This full-sized image was posted to a thread on Image Sharpness on TPF on 22 June, 2014 at http://www.thephotoforum.com/forum/nature-wildlife/362937-experiment-sharpness.html. Look at the FULL-sized or "Original" image"


This weekend I shot a beach session under very windy conditions, with steady 20 to 25 MPH winds, all danged day long. The subject's hair was blowing around like crazy. She wore a straw hat for most all of the shots, both for eye shading, but also to keep her hair somewhat under control. Anyway, here's a good example of the "need for speed" AND f/stop. This has had an effect applied to it, but look at the full-sized image closely and you will see a few things. Pretty much from 1 PM to 6:30 PM the wind blew right off the Pacific Ocean, NON-stop, steady, at 20 to 25 MPH.

Look at the upper left quadrant, and see that her wildly whipping-in-the-wind hair is rendered sharply, right out the the very tips of the strands. In the lower left, look at the fine hairs on her arm, near the wrist bangle. Her right hand is juuuust outside the front DOF plane! Her sweater between the hands--sharp. Moving to the lower right hand corner, you can see that yes, the DOF plane begins right at her wrist...but as you move up the arm, the fine hairs on the arm are sharply-rendered. Her denim vest has good detail in it. The skin on her chin is well-defined and sharp. At her ears, look at the fine hair that lines the ear opening. Check out the earrings. Look at the hinge of the eyeglasses, as seen through the lens.

Even with the "effect" overlayed on it, the image looks "sharp" because of a few things. 1) Adequate depth of field, meaning f/5.6 so we can go from the body, to the back of the hair, which is probably 13,14 inches-all being shown actually IN-FOCUS, remembering that her hair is streaming out behind her a fair distance. At f/5.6 the corners AND the center of the frame are about equally sharp, so there's actual, real detail like the fine hairs on the arm, and the hair is FROZEN as it whips in the wind. Shot at 120mm zoom setting, with Nikon's old 80-200mm f/2.8 AF-S which has no VR. ISO level was deliberately set HIGH, to 400, even though I am on a wide-open beach with June 20th sun pouring onto the scene, so I can get....f/5.6 at 1/1000 second from 2.99 meters distant. I don't like to shoot these kinds of shots where "ONLY the eyes" are in-focus, or God forbid, "Just the near eye" is in focus, because to me, that looks like artifice, like a contrivance. I want to see the whole person looking sharp, overall, and not just say a one- to three-inch plane. The high shutter speed and the DOF are more-critical than the ISO level here.

TO ACTUALLY SEE THE DETAILS, you need to look at it at FULL-size so you can either download or scroll around and look at it closely to see the many small things that ,together, create the impression of sharpness.