p.7 #1 · What was your sharpest lens, regardless of manufacturer or focal length?
It's a good subject for debate, points to either side.
I feel that sharpness intervenes once it is past a certain level, more-or-less what 20/20 vision gives us.
So over-sharpness in some instances places a distraction over the image as it is viewed, one that stops the viewing and steals focus from the image. Forgive me for saying so, but the LoCA search in reviews is cult behaviour, if you need 100% of 61mp to see it.
There is no question the excess sharpness works great for many subjects, but being of a suspicious mind, it may be no coincidence that the sharpness craze correlated in time with the loss of interest in photographing regular human beings in regular settings - not of the over-lit artificiality of portraits people pay for. Many modern lenses make women look horrible. They dislike it, Fred's wife included. Females in my life too, ones I shoot on the streets.
Lenses from the mainstream are no longer made for people photography, that is why the Canon forum is full of EF chat, and why the vintage lenses are so popular in Hollywood. Why Nikon made the f1/4 series for Z, why people love the 40/1.2 CV and old M lenses, the 58/1.4 from CV and Nikon. Some know what has been lost.
Correct sharpness levels appear to let the lens express other attributes more easily, by 'inviting' the viewer into the image, to merge their vision with the imagery. This is what many refer to when they describe imagery as 'cinematic'. It's a kind of visual flow across, and into the image. You don't see it in APO lenses' images, that's why so few people images are shot with them. So from this angle, sharpness is in the 'be careful what you wish for' category.
And yes, it challenges the tech-first review process so beloved of reviewers to the point they emphasis it over the actual images produced. It's easy to lose touch with your user base when you are in charge of what they have to use. I call this 'cultural herding', you can instil a fashion in the arts easily, witness the Hunter Biden art fiasco. Most modern art, in fact.
Tech can go too far in many fields, and people are uncomfortable with it. Zeiss have admitted this, by the way. I'm far from a voice in the wilderness on this. cheers. PS it's not audio, vision is something far more subtle, less technological. More is not better.
p.7 #3 · What was your sharpest lens, regardless of manufacturer or focal length?
philip_pj wrote:
What happens though, with such lenses, is that the viewer is forced to notice the extreme sharpness as having greater priority and importance than the image itself. The lens's acutance actually usurps the photo as the main attraction. The Sigma Syndrome is very popular.
that...that's not how photography works.
Mark Hamill told a story on Late Night with Seth Meyers where he lamented that his hair was not always wet between shots in a scene in Star Wars where Luke and the gang are trapped in a trash compactor, breaking continuity to which Harrison Ford responds "if the audience is looking at your hair, we are in a lot of trouble"
Basically if people are noticing the sharpness over anything else, your image is shitty to begin with; it's a skill issue.
p.7 #4 · What was your sharpest lens, regardless of manufacturer or focal length?
philip_pj wrote:
Many modern lenses make women look horrible. They dislike it, Fred's wife included. Females in my life too, ones I shoot on the streets.
what in god's name is that statement? why does it have to be just women? probably not your intent, but it rubs the wrong way on so many levels. I'm going to say it again: it's not the lens, it's the photographer. A shitty portrait taken with a Leica 90mm APO SL replaced with any vintage 85mm lens will result in that same shitty portrait, regardless of gender.
