On Lenses

[Barney]

Been overthinking this particular aspect of my photography,

If I use, what I consider, my best sharpest lenses in say 35mm, am I sharpening the grain and making the photos less appealing? Would I be better off with a softer lens to render the grain less obtrusive? I know that in portrait photography that it is sometimes more advantageous to use a softer lens, I could extend this "theory" to softer working developers also but I want to focus on the lens aspect first. (No pun intended )

 

[excalibur2]

Well I always use sharp lenses as you can always go down in quality but with a crap lens you can't go up...e.g.for portraiture on an older woman, with a sharp lens, you can use a diffuser or a poor man used to smear vaseline over a filter.
But in saying the above, have bought quite a few lenses at the bootie (for £1) and some would give a dreamy (or olde worlde) look to a shot (esp portraiture), so I suppose know your lens and horses for courses.

 

[Barney]

JUst realised what a stupid question that was, not taking a picture of the grain am I.

 

[StephenM]

I will just make a few comments on "sharpness". Like many things, what you see is less important to the effect than what you think you see. Style over substance, if you like. The mind will interpret contrast as sharpness more than it will resolution. The examples that were everywhere in photo magazines in the late 1960s from Zeiss showing why MTF gave a better measure of performance of a lens than resolution illustrate this.

Barry Thornton in one of his books describes how grain can make a photo look sharper; that an image on a slow film using a grain reducing developer might show more fine detail than the same subject on a fast film with grain apparent, but would appear softer, less sharp.

As in politics, so in photography. How things appear matters more than how they actually are,

 

[AndrewFlannigan]

IAs in politics, so in photography. How things appear matters more than how they actually are,

Another point that is too often unspoken of: if the viewer notices either the grain or the sharpness, in almost all cases, the picture probably isn't meeting its purpose.

To me, a good picture shows something of interest to the viewer in a way that informs the viewer about the subject. That subject is seldom how sharp the image is or how the grain looks (although sometimes, it's either or both). I was told decades ago that a picture has to tell a story and if the casual viewer is seeing the technique, rather than the story, the picture has failed. That's worked for me but other opinions are, of course, available.