Originally posted by Rondec Did you read the link you posted?
think hard about what you just quoted... because he says "This
probably means that the camera is processing the distortion out of the image. (It
could also mean that the distortion is very different focused up close, where DxO and Imatest work, then at infinity, where the optical bench works.)", and "
They aren't alone in this, it seems to be the wave of the future"
it's idle speculation, he's got no real proof that any company is doing any kind of raw distortion correction, and indeed he's claiming that you could be seeing raw correction on the pentax ff camera...
he apparently doesn't even know whether distortion is different at infinity than it is up close for all lenses?? or is it that he just doesn't know if that's the case with the fe35/1.4? overall it sounds like a pretty big gaffe, given that he does imatesting and optical bench testing on all kinds of lenses.
this is reminiscent of his silly claim that adapters lower resolution, when in fact glassless adapters can't alter the internal properties of lenses at all.
Originally posted by Rondec 4 percent distortion on a 35mm prime, even if it is mostly cooked out in the RAW file is a lot.
agreed, 4% distortion correction could easily mean a 12% loss in resolution across the entire frame, per roger's testing in the link that i posted earlier...
now sort this list by sharpness, the fe35/1.4 is the 10th highest-rated lens on dxo, on the 36mp a7r, not even the 42mp a7rii
Camera Lens Database - DxOMark
it's also tied for first place as the sharpest 35mm prime on dxo, equal to the sigma 35/1.4 on the nikon d800...
does that level of resolution sound like a lens that's been heavily corrected for distortion? those measurements were made on the sony raw file, 0.5% measured distortion.
Originally posted by Rondec I don't know how important this is, but the FA 31 is measured at 0.8 percent by Klaus on Photozone on a K10 (obviously pre-lens corrections).
the fa31 was not tested at infinity, on the lensrentals optical bench, so the 4% optical bench vs. 0.8% imatest chart is apples vs. oranges, it's not comparable.
you want to talk about pentax glass? look at the list, the two highest-resolution lenses on a pentax camera were made by sigma, not pentax...