On 2/10/2016 6:00 AM, Jim Nichols wrote:
I had a surprise, also. I did the distortion computation for three lenses, two Fujis and the iPhone 6. The new
Fujinon 35/2 has more barrel distortion than the Fujinon 27 Pancake or the iPhone 6. To me, this says that lens
designers are relying less on optical perfection and more on firmware.
Without a doubt. That's a common trend in ILCs. If you were not using a non-Adobe third party converter, you would never
see it. I assume the version of SilkyPix that Fuji provides for Raw conversion corrects linear distortion, and perhaps
CA, but have no first hand knowledge. ACR/LR and DxO do.
This reliance on firm/software correction is not all bad. Lens design has always (like all of photography) been a
balancing act, finding the best combination of good and bad. By turning linear distortion and CA over to post exposure
processing, the designers have more freedom in minimizing other aberrations that can't be corrected in that way. I think
that's part of the reason for the rather impressive IQ of many of these lenses.
The down side is that fine detail in the corners gets messed about a bit. But it's not a bad compromise for the vast
majority of uses. For the rest, there's PWP and RawTherapee. As already discussed, PTLens offers yet another set of
independent profiles for automatic correction. And DxO Photo Pro gives a choice between no correction and their own
versions. And all of them, of course, offer manual adjustments. There's a lot of choice
Balancing Act Moose
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What if the Hokey Pokey *IS* what it's all about?
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