>>3166537Try to measure how good a bowl of soup tastes. Not a simple affair.
Attempting to boil "micro contrast" down to a single variable - or even two or three - won't be terribly productive. Not one piece of the system is responsible for it, either - making things more complicated. You can get "awesome 3D pop" with lighting alone and a cell phone camera, or you can get it in crap lighting with a lens that's balanced "just so". Choosing where you focus can enhance or reduce the effect. It's just not a simple recipe.
For myself, I simplify it to saying "microcontrast" is the sum of how small transitions - in general - are rendered in an image.
Everything from the subject itself, lighting, lens character, aperture, focus, sensor, editing, etc. can influence it one way or another.
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This is an old, out of focus film image that I remember being very fond of. It's not special but demonstrates what some might call the "3d effect". I Think it was taken with a Bessa and maybe an old Leica 50mm
