[ElJamoquio]

The automatic lens corrections only get applied to the JPG.

You're assuming that the provided RAW is actually RAW. In many cases, it is not. See, for example, the K-5 at high ISO.

[normhead]

You are also assuming that un-corrected images are by definition better to look at. They aren't. The human eye expects curvature.. completely correcting a WA lens makes artificial looking images. And for the most part, lenses 50mm and over, don't need correcting.

[philbaum]

This thread ought to be labelled "grumpy old photographers before their morning coffee"

First of all - i didn't define the word "flaw", Webster and numerous other dictionaries did. Want to write your own dictionary - go for it - i'd rather take pictures.

Second - in viewing this morning's Amazon listing of best sellers, the aforementioned "flawed" design from Sony is selling at 20th place (RX100 Mark III) and 58th place (RX100 original). No Pentax designs place in the all digital camera first 100 listing. Nuff said.

For those that enjoy tasteless gloating, i will admit that the 645D shows up in the 1st and 5th ranking for "Medium Format"

This debate is sounding to me like an arguement over which is the better vehicle: a Ford pickup or a Honda Fit. There are trade-offs in every design, and consumer populations that want/need this or that. Declarations of design purity are just a pile of manure PHD (piled higher and deeper)

[clackers]

First of all - i didn't define the word "flaw"

But you did, Phil, by defining what it wasn't.

You said a flaw could not be intentional, and others disagree. A planned weakness is still a weakness.

As for " Second - in viewing this morning's Amazon listing of best sellers, the aforementioned "flawed" design from Sony is selling at 20th place (RX100 Mark III) and 58th place (RX100 original). No Pentax designs place in the all digital camera first 100 listing. Nuff said." ...

What are you saying about the cameras we use?

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Last edited by clackers; 10-15-2014 at 02:56 PM.

[rawr]

How far do you want to limit lens correction as a concept, in or out of camera?
Is correcting for barrel distortion more evil than fixing CA or removing vignetting?

[clackers]

How far do you want to limit lens correction as a concept, in or out of camera?
Is correcting for barrel distortion more evil than fixing CA or removing vignetting?

Rawr, most people shoot JPG on their phones with tiny lenses and tiny sensors needing huge corrections and couldn't tell you what a digital negative is.

But others - many on this forum, I suspect - know what they want out of a final image and want to control everything in post. They want to minimize second guessing by the camera.

Is it Fuji (amongst others) doing noise reduction to RAW? Why is its chip firmware better than dedicated software and the eyes of the camera owner who shakes his head and says, "Too heavy handed, in too many areas."?

[kadajawi]

Rawr, most people shoot JPG on their phones with tiny lenses and tiny sensors needing huge corrections and couldn't tell you what a digital negative is.

But others - many on this forum, I suspect - know what they want out of a final image and want to control everything in post. They want to minimize second guessing by the camera.

Is it Fuji (amongst others) doing noise reduction to RAW? Why is its chip firmware better than dedicated software and the eyes of the camera owner who shakes his head and says, "Too heavy handed, in too many areas."?

I think all brands are applying noise reduction to raw, amongst them Pentax (and quite heavy IIRC). I don't like that. I do think that usually, Lightroom does a better job at that. Perhaps not, who knows. It depends on the kind of noise reduction that is done. My smartphone is able to save untouched DNG raw files, and they actually look pretty good. There's a ton of noise, but Lightroom can deal with that, and what's left is some very sharp photos, at 1:1 with 13 MP I'd say easily better than the 18-55 kit lens on my Pentax, and maybe even sharper than the 50 1.8... or at least similarly sharp. It's quite astonishing.


Anyway, what I was suggesting was that the correction doesn't happen in camera (unless you save JPEGs), but on the computer, in your editing software, and you have control over that (hopefully). So it's activated by default, but you can individually turn of certain corrections, like vignetting, CA, distortion etc. The design of the lens would then be able to leave away an element that does the barrel correction, because that can be done in post, and works very well there (admittedly this is more something for lenses meant for mirrorless cameras, so the viewfinder image can be corrected). One element less = smaller and lighter lens, cheaper to make.

[Paul MaudDib]

I think all brands are applying noise reduction to raw, amongst them Pentax (and quite heavy IIRC). I don't like that. I do think that usually, Lightroom does a better job at that. Perhaps not, who knows. It depends on the kind of noise reduction that is done. My smartphone is able to save untouched DNG raw files, and they actually look pretty good. There's a ton of noise, but Lightroom can deal with that, and what's left is some very sharp photos, at 1:1 with 13 MP I'd say easily better than the 18-55 kit lens on my Pentax, and maybe even sharper than the 50 1.8... or at least similarly sharp. It's quite astonishing.

In-camera is the best way to detect hot pixels and such. The camera can detect which pixels are hot right now, Lightroom can just try to repair the damage later.

[Clavius]

I've been having trouble with the concept RAW and how the manufacturers handle it for years. It's supposed to be an unprocessed image data dump. If a manufacturer still slips in correctings to the RAW images anyway in some way, then at least make it so the user can disable it. Imagine if this happened in the food industry: supposedly nut-free, lactose-free, fish-free products that still do intentionally contain plenty of nuts, milk and fish.

[clackers]

If a manufacturer still slips in correctings to the RAW images anyway in some way, then at least make it so the user can disable it.

Start campaigning for raw RAW, Clavius! :-)

[Clavius]

Maybe this is why us grumpy old photographers like manual focus lenses so much: no trickery.

[kadajawi]

Maybe this is why us grumpy old photographers like manual focus lenses so much: no trickery.

Hm. The reason why I like manual lenses is because they are usually better made (casing), feel nicer to use, and can be used to manually focus smoothly during video (where AF is useless). Luckily Pentax' primes are pretty nice to use too.


Btw., anyone noticed how Tokina is taking a, say, $500 lens, put a nicer body around it, remove the AF, make it smoother to focus (i.e. turn it into an old MF lens), call it cinema lens and charge $2000 for it? And then everyone is raving how affordable it is. There's money to be made for Pentax...


I guess some of the denoising is best done in camera, but it should always be done mildly. Raw should be (mostly) raw, lens corrections really don't belong in there (except for meta data perhaps).

[rawr]

Start campaigning for raw RAW

Ken Rockwell calls it using 'real RAW'.
In other words, use film.

But even film classically goes through a complicated series of chemical and artistic processes from compose -> capture -> develop -> negative -> print.

Let alone today's common film/digital hybrid process of compose -> capture -> develop -> negative -> scan to TIFF -> Photoshop -> print. It's probably a 16 stage journey nowadays, involving all sorts of manipulations and adjustments, even for film.

[philbaum]

But you did, Phil, by defining what it wasn't.

You said a flaw could not be intentional, and others disagree. A planned weakness is still a weakness.

As for " Second - in viewing this morning's Amazon listing of best sellers, the aforementioned "flawed" design from Sony is selling at 20th place (RX100 Mark III) and 58th place (RX100 original). No Pentax designs place in the all digital camera first 100 listing. Nuff said." ...

What are you saying about the cameras we use?

Defining a design as flawed because it doesn't meet one's preference doesn't sound right to me. (although i've probably done it before myself) My point with the RX100 is that its a very popular camera with good resolution and can be slipped in one's pocket. Design goal achieved apparently. i know 2 members of our club that enjoy theirs very much. Plus many others enjoy their smart phone cameras which probably do similar corrections in-body. Its a mistake not to recognize the different segments of the photo. community that have different preferences. The RX100 was only an example of a legitimate application of corrected lenses, not something i intend to buy myself.

As far as a DSLR, i think several folks raised some good concerns about lenses needing correction. I haven't made up my mind on it - It would be nice if there was a industry wide forum to discuss the merits of it - but i doubt that some mfr want to share secrets.

As regards our Pentax cameras, I think Pentax has been slow to pickup on new trends. I like my K3 a lot, but as an example, i miss the tilting LCD screens on my older Sony Nex cameras. My guess is that the conservatism of the company is as responsible for Pentax's low market share as anything. I may be wrong but thats my opinion.

[Paul MaudDib]

Not DSLRs in particular, but I've heard of some systems using curved sensors to enable unconventional lens design - for example, strong field curvature that matches up to the curvature of the sensor.

Another fun thing is that you can fairly easily straighten out fisheye lenses with modern correction software. The tradeoff there is that you're stretching some pixels and shrinking (or disappearing) others, so the areas with lots of corrected distortion also tend to lose resolution.

Both of those are neither here nor there, I don't see Pentax making a curved-sensor camera, and fisheye correction is all software.

Now, what would be cool is ripping off the Contax AX moving focal plane system. Imagine a DSLR that could be as adaptable as a mirrorless just by switching an adapter and moving the sensor to tweak the register distance... Rumors were that Sony was experimenting with it with APS-C sensors, but no one has done it with FF and so far as I know there's been nothing more on that prototype for a year or more now.