Are Technical Elements of an Image Important?

4 hours ago, adamhanlon said:

Technical aspects aren't exclusive to the other factors...If your creative vision is to incorporate technical "defects" into your images and do not see them as defects, go for it 

But using lighting that provides a more pleasing light, using lenses that allow for sharp corners, ensuring technique is up to date and practised etc. are things that can be accomplished in addition to focus (or deliberate defocus!), composition, subject selection et al. 

Surely, if the goal is to produce excellent images, we need to load the deck in our favour?

A practical example (and apologies for "picking" on @TmxDiver), in the environment he is describing, the WACP will produce technically better results, and will actually be easier to use. Is the reason for not using it, expense, size, weight, bulk or something else? I appreciate that this seems aimed at one individual, but more generally, why would individuals chose technical options that potentially compromise image quality?

Do we limit our images to the "good" category by compromising on technicalities, or could they still be great with technical flaws?

 

I don't mind the feedback at all.

Two quick notes:

1) I agree with the idea of using the best tools available -- subject to a cost/benefit analysis. For example, I was using Big Blue lights and recently bought some Keldan 8x 18k lights. They are far superior and produce light which has no hard edges, the color is nicer, etc. However, they also cost about 2x the Big Blue lights. 

2) In terms of the WACP,  it is a cost/benefit analysis for me. It probably would have been a better image but it weights ~3x a WWL-1B (on land) and costs ~ 4x (?) a WWL1-B and I'm not sure the image would be 4x better. I'm also often traveling so weight and size matter (in addition to being a factor in the conditions/places I'm often diving with current and small places).

For me personally, the cost/benefit equation doesn't work and I have considered "upgrading" to the WACP. If somebody were to loan me one and asked me to evaluate it for deep wreck diving, I'd do it.

- brett

PS - @adamhanlon I am curious as to why the WACP would be "easier to use" than the WWL-1B?

7 minutes ago, TmxDiver said:

I am curious as to why the WACP would be "easier to use" than the WWL-1B?

I kind of want to avoid this becoming about WACPs!

But I did open the door...corner performance at small apertures is better with WACP than WWL. Shooting big wrecks at some distance from the camera does not really create a DOF issue.

So, it would be easier, as you would be able to shoot wide open, allowing you to use faster shutter speeds and/or lower ISOs.  While the ISO issue is really more of a post processing hassle and achieving as much dynamic range as possible, the shutter speed advantage would allow you to shoot darker scenes, or reduce the potential for motion blur.

I would suggest that this is a skill issue as well as an equipment one! 

 

Surely, there is no more drag with a WACP than there would be with a large dome. In strong currents, wide angle scenics are going to be  a struggle with any dome port combination! If the dive briefing mentions strong currents, I'm not going to plan to shoot any [emoji3]

 

Perhaps the issue here is that her lens choice in those conditions being at fault, which again brings me round to the question of how we should use equipment to maximise the technical potential of our images.

 

However, it is important to stress that I am not recommending that the WACP is the right choice in all conditions. I used it simply as an example, not as a general recommendation or suggestion.

That was an example

In terms of skill issues looking at a few trips I have dome quite a few photographers had a level of fitness inadequate to take certain shots

I had several occasions when someone said please take me where you go I had some counter current swimming and they were gone

Partially also because of diving equipment choices i.e. split fins may be comfortable but unsuited to the task

Generally I have the best equipment for what I decide to shoot and know how to take that shot however I have plenty of technically good shots that mean little to me but in some case less technically perfect that are more powerful but didn’t have the time to set things best or I had not made the best choice to go underwater with

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Well I guess, lack of fitness and/or diving proficiency definitely ties into the things that we can do something about before venturing underwater in order to obtain better images.

However I'm not sure that it would necessarily affect technical proficiency in photographic terms? For example, I can back fin pretty adequately, which is a really useful thing to be able to do. I have dived with lots of photographers that cannot, and they can still produce well composed, exposed and technically well executed images 
 

50 minutes ago, Interceptor121 said:

but in some case less technically perfect that are more powerful but didn’t have the time to set things best or I had not made the best choice to go underwater with

So, if they were technically perfect too, they might be even more powerful?

They would if you could
However if the fish moves and your composition didn’t have the perfect settings you can’t
Or you jumped with a too short or too long lens
Ultimately only landscape photography can have the perfect setting dialled in and then it conditions are perfect match the shots
Underwater many things like bracketing don’t work with strobes so you have less opportunities


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I'm as technical a photographer as you will come across and see any flaws in images quiet readily. but I've learnt over the years most non-photographers don't see these flaws or are not worried by them - there are limits of course but unsharp corners are not high up on the list - it has to be reasonably sharp and the subject needs to stand out.   People respond to images with some level of impact - good pose of the subject and clarity. 

That's not to say you shouldn't try to maximise the technical quality of an image if that's what brings you joy, just don't let it get in the way of capturing images with a level of impact, charisma etc. 

I've been exposed to both extremes, some years back I printed some large format prints (I have an A2 size printer)  for an artist, they were grainy not all that sharp and started with rather low resolution originals that broke all the rules.  BUt I preserved the colour, did a little basic processing on them and he loved them.   I've mellowed a bit on quality recently, I still try to get all the important bits sharp and not include distractions and I'll fuss over processing stacked macro images getting all the details just right - but I certainly don't go for absolutely smooth backgrounds and find myself leaning more towards getting the pose and lighting better.

If you are prepared to do so, you can delve back in time and into the photographic press of the mid-1850s. Here you will discover that photographers have been obsessing about technical quality from at theast the point when it started being recorded in publications such as these (aurally alomst certainly before). Old B&W images which were created back then are view for their content today and no doubt this is how our contemporary images will be viewed in the future.  It was Ansel Adams who said that 'there is nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept" and IMO this applies as much to underwater images as above.

Personally I shoot for content and technical imperfections, provided they don't impinge on the fundamentals of the image, are of little consequence.

20 hours ago, ChrisRoss said:

most non-photographers don't see these flaws or are not worried by them

This is correct, but if you are planning to sell your work to publications, plan to publish your own work in print,  or build/enhance your reputation via competitions, I think that technical issues are still important.

So I guess we should factor in the concept of our goals as photographers?

I completely agree that if your plan is simply to post pictures online, then an image's "popularity" is based mostly on subject and then composition. But are we only shooting to share images via social media? 

I think Ansel Adams fuzzy concept quote is being somewhat misquoted. If you plan an image with blur, then the technical judgements must revolve around how well you create that blur (technically.) If you plan an image that is sharp, then it should be sharp?  This is a creative decision, and both involve the application of technical skills. We do not all share the same creative visions, so there is no "universal" truth.

Adams is simply saying that he feels that if (in his opinion) the image should be soft, we should not shoot it as a sharp image. This is actually an appeal for creators to choose specific technical skills, to enhance their creative vision. 

13 minutes ago, adamhanlon said:

I think Ansel Adams fuzzy concept quote is being somewhat misquoted.

No, I think that Adams was saying that technical perfection does not, in itself, make a 'good' image. This will apply just as well to a photograph shot wide open on a fast lens with lots of 'bokeh' as it will to an image taken stopped down and sharp throughout. If its not well thought out then no amount of technical precision can compensate for this.

In my book there are three elements to a photograph. Primary is subject. Of equal standing are the next two: lighting and composition. The rest is technical and that is up to the photographer to deal with. Personally I am less worried about corner unsharpness than many see to be because, provided the three primary elements are strong enough, then minor 'flaws' will be overlooked, or at least they will be by all except the technically obsessed photographers who view the image. I say this from personal experience.

I think a technically perfect but otherwise simple or dull image will always be beaten by one that may be a little soft or skew but is more captivating in composition/light/emotional connection or any of the other criteria mentioned in the thread. The technical side of an image only really becomes important if the content of it is interesting enough, you can't have an amazing picture with good exposure or corner sharpness alone, but these additional details will obviously make any image that much better, but there has to be some meat to it first.

In an ideal world you would obviously have the best possible gear to limit any imperfections but for me at least that would cost far too much. For instance the Nauticam wet optics mentioned cost more than my entire system, which is where underwater photography becomes very different from surface stuff, where whacky optical artifacts and iffy sharpness can be left behind at a relatively low price point. 

Within reason, I reckon imperfections can be forgiven if the image is otherwise good!

20 hours ago, adamhanlon said:

This is correct, but if you are planning to sell your work to publications, plan to publish your own work in print,  or build/enhance your reputation via competitions, I think that technical issues are still important.

So I guess we should factor in the concept of our goals as photographers?
 

Perhaps, but at least for competitions photos win with obvious technical flaws for example photo 1/25 in the link below - the overall winner:

https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2018/08/2018-ag-nature-photographer-of-the-year-winners/

Not to detract from the photo in anyway , but shooting a 16mm lens - I'm guessing a fisheye at f4.5 is not going to give sharp corners. and you can certainly see it in this image, but it didn't seem to worry the judges.  If you look through some more past winners you'll see images with other technical flaws, some reasonably obvious others a little more subtle, there are plenty of technically perfect images as well of course!  I think in Photo competitions there is certainly an element of art involved which tends to overlook technical aspects, degree of difficulty etc and just goes with the appeal of the image to to the judges.

On 7/27/2022 at 11:19 AM, Paul Kay said:

In my book there are three elements to a photograph. Primary is subject. Of equal standing are the next two: lighting and composition. The rest is technical and that is up to the photographer to deal with. Personally I am less worried about corner unsharpness than many see to be because, provided the three primary elements are strong enough, then minor 'flaws' will be overlooked, or at least they will be by all except the technically obsessed photographers who view the image. I say this from personal experience.

To add to Paul's thoughts, editors generally like to overlay text, captions, insets and such in corners. No one actually sees some of the corners, and again as Paul notes, readers look at the subject, not at the corners.

I find it amusing that on 50% of photographs (wide angle), photographers obsess about the sharpness of corners. On the other 50% (macro) they obsess about Bokeh and a nice softness to everything other than the subject.