Shel Belinkoff wrote:
After posting my comment i realized that a photographic image, in the terms that you're now using, can be too sharp as well. Using Boris's recent photo we can see that a photograph can be too soft (let's not get into subjective v objective arguments here), and that for some other instances, such as a portrait of a sweet old lady, the photo can be too sharp. Am I splitting hairs? maybe, but I don't think so, for just as other aspects of a photograph are more or less appropriate for a given image (color v B&W, cropping, contrast choices, choice of paper, inks, and so forth, the amount of sharpness one chooses may or may not be appropriate. Were there no such thing as "too sharp," there'd be no soft focus lenses, diffusion filters, or vaseline smeared on filters, images shot through a stocking stretched over the lens or photos made through scratched and fogged glass. Where would the Holga be? and that newish Baby-something-or-other lens that was mentioned here earlier.
Shel
Okay, I gladly relent...
Depending on what the image is, you CAN have too much sharpness, as it might detract from whatever you're trying to portray.
Your little old lady example is a good one. Everyone might love to see her visage, but certainly not her wild chin hairs, the wrinkles upon wrinkles and the other blemishes and insults of old age...
Without bokeh, a scene, an image, might get lost in all the detail, and that's why one frequently opts for a larger aperture.
So, just as the entire image shouldn't necessarily be in focus, all the way out to infinity, neither should all parts of the image be needle sharp. That makes for "accurate" images, but boring ones, too!
I was thinking too narrowly. Thanks for the wake up.
keith whaley
