Great topic and viewpoint - When I first started out that was all I heard about - How to get Tack Sharp Photos. But over time I realized a great photo is all based on the mood - How it makes you feel - Your thoughts - your emotions. If you are first noticing the method or the process how it was made - Then you are missing the true sense of the art piece.
Yes and also missing how introducing movement and differential focus can actually get more of the visual message across. Paolo Pellegrin is a great example of this.
Great subject, I believe many photographers equate sharpness with perfection. As technology has improved so has the “need” for ultra sharp pictures. Your example with your pup is perfect as it evokes a feeling and emotion not a lesson in composition and sharpness. Love your channel, all the best in 2025.
When I first heard of "Are Bure Boke," I knew I was home. Moriyama's my favorite in the category of "I REALLY feel this work." Excited that you shared your thoughts on this.
It's funny to me now how I obsessed over sharpness when I first started photography and would pour over lens reviews, etc. Now, the only thing that matters is if I like the picture and some of my favorites would not be in the category of "sharp". Mood, tone, and content is where it's at for me! Also, love that your recommending books as I got into Gruyaert some time ago after one of your videos.
I'm a massive fan of Moriyama, his flow when on the street is reminiscent of your own, he moves and shoots what catches his eye which might not conform to the accepted norms in photography.
Daido Moriyama's work is amazing especially the early work using Ricoh GR 35mm film and early digital Ricoh GR1 8mp! As for sharpness, on a digital camera if you are using the sharpening 'in camera' whilst you shoot you usually find that there is more contrast around patterns within the image eg a defined darkened area introduced around a person or people almost like a halo effect. It looks terrible when people sharpen in post and sharpened in camera as it looks way too sharp. Digital lenses don't require sharpening however vintage lenses sometimes need some help as the focal plain might be slightly out. As for normal sharpness well I think if you just nail the focus that's enough. Great to hear about these two new affordable books, I could never afford his vintage books like PROVOKE at £2,500 for Daido's work it's out of most peoples league.
I recently visited the Moriyama exhibition in the Museum Photo Elysée in Lausanne and spent a couple of hours there studying his work. A fabulous collection of his work if you get a chance to see it whilst it is on tour. Thanks very much for the book reviews, just ordered both volumes of Record 👍
Very well said Jeff. In digital technical terms sharpness is actually simply the clarity of the detail and hence the luminance contrast between adjacent pixels. Unfortunately, in our present age of technological advancement, photographers are way too obsessed with technical perfection, such as clarity, contrast, sharpness, dynamic range, bokeh (urgh!), coma, etc etc. Many people simply buy lenses that deliver these but have little idea about photography (which is an art, not a science).
I think people get confused with what is sharp and what is in or out of focus. Which you touch on. I think what people mean when they say is the image is sharp, in the main, is a referring to in/out of focus. Love this video.
Sharpness is the difference between creating art that pleases your soul and spending your days comparing camera lenses to find one capable of zeroing in on a gnat’s behind. In other words, the story and impression a photo conveys are far more important to me than how many pores I can count on a person’s face.
A good picture tells a story! Motion blur brings a kind of dynamic into a scenery. And sharpnes is when we can see the details necessary to create the story of the image in our minds.
This is so cool. I'm in a Moriyama phase now, just admiring his work and others who are inspired by his aesthetics but I have no idea how to set my camera and perception to capture similar styled images.
Sharpness to me means the clarity of fine details. Sometimes I need that (architecture) sometimes it is not wanted ( need to see every pore in an portrait?). But in postproduction it is easier to reduce sharpness than the other way around
For the sake of... fun (?), perhaps you want to see Hiroshi Sugimoto's "Architecture". All of his architecure shots were intentionally blurred. Very unusual approach :D
Thanks Jeff, shocking but true, I hadn't learned of Daido, book ordered. Now sharpness, if it's a good shot (my own opinion) it doesn't matter, if you connect / relate it doesn't matter, if it excites / inspires to make more it doesn't matter. Those are my three rules. Enjoyed the video and look forward to more.
@ it took me a while to understand. What everyone else says isn’t necessarily always correct lol If you get chance I’d be interested to see what you think of my last video images. 👍
In the early 90s I assisted a guy who shot everything with Hasselblad (on Plus-X), top-notch gear for the time. We once did a photo of a famous musician, who couldn't be still for more than a second. The best shot, the one that went to publication, was not in focus because of the sitter's jumpiness. When I pointed out to my boss that the photo he selected wasn't sharp, compared to some others, he replied "Sharpness is overrated". It's been true for much longer than that. I feel sorry for people like that Nikon user. A camera doesn't take amazing photos when it's inside a bag all the time. Happy new year, Jeff!
Food for thought. Thanks. When I first started photography sharpness was too me edge to edge sharpness, however as I have progressed through my photographic endeavors I value edge to edge sharpness less and I now often pick lenses that are not by definition sharp like the modern lenses of today which if used well have more character and mood to their renderings. I shoot 95% B&W so that also creates a different feel to an image where contrast and strong blacks against white whites are often to me what defines the images I personally like and not the sharpness of the image.
Well said, Jeff, The obsession today is, in my opinion, due to some amazing advances in lens and camera technology. My view however, is that just because we can does not mean that we must or should make use of the technology. Just look back at some of the classic photos that we all hold in high regard, most were not sharp by the standard used today.
Thank you. Yes many would not past the pixel peeping test of 100% on a 4K monitor, but they look incredible in the pages of a book or on the walls of an exhibition.
Henri Cartier-Bresson famously said, "Sharpness is a bourgeois concept." I discovered Daido Moriyama 3 decades ago and am still in awe of him today. By the way, a minor point, his name is pronounced Da-I-Do- as in Dada, so Duheedoh (not Deydoh). Love your videos and your and Sarah's work, keep up the good work. I like the idea of recommending books. Perhaps you can do another famous (or infamous?) photographic giant: Nobuyoshi Araki, though he is well known for eroticism, he also does a lot of street photography in his own way. And they happen to be friends with Daido.
Ahh I didn’t know that. Thank you. I’ve heard it pronounced DayDo a lot over the years and also Dye-Doh but never Duheedoh. I also didn’t know until recently that Daido isn’t his birth name. The Bresson quote was made when he was walking around Paris with Helmut Newton. HN saw that HCB was struggling to hold his camera steady (he was an old man by then) and mentioned it. HCB replied with the bourgeois comment as a joke.
Thanks for a very good video. And I agree with you. I don't worry much about sharpness, but it does bother me when I botch focus. I think the two are different. And I just received the Photofile book on Moriyama. That's a nice option for anyone who might not be sure about paying for the more elaborate volume. His photography might be an acquired taste, but it's worth looking at carefully.
Yes. It’s a bit like listening to Slipknot for me. I keep thinking I’ll try them again and each time I get a little bit more into them. At first it was an almighty racket 😂
I have a Z9, which can obviously take incredibly sharp photos. But, I really enjoy enjoy dropping the shutter speed to get motion blur. It's not sharp but it's the effect I like.
@@WalkLikeAlice I commented before I'd got far into video. When you started asking whether sharpness meant if it was simply in focus r was it something else, I was genuinely at a loss. For me a "sharp" photo might be one that shows a level of detail can clarity that isn't able to be seen by the human eye in an everyday scenario...Maybe. The slightly out of focus/blurry/ lower shutter speed photos that have more character, are more reminiscent of how the human sees things (or the mind remembers) and that's why I gravitate to them more.
While sharpness is vital in some genres of photography - see portraiture, landscape, commericals etc - in street photography it is very much a personal and aesthetic choice. Too much sharpness can suck the life and energy out of a street scene. whereas blur can give a sense of movement and life. I cover a lot conflict in the streets and when I can I aspire to getting sharp images, but the photos can come out looking staged and artificial.
Wayne Gretzky once said that you miss 100% of the shots you don't take..... Let's go back to the guy with the bubble wrap Nikon... How many "sharp" photographs is he getting with his Nikon bubble wrapped inside his backpack?.... As for discussion of sharpness in street photography, I think that someone that is mostly concerned with sharpness in their street photography is missing the point of street photography. You can have a perfectly sharp image of something that is of no interest, but what value is it? What have you accomplished by making it?
I was recently in a camera shop talking to the sales guy and I said "I don't particularly care about about image quality in the traditional sense". His mouth was agape and he said "then we have a problem". Why don't you stick to using your phone?" He didn't get it at all. I don't have control over it. I can't force it to use 1/30th of a second or control the depth of field exactly as I like. And there are lots of other settings that it insists on controlling. I've just come back from a month in Japan where I took an awful lot of photos. Very few of them are pin sharp. But that's not what it's about for me at all...
Things like reliability, ergonomics, system compatibility, and weather proofing are also features in high end gear. For us the Leica thing came because in 2001 I needed a film camera which I could use in low light. Sharpness wasn’t the issue, it was how fast a lens I could get and how steady I could hold the camera. But I do get your point within certain demographics.
Great subject and +1 for Record... Sharpness? I get it when it meant 'in focus...' But now it now seems to infer a bizarre heightened reality of supernatural clarity and weird contrast: crispy, crunchy images that more and more just look horrible. Modern cameras, lenses and post production all to blame along with shifts in taste and the desire to get tiny images on a phone to pop.
That guy was just i assume only engaged in that type of bright professional looking clean stock-like photography, that dominates postcards and things, as opposed to the more raw candid street kind, it's a funny moment to imagine and i'd enjoy something like that. As opposed to something more confrontational... The irony is that it's (i find) harder to do low shutter speed shots as i have to get the right light (i don't use flash). Just try to be aware of it starting to get dark and what light sources there are. I've had a few by Westminster recently where i'm not fully recognising the light and getting results i'm not expecting. For me i want art to open up possibilities, not close them, so the focus on shape and form (using low shutter speed, being graphic) allows that. I get people not liking Daido Moriyama, but get less people thinking photography should strive to be perfect, because once you've seen perfection you want to shake it up and it's no longer about what is perfect but what is fresh. The variation in art comes through tone. Moriyama's work is obviously about its spirit, it's very easy when you're doing it a lot to soften the edges of what you do and lose sight of the chaotic free space art is meant to allow and i take his 'farewell photography' as about that, as well as his quote 'i tried to destroy photography but when i tried to destroy it i realised i couldn't live without it'.
Sharpness is a way of rating a lemon . . . . or if an image is sharp front to back it allows an image to be rated without discussing th ecreativity that went into it. That probably goes for most of these more technical considerations like fantastic bokeh!
I’ve always thought “sharpness” simply meant “lack of blur” , of any sort - whether from subject motion, camera motion, or being out of focus. Whether that’s the correct definition or not I don’t know. Lack of blur is often strived for in at least some part of an image but like you say is not the be all and end all. Also it’s a relative concept, and subject motion and camera motion should possibly be grouped into ‘motion of subject _relative_ to camera’. A panning shot for instance, there is always going to be some motion blur even of the subject relative to the camera, but the important factor is just that there is _more_ relative motion between camera and background than camera and subject. Hence the subject appears more sharp than the background, and the image still looks good even if they’re not completely sharp, they’re just _more_ sharp than the background.
Yeah I thought that as well. But then I had someone look at some pictures I’d taken with a Leica and compare them with some he’d taken with an Olympus. Everything was blur free. He commented that the Olympus shots were “sharper”. Basically the Oly adds a lot of edge sharpening and adjustments to the file in camera where the Leica doesn’t.
@@WalkLikeAlice Yeah so is there a limit to actual sharpness, and is there a difference between actual sharpness and perceived sharpness? So for instance if you took a photo of a stationary object with the camera fixed on a sturdy tripod and the subject was perfectly in focus, there shouldn't be any blur, the image should be as sharp as you can get, right? In other words, _actual_ sharpness is at its maximum.... If you then went into photoshop and turned up the sharpness dial (or used a camera like an olympus that does that in camera) then it's increasing edge contrast to crank the _perceived_ sharpness up even more than the maximum _actual_ sharpness allows. If you wanted to pixel peep and prove this for sure I guess you could ensure the photo was of a dark gray subject (of a known shade of gray) against a lighter gray background (of a lighter known shade of gray), ensure the subject is perfectly horizontal, ensure the subject is made of a perfectly smooth straight material (difficult, I know....) and then look at the row of pixels where subject meets background. If 'actual sharpness' was _not_ at a maximum, then there would be some slight gradation between the subject's pixels and the background pixels. If edge sharpening has been used, you might expect some of the subject's pixels as you get near the edge of it to actually be slightly darker than the rest of the subject, and some of the background's pixels to be slightly lighter than the rest of the background. Maybe. I might be out of my depth here but that's how I imagine actual vs perceived sharpness.
Well I suppose there are images that are out of focus or have subject movement and then there are the benefits or limitations of any sensor/lens design that lead to so called sharpness or the lack of it. Has become an obsession with many, pixel peeping
It has. A function of the digital age, unfortunately. Zooming in to 100% on a 27” 4K screen must be like going right up to a 30” print getting a magnifying glass out and declaring it isn’t sharp!! But from 12feet away it looks fantastic.
Sharpness is a concern for those pixel peeper type photographers. Photography is a broad church so such things should not be excluded from the conversation, but it is not a key factor in defining a good street photo that's for sure.
I gave away a perfectly good Nikon D40, because I was led to believe its 6mp sensor and the kit lens would never be good enough. Gee, thanks, photography magazines!
Haha. Sorry about that. Magazine reviews have a lot to answer for. Problem is that a lot of the time the reviewers weren’t actual photographers. At least here in the UK
i bought a d40x having the d40 for 20 years 39,000 shutter no complaint so the d40x is goldie ir convert 590nm and seems twice as sharp with crap 18.55 lens.....try it.
@@wullieg7269 Nice try! It's that elusive "twice as sharp" butterfly I thought I needed to catch that got me onto the GAS treadmill in the first place. Living in a rainy part of the planet now, I've moved on by necessity to cameras and lenses with some weather sealing. I still miss that D40, though!
I thought about the whole sharpness thing at the beginning but ended up realising what I wanted was a punchy contrasty image not something soft but then using an old Russian vintage lens and a preset found it didn't really make any difference anyway 🙄
Sharpness is clarity, yes, but not like you get with the Clarity slider in Lightroom, more like the Detail slider with a mask applied, so that it just heightens the clarity of the edges of objects more finely than the Clarity slider does. Sorry if that's clear as mud. 😁 I have more fun with my Helios 44-2 (on Fuji X-T30ii) than with any of my Fuji lenses. And I have an immense amount of fun using the mood.camera app on my iPhone, which gives me mono photos that look like more they're from the 70s than modern times. And it doesn't matter if they're "sharp". Or if they include all of the light zones. Or any other technical quality. It's about the content and the expression of that content.
Garry, thanks very much for the comment but just a heads up, UA-cam held your comment I’m guessing because of the link in it. Might be worth leaving them out if you are commenting elsewhere. Cheers. 🙏
@@WalkLikeAlice Oh, sorry, my mistake. I didn't notice that it had turned into a link. It's just the name of the app, plus Google trying to be too clever.
Sharpness isn't everything, but if you want it for a shot, and can't achieve it because of a limitation of your gear, you feel a bit short changed. It does beg the question though, if "sharpness" isn't everything, why bother with top notch (expensive) lenses?
I think technically sharpness is a combination of resolution, and image contrast. Resolution is the amount of information a lens is capable of extracting usually measured in line pairs, while image contrast or acutance is defined as edge contrast which is the ability to clearly record finite edges between adjacent elements. However I think of sharpness and blur simply as tools of visual communication. If you are a landscape photographer sharpness and detail may be an important part of your work. A more artistic approach may be to use different ways to blur the image. To me it’s all about what you are trying to say not how sharp you can make it !
In the end, I think it boils down to what visual properties people covet in their photography. If they want "sharp" crisp photos - they need to seek kit which delivers that.
Your vlog on “Sharpness” deals with a conscious overemphasis on sharpness for sharpness's sake while explaining why you choose less sharpness and more blur in your images. Just like artists, there are several camps on this subject and where you might “belong” is, as in your case, a matter of choice and not a preoccupation. My background of 50 years in photojournalism (sports and news) has trained my mind and eye for higher contrast and sharpness due to what a printed image may look like (dot patterns) on the printed page. Occasionally, I might opt for less sharpness, texture, or clarity, but it depends on the story to be told. Michael Shainblum has said, “Make art because you enjoy it. You’re on your own journey.” The artistic expression of 10 years ago isn’t what you favor today, and your photography 10 years from now won’t be what it is today. We all grow, change, alter our visions, change our projects. When I retired, I sought landscape and nature photography because the last thing I wanted to do was photograph people after doing it for 50 years. Five years later, I experimented with street photography due to my photo club contest and became smitten. But my eye and mindset remain that of a photojournalist. That’s my style, that’s my training, that’s my skill set. My dad had a saying, “Concerning taste, there’s no dispute,” said the old farm woman as she kissed the cow. A Latin maxim states, “The receiver receives that which he is capable of receiving.” I follow your vlog because it’s different from street photography blogs and exposes me to contrary thoughts and perspectives. I incorporate the insights that will make my style of photography better and ignore the rest. You’re you, I’m me, and sometimes the twain will never meet. Fortunately, we meet often via your vlog, and for that I’m thankful.
A sharp image isn’t always a good photo, if its content means nothing. I have shots that are not sharp but I like the subject… some of which has motion blur which adds ’life” to the story 🏴 Flickr Ormie (O) PS I’m going to be controversial and say Fan Ho is a more interesting street photographer.
Fan Ho is a different kind of street photographer - the total opposite to Moriyama. I don’t know if his work is more interesting. It’s different. He was working before Moriyama and also at a time when China was in a stage of transition. So I think his work has a much more nostalgic feel to it. A lot of it was pseudo-staged and a lot of it was heavily manipulated in the darkroom. He also wasn’t particularly prolific often repeating ideas and visiting the same places. Beautiful work. Absolutely amazing but nothing like Moriyama.
You need to have sharp eyes to photograph, lens sharpness is optional, and its usefulness depends on your style and the subject of your work. Great channel, great content and insights, congrats and thank you. To all: let's have the best of what 2025 can bring us.
As Ansel Adams apparently said "There is nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept"
Adams said some great things about photography. One of which will be the subject of a video in a couple of weeks time.
What i wish Capa HAD said. 'if you're photos arent good enough, they're not blurry enough'. thanks for bringing this up.
Thanks for watching
Great topic and viewpoint - When I first started out that was all I heard about - How to get Tack Sharp Photos. But over time I realized a great photo is all based on the mood - How it makes you feel - Your thoughts - your emotions. If you are first noticing the method or the process how it was made - Then you are missing the true sense of the art piece.
Yes and also missing how introducing movement and differential focus can actually get more of the visual message across. Paolo Pellegrin is a great example of this.
Great subject, I believe many photographers equate sharpness with perfection. As technology has improved so has the “need” for ultra sharp pictures. Your example with your pup is perfect as it evokes a feeling and emotion not a lesson in composition and sharpness. Love your channel, all the best in 2025.
Thank you Alan and to you too.
Sharpness is (in my opinion) being able to get enough clarity in the details essential for the image to tell its story.
Clarity seems to be a recurring theme here.
When I first heard of "Are Bure Boke," I knew I was home. Moriyama's my favorite in the category of "I REALLY feel this work." Excited that you shared your thoughts on this.
It's funny to me now how I obsessed over sharpness when I first started photography and would pour over lens reviews, etc. Now, the only thing that matters is if I like the picture and some of my favorites would not be in the category of "sharp". Mood, tone, and content is where it's at for me! Also, love that your recommending books as I got into Gruyaert some time ago after one of your videos.
I'm a massive fan of Moriyama, his flow when on the street is reminiscent of your own, he moves and shoots what catches his eye which might not conform to the accepted norms in photography.
I’ll take that as a big compliment. Thank you.
Daido Moriyama's work is amazing especially the early work using Ricoh GR 35mm film and early digital Ricoh GR1 8mp! As for sharpness, on a digital camera if you are using the sharpening 'in camera' whilst you shoot you usually find that there is more contrast around patterns within the image eg a defined darkened area introduced around a person or people almost like a halo effect. It looks terrible when people sharpen in post and sharpened in camera as it looks way too sharp. Digital lenses don't require sharpening however vintage lenses sometimes need some help as the focal plain might be slightly out. As for normal sharpness well I think if you just nail the focus that's enough. Great to hear about these two new affordable books, I could never afford his vintage books like PROVOKE at £2,500 for Daido's work it's out of most peoples league.
Thanks for watching. Hope you enjoyed the video.
I recently visited the Moriyama exhibition in the Museum Photo Elysée in Lausanne and spent a couple of hours there studying his work. A fabulous collection of his work if you get a chance to see it whilst it is on tour. Thanks very much for the book reviews, just ordered both volumes of Record 👍
Yeah he’s something else. Some photographers I know aren’t so keen on his work but I think it’s very cool.
Noise is nice! 😀
Very well said Jeff. In digital technical terms sharpness is actually simply the clarity of the detail and hence the luminance contrast between adjacent pixels. Unfortunately, in our present age of technological advancement, photographers are way too obsessed with technical perfection, such as clarity, contrast, sharpness, dynamic range, bokeh (urgh!), coma, etc etc. Many people simply buy lenses that deliver these but have little idea about photography (which is an art, not a science).
Thank you!! That makes sense. But yeah I agree technical perfection often leads to boring photographs.
I think people get confused with what is sharp and what is in or out of focus. Which you touch on. I think what people mean when they say is the image is sharp, in the main, is a referring to in/out of focus. Love this video.
Yes and the more defined the focus is, the sharper it is.
Sharpness is the difference between creating art that pleases your soul and spending your days comparing camera lenses to find one capable of zeroing in on a gnat’s behind. In other words, the story and impression a photo conveys are far more important to me than how many pores I can count on a person’s face.
Haha. This is true. The difference between photographers and camera owners.
A good picture tells a story! Motion blur brings a kind of dynamic into a scenery. And sharpnes is when we can see the details necessary to create the story of the image in our minds.
That’s a great way of looking at it.
This is so cool. I'm in a Moriyama phase now, just admiring his work and others who are inspired by his aesthetics but I have no idea how to set my camera and perception to capture similar styled images.
Get his book “How I take photographs” It’s small and cheap but gives a real insight into how he works.
@ hats off for the tip! Will check out the book. Thank you!
Sharpness to me means the clarity of fine details. Sometimes I need that (architecture) sometimes it is not wanted ( need to see every pore in an portrait?). But in postproduction it is easier to reduce sharpness than the other way around
Yeah. Clarity of details seems to be what people are thinking.
For the sake of... fun (?), perhaps you want to see Hiroshi Sugimoto's "Architecture". All of his architecure shots were intentionally blurred. Very unusual approach :D
yup!
Thanks Jeff, shocking but true, I hadn't learned of Daido, book ordered. Now sharpness, if it's a good shot (my own opinion) it doesn't matter, if you connect / relate it doesn't matter, if it excites / inspires to make more it doesn't matter. Those are my three rules. Enjoyed the video and look forward to more.
Thanks Mali and you are absolutely right.
@ it took me a while to understand. What everyone else says isn’t necessarily always correct lol If you get chance I’d be interested to see what you think of my last video images. 👍
In the early 90s I assisted a guy who shot everything with Hasselblad (on Plus-X), top-notch gear for the time. We once did a photo of a famous musician, who couldn't be still for more than a second. The best shot, the one that went to publication, was not in focus because of the sitter's jumpiness. When I pointed out to my boss that the photo he selected wasn't sharp, compared to some others, he replied "Sharpness is overrated". It's been true for much longer than that.
I feel sorry for people like that Nikon user. A camera doesn't take amazing photos when it's inside a bag all the time.
Happy new year, Jeff!
Exactly!! HNY to you too.
Food for thought. Thanks.
When I first started photography sharpness was too me edge to edge sharpness, however as I have progressed through my photographic endeavors I value edge to edge sharpness less and I now often pick lenses that are not by definition sharp like the modern lenses of today which if used well have more character and mood to their renderings. I shoot 95% B&W so that also creates a different feel to an image where contrast and strong blacks against white whites are often to me what defines the images I personally like and not the sharpness of the image.
That’s a good point. The vintage lens market is booming. Maybe because digital has become too sharp?
Well said, Jeff, The obsession today is, in my opinion, due to some amazing advances in lens and camera technology. My view however, is that just because we can does not mean that we must or should make use of the technology. Just look back at some of the classic photos that we all hold in high regard, most were not sharp by the standard used today.
Thank you. Yes many would not past the pixel peeping test of 100% on a 4K monitor, but they look incredible in the pages of a book or on the walls of an exhibition.
Henri Cartier-Bresson famously said, "Sharpness is a bourgeois concept." I discovered Daido Moriyama 3 decades ago and am still in awe of him today. By the way, a minor point, his name is pronounced Da-I-Do- as in Dada, so Duheedoh (not Deydoh). Love your videos and your and Sarah's work, keep up the good work. I like the idea of recommending books. Perhaps you can do another famous (or infamous?) photographic giant: Nobuyoshi Araki, though he is well known for eroticism, he also does a lot of street photography in his own way. And they happen to be friends with Daido.
Because he couldn't get photos in focus
Ahh I didn’t know that. Thank you. I’ve heard it pronounced DayDo a lot over the years and also Dye-Doh but never Duheedoh. I also didn’t know until recently that Daido isn’t his birth name.
The Bresson quote was made when he was walking around Paris with Helmut Newton. HN saw that HCB was struggling to hold his camera steady (he was an old man by then) and mentioned it. HCB replied with the bourgeois comment as a joke.
LONDON CALLING
Thanks for a very good video. And I agree with you. I don't worry much about sharpness, but it does bother me when I botch focus. I think the two are different. And I just received the Photofile book on Moriyama. That's a nice option for anyone who might not be sure about paying for the more elaborate volume. His photography might be an acquired taste, but it's worth looking at carefully.
Yes. It’s a bit like listening to Slipknot for me. I keep thinking I’ll try them again and each time I get a little bit more into them. At first it was an almighty racket 😂
I have a Z9, which can obviously take incredibly sharp photos. But, I really enjoy enjoy dropping the shutter speed to get motion blur. It's not sharp but it's the effect I like.
What do you mean by “sharp” though? Is it the focus or the general clarity of the photograph?
@@WalkLikeAlice I commented before I'd got far into video. When you started asking whether sharpness meant if it was simply in focus r was it something else, I was genuinely at a loss. For me a "sharp" photo might be one that shows a level of detail can clarity that isn't able to be seen by the human eye in an everyday scenario...Maybe.
The slightly out of focus/blurry/ lower shutter speed photos that have more character, are more reminiscent of how the human sees things (or the mind remembers) and that's why I gravitate to them more.
@@ClearVistathat’s a great answer and it’s one of the concepts Moriyama often talks about.
While sharpness is vital in some genres of photography - see portraiture, landscape, commericals etc - in street photography it is very much a personal and aesthetic choice. Too much sharpness can suck the life and energy out of a street scene. whereas blur can give a sense of movement and life. I cover a lot conflict in the streets and when I can I aspire to getting sharp images, but the photos can come out looking staged and artificial.
Check out Antonin Kratochvil’s portraits. Not many are sharp!! Also his landscape work. I think that’s even more blurred.
Wayne Gretzky once said that you miss 100% of the shots you don't take..... Let's go back to the guy with the bubble wrap Nikon... How many "sharp" photographs is he getting with his Nikon bubble wrapped inside his backpack?.... As for discussion of sharpness in street photography, I think that someone that is mostly concerned with sharpness in their street photography is missing the point of street photography. You can have a perfectly sharp image of something that is of no interest, but what value is it? What have you accomplished by making it?
Very well said. 👏🏻👏🏻
I was recently in a camera shop talking to the sales guy and I said "I don't particularly care about about image quality in the traditional sense". His mouth was agape and he said "then we have a problem". Why don't you stick to using your phone?" He didn't get it at all. I don't have control over it. I can't force it to use 1/30th of a second or control the depth of field exactly as I like. And there are lots of other settings that it insists on controlling. I've just come back from a month in Japan where I took an awful lot of photos. Very few of them are pin sharp. But that's not what it's about for me at all...
In my experience, camera reps and store owners often come from selling TV’s in electrical stores. It’s all about selling the features.
A lot of the people who arent concerned with sharpness all seem to have top of the range kit and or Leica kit
Things like reliability, ergonomics, system compatibility, and weather proofing are also features in high end gear. For us the Leica thing came because in 2001 I needed a film camera which I could use in low light. Sharpness wasn’t the issue, it was how fast a lens I could get and how steady I could hold the camera. But I do get your point within certain demographics.
Great subject and +1 for Record... Sharpness? I get it when it meant 'in focus...' But now it now seems to infer a bizarre heightened reality of supernatural clarity and weird contrast: crispy, crunchy images that more and more just look horrible. Modern cameras, lenses and post production all to blame along with shifts in taste and the desire to get tiny images on a phone to pop.
Exactly. Sharpness has gone away from just being clear and in focus.
That guy was just i assume only engaged in that type of bright professional looking clean stock-like photography, that dominates postcards and things, as opposed to the more raw candid street kind, it's a funny moment to imagine and i'd enjoy something like that. As opposed to something more confrontational...
The irony is that it's (i find) harder to do low shutter speed shots as i have to get the right light (i don't use flash). Just try to be aware of it starting to get dark and what light sources there are. I've had a few by Westminster recently where i'm not fully recognising the light and getting results i'm not expecting. For me i want art to open up possibilities, not close them, so the focus on shape and form (using low shutter speed, being graphic) allows that. I get people not liking Daido Moriyama, but get less people thinking photography should strive to be perfect, because once you've seen perfection you want to shake it up and it's no longer about what is perfect but what is fresh. The variation in art comes through tone. Moriyama's work is obviously about its spirit, it's very easy when you're doing it a lot to soften the edges of what you do and lose sight of the chaotic free space art is meant to allow and i take his 'farewell photography' as about that, as well as his quote 'i tried to destroy photography but when i tried to destroy it i realised i couldn't live without it'.
Thanks for the comment. And very well said.
Sharpness is a way of rating a lemon . . . . or if an image is sharp front to back it allows an image to be rated without discussing th ecreativity that went into it. That probably goes for most of these more technical considerations like fantastic bokeh!
Yes!! Like when someone sees a crap photo but says “oh look how clear and sharp it is”.
I’ve always thought “sharpness” simply meant “lack of blur” , of any sort - whether from subject motion, camera motion, or being out of focus.
Whether that’s the correct definition or not I don’t know.
Lack of blur is often strived for in at least some part of an image but like you say is not the be all and end all.
Also it’s a relative concept, and subject motion and camera motion should possibly be grouped into ‘motion of subject _relative_ to camera’. A panning shot for instance, there is always going to be some motion blur even of the subject relative to the camera, but the important factor is just that there is _more_ relative motion between camera and background than camera and subject. Hence the subject appears more sharp than the background, and the image still looks good even if they’re not completely sharp, they’re just _more_ sharp than the background.
Yeah I thought that as well. But then I had someone look at some pictures I’d taken with a Leica and compare them with some he’d taken with an Olympus. Everything was blur free. He commented that the Olympus shots were “sharper”. Basically the Oly adds a lot of edge sharpening and adjustments to the file in camera where the Leica doesn’t.
@@WalkLikeAlice Yeah so is there a limit to actual sharpness, and is there a difference between actual sharpness and perceived sharpness?
So for instance if you took a photo of a stationary object with the camera fixed on a sturdy tripod and the subject was perfectly in focus, there shouldn't be any blur, the image should be as sharp as you can get, right? In other words, _actual_ sharpness is at its maximum....
If you then went into photoshop and turned up the sharpness dial (or used a camera like an olympus that does that in camera) then it's increasing edge contrast to crank the _perceived_ sharpness up even more than the maximum _actual_ sharpness allows.
If you wanted to pixel peep and prove this for sure I guess you could ensure the photo was of a dark gray subject (of a known shade of gray) against a lighter gray background (of a lighter known shade of gray), ensure the subject is perfectly horizontal, ensure the subject is made of a perfectly smooth straight material (difficult, I know....) and then look at the row of pixels where subject meets background.
If 'actual sharpness' was _not_ at a maximum, then there would be some slight gradation between the subject's pixels and the background pixels. If edge sharpening has been used, you might expect some of the subject's pixels as you get near the edge of it to actually be slightly darker than the rest of the subject, and some of the background's pixels to be slightly lighter than the rest of the background.
Maybe. I might be out of my depth here but that's how I imagine actual vs perceived sharpness.
Well I suppose there are images that are out of focus or have subject movement and then there are the benefits or limitations of any sensor/lens design that lead to so called sharpness or the lack of it. Has become an obsession with many, pixel peeping
It has. A function of the digital age, unfortunately. Zooming in to 100% on a 27” 4K screen must be like going right up to a 30” print getting a magnifying glass out and declaring it isn’t sharp!! But from 12feet away it looks fantastic.
What does sharpness mean ?
Technical mood ?
Not quite sure what that means.
Sharpness is a concern for those pixel peeper type photographers. Photography is a broad church so such things should not be excluded from the conversation, but it is not a key factor in defining a good street photo that's for sure.
Well said.
I gave away a perfectly good Nikon D40, because I was led to believe its 6mp sensor and the kit lens would never be good enough. Gee, thanks, photography magazines!
Haha. Sorry about that. Magazine reviews have a lot to answer for. Problem is that a lot of the time the reviewers weren’t actual photographers. At least here in the UK
i bought a d40x having the d40 for 20 years 39,000 shutter no complaint so the d40x is goldie ir convert 590nm and seems twice as sharp with crap 18.55 lens.....try it.
@@wullieg7269 Nice try! It's that elusive "twice as sharp" butterfly I thought I needed to catch that got me onto the GAS treadmill in the first place.
Living in a rainy part of the planet now, I've moved on by necessity to cameras and lenses with some weather sealing. I still miss that D40, though!
Composition first, then sharpness.
I thought about the whole sharpness thing at the beginning but ended up realising what I wanted was a punchy contrasty image not something soft but then using an old Russian vintage lens and a preset found it didn't really make any difference anyway 🙄
Haha. Got to love those Russian optics.
Sharpness is clarity, yes, but not like you get with the Clarity slider in Lightroom, more like the Detail slider with a mask applied, so that it just heightens the clarity of the edges of objects more finely than the Clarity slider does. Sorry if that's clear as mud. 😁 I have more fun with my Helios 44-2 (on Fuji X-T30ii) than with any of my Fuji lenses. And I have an immense amount of fun using the mood.camera app on my iPhone, which gives me mono photos that look like more they're from the 70s than modern times. And it doesn't matter if they're "sharp". Or if they include all of the light zones. Or any other technical quality. It's about the content and the expression of that content.
Garry, thanks very much for the comment but just a heads up, UA-cam held your comment I’m guessing because of the link in it. Might be worth leaving them out if you are commenting elsewhere. Cheers. 🙏
@@WalkLikeAlice Oh, sorry, my mistake. I didn't notice that it had turned into a link. It's just the name of the app, plus Google trying to be too clever.
No need to apologise. Just didn’t want you thinking that we were ignoring your comment.
Dont confuse narrow depth of field with sharpness
That’s a great point.
Sharpness isn't everything, but if you want it for a shot, and can't achieve it because of a limitation of your gear, you feel a bit short changed. It does beg the question though, if "sharpness" isn't everything, why bother with top notch (expensive) lenses?
Salgado famously uses some of Canon’s cheapest lenses. I used to use a lot of prosumer lenses when I was shooting commercially.
@ the plastic 50mm f1.8mm Canon lens is great.
Yes and also the old 50 1.4. The 50 1.2 for the EF mount was an absolute piece of crap.
I think technically sharpness is a combination of resolution, and image contrast. Resolution is the amount of information a lens is capable of extracting usually measured in line pairs, while image contrast or acutance is defined as edge contrast which is the ability to clearly record finite edges between adjacent elements. However I think of sharpness and blur simply as tools of visual communication. If you are a landscape photographer sharpness and detail may be an important part of your work. A more artistic approach may be to use different ways to blur the image. To me it’s all about what you are trying to say not how sharp you can make it !
In the end, I think it boils down to what visual properties people covet in their photography. If they want "sharp" crisp photos - they need to seek kit which delivers that.
Your vlog on “Sharpness” deals with a conscious overemphasis on sharpness for sharpness's sake while explaining why you choose less sharpness and more blur in your images. Just like artists, there are several camps on this subject and where you might “belong” is, as in your case, a matter of choice and not a preoccupation. My background of 50 years in photojournalism (sports and news) has trained my mind and eye for higher contrast and sharpness due to what a printed image may look like (dot patterns) on the printed page. Occasionally, I might opt for less sharpness, texture, or clarity, but it depends on the story to be told. Michael Shainblum has said, “Make art because you enjoy it. You’re on your own journey.” The artistic expression of 10 years ago isn’t what you favor today, and your photography 10 years from now won’t be what it is today. We all grow, change, alter our visions, change our projects. When I retired, I sought landscape and nature photography because the last thing I wanted to do was photograph people after doing it for 50 years. Five years later, I experimented with street photography due to my photo club contest and became smitten. But my eye and mindset remain that of a photojournalist. That’s my style, that’s my training, that’s my skill set. My dad had a saying, “Concerning taste, there’s no dispute,” said the old farm woman as she kissed the cow. A Latin maxim states, “The receiver receives that which he is capable of receiving.” I follow your vlog because it’s different from street photography blogs and exposes me to contrary thoughts and perspectives. I incorporate the insights that will make my style of photography better and ignore the rest. You’re you, I’m me, and sometimes the twain will never meet. Fortunately, we meet often via your vlog, and for that I’m thankful.
Thank you for your insight 🙏
A sharp image isn’t always a good photo, if its content means nothing. I have shots that are not sharp but I like the subject… some of which has motion blur which adds ’life” to the story 🏴
Flickr Ormie (O)
PS I’m going to be controversial and say Fan Ho is a more interesting street photographer.
Fan Ho is a different kind of street photographer - the total opposite to Moriyama. I don’t know if his work is more interesting. It’s different. He was working before Moriyama and also at a time when China was in a stage of transition. So I think his work has a much more nostalgic feel to it. A lot of it was pseudo-staged and a lot of it was heavily manipulated in the darkroom. He also wasn’t particularly prolific often repeating ideas and visiting the same places. Beautiful work. Absolutely amazing but nothing like Moriyama.
You need to have sharp eyes to photograph, lens sharpness is optional, and its usefulness depends on your style and the subject of your work.
Great channel, great content and insights, congrats and thank you.
To all: let's have the best of what 2025 can bring us.
Thank you and well said.