p.5 #1 · What was your sharpest lens, regardless of manufacturer or focal length?
Reading this enlightening thread, I was wondering if we would see such a comment as this below, with not much hope I admit:
'It is very sharp, maybe a bit too sharp for my personal liking. I often reduce sharpness..'
Sharpness has been sanctified. Like money, you can never have too much of it! Just don't ask your women folk what they like in your photos of them. In brief - in film days the optical designers strove for maximum sharpness because film is a soft and forgiving medium. Enter the harsh mistress of digital and these same designers kept on going that way, and on and on, as technology improved and profits rose.
It was sold to you as perfection. But digital needs very careful calibration of lens aberrations, careful balancing of resolution and lens micro-contrast, and especially astute handling of high spatial frequencies ('sharpness') so as not to be very unpleasant to many subjects - like...human skin!
