Sharp Enough?

[Mike Farley]

Having introduced us to a tool which claims to sharpen blurred images, Mike Johnston's blog at The Online Photographer goes on to question the qualities of sharpness. It is worth reading just for his critique of Robert Capa's famous D-Day landing photo and the debunking of Capa's armchair detractors. I could not agree more. As the featured comments reflect, everyone who was there that day was scared and Capa was shooting solely with a Contax camera.

https://theonlinephotographer.typepad.c ... etter.html

Thinking about the two photos of mine which featured in our recent successful image critique evening, I realised that one is deliberately less than totally sharp in order create a certain mood. I had softened the original capture and that passed without comment. The other was criticised for not being sufficiently blurred! The shot in question was of a motorbike racer in which I had attempted to create a sense of movement in the background by using a slow shutter speed and panning. Rosemary immediately picked up that I had used too fast a shutter speed at 1/125. In terms of keeping the bike and rider sharp, it is a "safe" speed but 1/60 would have achieved a better effect, even if it would have resulted in far fewer keepers. It is possible that some movement in the main subject would have been acceptable, although I would undoubtedly get a mixed reaction for anything submitted into competition.