Creeping Perfectionism

Figure 1: A shot from the Pentax: far from perfect.

There is this thing I call the creep of perfectionism.  It stems from the fact that nothing is ever perfect, even though we may think it is, for a time.  I remember my first camera (a Kodak brownie borrowed from my mum).  It was pretty darned good, I thought.  Later, when I bought an Olympus OM film camera, it seemed vastly superior to the old brownie.  I thought the pictures were just perfect.  Well, later the digital cameras became available, and I purchased a digital Pentax.  I realized the Olympus film camera was less than perfect, but it took the retrospective of the Pentax to make me realize this fact.  So, it’s with hindsight that we continually must update our ideas about perfection, and we update continually because we never reach it.

So, I upgraded my kit to have a camera without the anti-alias filter (a Pentax K5 /iis), and a Sigma lens.   Yet, the results so far leave me still wanting for that sharpness factor.  I’m using the Sigma 18-250 mm lens in the shot shown in figure 1.  Click the picture to see it in full size.  Doesn’t the detail of the pic just lack something in terms of the sharpness factor?  Do I need a full frame camera to get what I want?  Is it the lens, the camera, or the picture taker that’s at fault?  I suspect it’s the latter.

I guess people are just as imperfect as cameras.

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