imperfection of the analogy comes from the fact that a piece of music cannot be taken in as briefly as a picture. So, to make the analogy work totally, one would have to take a small "slice" of the song...which cannot be done with any usefulness, as it ceases to be a song. You can't compare a slice of a song to a print and get any useful analogies...and you can't compare an entire song to a print, and get any totally correct analogies.

So, we have to do the best we can to compare by putting the entirely of a piece of music up against one flat print. It cannot really be done! Hence the arguments.

The fact that two technical somethings are measured in the same way does not mean that they have the same affect on the final product. The point that how wide a range of frequencies are used in a piece of music is the same as how sharp a print is, and has the same affect on the final piece is just a lame metaphor, if you are understand how both songs and pictures are affected by their elements. The comparison is too minute and too technical, and does not make sense practically.

Take it from the final piece backwards. Think how each affects the final piece.

You have a print, and a piece of music:

What makes the print sharp? Acute display of and discernment ability of different bits of the image on the print.

What in music affects your being able to acutely hear a lot of different bits? Nothing really as cut and dried as the explanation for a picture, as there are many things that do this...but it is affected by how neat and tight the composition, arrangement, and performance are. If you have a drunk trombonist doing big, blatty glissandos throughout the piece, it will smear out the precise nuances of the anally retentive xylophone player. It will affect the song, and on purpose. If you had purposefully-introduced lens flare in your picture smearing over your details, you'd get a similar visual affect.

What makes an individual voice high or low in music? The frequency.

What makes an individual part of a picture high or low? The tonal value.

What describes the entire musical palette available to (i.e. that can be used by) the maker of a piece of music? The dynamic range of the instruments and audio system.

What describes the entire visual palette available to (i.e. that can be used by) the maker of a picture? The dynamic range of the printing paper.

What describes the variety of pitches that actually are used (not that can be used) in the one piece of music? The frequency range employed in the piece. (How far apart are your lowest pitch used and your highest pitch used?)

What describes the variety of tonal values that actually are used (not that can be used) in the one picture? The tonal range employed in the print. (How far apart are your lowest tonal value used and your highest tonal value used?)

Using the method of measurement for two different thingies to determine whether or not they are analogous does not work in this case. It is a vapid approach...similar to what the OP was talking about in the first place: Using a technical criterion to wholly form ones opinion of a picture.

2F/2F said:

Q.G.,

I did not repeat what you said. You said frequency range is measured in cycles per unit.[...]

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I most certainly did not.

A discussion begins with taking in what the participants say, instead of assuming that they say what you hope/want they say.

So (and not to bore the other participants further), let's call it quits.

You are right about my misparaphrase, "You said frequency range is measured in cycles per unit". What you said, to which I was referring with my paraphrase, was, "Sharpness is nothing else but frequency range. [new paragraph] That's why, for instance, it is measured in modulations per unit." You also said, "Frequency range is frequency range. The thing a frequency range is a range of is frequency. Which is meassured in modulations per unit." My apologies for this misparaphrase. Please don't think it was on purpose.

As for your second paragraph, please........If I do anything but this it is a simple slip...and I think you know this.

Let us call it quits.

Q.G., 2F/2F, I assume that you are both familiar with the visual music genre; there are quite a few contributors to that and some of your ideas are likely implemented there.

I know of that thing, yes.
But it is as far removed from what i was on about as color psychology is from attempts to make lenses apochromatic.

Well, if you consider these issues from the perspective of the viewer/listener...