I used to obsess over sharpness, I spent more time doing lens tests than I did taking actual photographs.
These days when I get a new lens I research it, buy it, do a couple of quick tests to make sure it doesn't display any serious problems, decentering, etc... and then go on with shooting.
It's quite liberating to not stress and worry about if my copy of my lens is as good as it can be. While I definitely want as much sharpness as I can get, I don't think it's worth pixel peeping and doing countless lens tests to obsess over a 5-10% difference.
I saw an Ansel Adams exhibit a couple of year ago, I don't remember even thinking about the sharpness, I just remember thinking the prints looked great.
Truth be told it's probably only gear heads like us that go to an art show and pixel peep someones prints, everyone else either just recognizes that they like them and they look good, or they don't.
Yeah I suffered from sharpness insanity a couple years ago. Freaked out about corners on a lens that Id taken excellent photos with for years! Ridiculous! Shot with 18-135 last night, one of the shots looked better than 180 tamron due to composition. Not that the sharpness of 180 upsets me
andyjaggy82 wrote:
It's quite liberating to not stress and worry about if my copy of my lens is as good as it can be.
I think this is mostly an issue for people who are drooling over lenses that they can't afford, or when they buy one and want to be sure that they really got what they hoped for. It was a bit like that for me at least, initially with my Contax lenses. Soon after I got to know my lenses with their strengths and imperfections I just became very happy with my kit. If I ever come to the point where I am buying $$$$ Leica M lenses, I wouldn't be doing as much pixel peeping but just making sure that the results are really bringing something unique that suits my style.
I want really good sharpness but I don't need high resolution, because 90% of my photography is about scenes without anything happening and I only publish smallish images on the web. I try to make simple and boring things look interesting through strict compositions combined with great IQ including colors, depth (but seldom short DOF) and textures. That doesn't work very well without great sharpness.
And yes, it DOES matter even for small sized images on the web...
makten - what exactly do you mean by sharpness if you don't need resolution? are you thinking of contrast in a certain frequency range? does changing the viewing size effect this sharpness in your experience?
Well, I find Martin's comments very interesting. Back in the early 80s it was generally known that Leica lens design philosophy emphasized high resolution but low contrast, which resulted in the typical Leica look of that period still appreciated until today by Leica aficionadoes. On the other hand, Zeiss lens design philosophy was to emphasize high contrast in the coarse structures resulting in a very sharp image at common printing sizes but at the expense of high resolution. Zeiss idea was that even in larger prints, high contrast is perceived as sharpness more than actual resolved detail, which is very true IMO. Of course, things have dramatically changed since Leica adopted Zeiss approach after having realized the huge success of Zeiss with their lens designs. And in the digital age, I think all manufacturers are working on high resolution designs above anything else to satisfy the pixel peepers. This was documented in an article by Erwin Puts, but it seems to not exist anymore on his website. Anyhow, most Contax lenses have been designed following this philosophy and I think their peculiar drawing style is still appreciated, and to a certain extent lost in the newer Zeiss lines.
sebboh wrote:
makten - what exactly do you mean by sharpness if you don't need resolution?
Acutance (microcontrast basically). Sharpness can be said to be a function of resolution and acutance.
Resolution doesn't say much about microcontrast. A lens can resolve 1000lp/mm but if it's MTF10 (10% contrast) the acutance is low and so is the impression of sharpness.
sebboh wrote:
makten - what exactly do you mean by sharpness if you don't need resolution? are you thinking of contrast in a certain frequency range?
Yes, that's what I'm talking about and Edwards answer sums it up nicely. Though, I have to say that the lens that I used (Leica 28/2 Summicron ASPH) for the example gives both high local contrast (lower frequency) AND high resolution. But then it's a $4000 lens, and that's why I sold it. Just couldn't justify it for me as an amateur that doesn't make a nickel from my photography.
I don't want this to turn into a Leica vs. Zeiss discussion, but I think both Leica and Zeiss make lenses that are very high resolving and very "sharp" these days. A pretty good example of what I'm NOT liking, is the Leica 40/2 Summicron-C on the OM-D. Even though it gives moiré at f/4 – which means it outresolves 64 megapixels on FF – it gives a smooth and not very contrasty or "sharp" impression.
So, resolution doesn't correspond fully to "sharpness" when you view a whole image instead of peeping close up.
does changing the viewing size effect this sharpness in your experience?
I really don't know, but I suppose it should. Though it might be the other way around from what you might think, because a small final image benefits more from some extra "punch" than a large one does, to sort of make up for the lack of resolution.
I mean, 1024 pixels on the long end is nothing, but if there's high definition, great colors and lack of aberrations, the viewer will still get a good enough impression. High resolution won't help at all here.
Makten wrote:
I really don't know, but I suppose it should. Though it might be the other way around from what you might think, because a small final image benefits more from some extra "punch" than a large one does, to sort of make up for the lack of resolution.
I mean, 1024 pixels on the long end is nothing, but if there's high definition, great colors and lack of aberrations, the viewer will still get a good enough impression. High resolution won't help at all here.
that's kind of what i was getting at. at small sizes a an oof shot with high contrast can actually look very sharp while at extremely large sizes an image from a lens with high microcontrast can look less sharp than a shot from a low contrast but high resolution lens. i wasn't entirely sure what you meant by sharpness though, since most people mean resolution when they say sharpness and you explicitly said that's not what you meant, but didn't define what you did mean.
out of curiosity, did you ever try your 28 cron on the OM-D, and if so did it perform similarly to the 40 cron or did it still show lots of punch? i ask because i've heard a few people say that the 28 cron draws similarly to the 40 cron, though a bit more modern. i personally prefer the style of the 40 cron on my NEX-7 to my punchier zeiss 45/2 (i think i'm in the minority here) - i find that much of the fine detail gets lost in the in your face contrast with downsizing the zeiss images while it seems to come out with the cron. back on topic, as far as resolution goes, i certainly will never turn down extra resolution, but it's how the images look at normal sizes that i use to base my decisions on whether to keep a lens.
Once you've used a high resolving sharp lens to capture a great photo, using a softer lens to capture great photos is a bit more disappointing unless you're specifically going for a certain look.
I know when I capture a great photo, I always want it at the highest detail, resolution, and quality I could have gotten at my fiscal and carrying budget.
andyjaggy82 wrote:
I saw an Ansel Adams exhibit a couple of year ago, I don't remember even thinking about the sharpness, I just remember thinking the prints looked great.
Truth be told it's probably only gear heads like us that go to an art show and pixel peep someones prints, everyone else either just recognizes that they like them and they look good, or they don't.
I don't think I've ever noticed sharpness at a gallery showing or museum exhibit. There I somehow just assume they are as the artist wanted them to be. I sure notice it with on-line digital files though.
FlyPenFly wrote:
Once you've used a high resolving sharp lens to capture a great photo, using a softer lens to capture great photos is a bit more disappointing unless you're specifically going for a certain look.
Pixel peeping is useful though, it gets a bad rap but sometimes, it's critical if you're trying to get something ready for a client or for print.
Not pixel peeping is fine and I mostly don't but when you're getting a photo ready for distribution, its the mark of a professional or competent amateur that it's as good as it can be within the constraints for the project.
I don't pixel peep photos I put on facebook of my friends or of random vacation shots. I do pixel peep when I'm trying to evaluate if a lens can deliver to verify I didn't get a lemon. Most importantly I pixel peep if I have the time before I make a print available for sale.
FlyPenFly wrote:
Pixel peeping is useful though, it gets a bad rap but sometimes, it's critical if you're trying to get something ready for a client or for print.
Not pixel peeping is fine and I mostly don't but when you're getting a photo ready for distribution, its the mark of a professional that it's as good as it can be within the constraints for the project.
I don't pixel peep photos I put on facebook of my friends or of random vacation shots. I do pixel peep when I'm trying to evaluate if a lens can deliver to verify I didn't get a lemon. Most importantly I pixel peep if I have the time before I make a print available for sale....Show more →
yes, if you're selling stock you need to. for other uses (including printing) it's better to optimize the image for best results at the output size rather than best results at the pixel level.
in my admittedly limited experience, i find that optimizing for 100% view can sometimes result in a worse downsized image or an image in which many more steps are necessary to achieve the optimal downsized image.
FlyPenFly wrote:
Once you've used a high resolving sharp lens to capture a great photo, using a softer lens to capture great photos is a bit more disappointing unless you're specifically going for a certain look.
sebboh wrote:
unless you don't pixel peep.
I guess that's a joke?
If not that's kinda silly to say. As soon as the captured image appears in the camera's EVF I (usually) know. It's screamed at me with an ACR display of Fit Image which is usually like 16 to 20 percent. It reaches out and pokes ya right in the eyeballs with extreme force on the first PS scale displayed as Fit Image full-screen which for me is usually 50% display scale and 65% image scaling. After a few more scaling steps when the image size is below 1000 pixels it's sometimes difficult to tell. And of course it's fairly impossible to tell with shots being scaled down to around 800x600 and less (which is one reason I don't understand people who post that small). But absolutely no pixel peeping is needed to know if the lens is mediocre, sharp, or exceptionally sharp - once a person has shot with those grades of lenses. And that's just what FlyPenFly said too.
FlyPenFly wrote:
I think you should do both.
sebboh wrote:
in my admittedly limited experience, i find that optimizing for 100% view can sometimes result in a worse downsized image or an image in which many more steps are necessary to achieve the optimal downsized image.
And of course again just like FlyPenFly said there too, you should optimize both the original 100% and for the targeted output. Nothing else even makes much sense. You can't tell me you don't do that S. I know you do it - I can see it in your images and I think I read you saying as much in the recent past too.
One fun thing is to go through interfacelift.com, I get a lot of my wallpapers from there for my systems. I often see some amazing images that would have been much nicer if they were taken with a nicer sharper lens. Sure, the image itself is fantastic and most people won't notice but I can easily see lens shortcomings on my 27" monitors.
That just makes me think that's a shame such an impressive scene wasn't captured with a better lens.
