Sony 24-70 F4 Extreme distortion ?

[Boily]

My 24-70 gives me very weird distortion in my pictures..
Any ideas what could cause this ?
The preview in windows is fine (auto-corrected by the camera maybe?) but when I open it in camera raw... :

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[ztryfe]

I believe the in camera corrections apply only to JPG's, if you're shooting JPG + RAW, only the JPG will be corrected (and this is what you see in the camera's screen), however, Lightroom, Darktable and a plethora of other post tools should have a profile to correct it automatically.

 

[tomme]

As ztryfe said, only apply to jpeg ( lens correction ), the 24-70 has 3.8% barrel distortion at 24mm which is very bad. Can see it here.

 

[Boily]

wow ok this lens sucks big time lol, thank you !

 

[NickCyprus]

wow ok this lens sucks big time lol, thank you !

Really??? I thought the Zeiss 24-70mm f/4 was considered one of the best zoom lenses for these cameras...

You should see how bad the distortion is on the G 18-105mm f/4 lens


Still, I'm curious why you say it "sucks" - personally I don't find distortion a problem at all. If you're a RAW shooter, then its fixed with just a click in Lightroom and if you're a Jpeg shooter then distortion is corrected automatically in-camera...
Or is it something else that you don't like in this lens? Sharpness, contrast etc?

 

[ztryfe]

Or the fact that buying Zeiss != perfect optics? (Im on that camp)

 

[rbelyell]

nothing in life is 'perfect'. every single aspect of it is a tradeoff of some kind. want perfect, read plato. ):

this lens has excellent sharpness and wonderful color in a useful zoom range. distortion is easily correctible.

 

[michelb]

wow ok this lens sucks big time lol, thank you !

I dis a comparison of the so much praised Zeiss 55mm F 1.8 comparing it to one of the first Minolta Auto Rokkor 55mm F 1.8 from circa 1958

See my story: http://www.dyxum.com/dforum/55mm-f-18-55-years-later_topic108885.html

It includes links to Flickr albums showing pictures with the Zeiss both with and without in camera software correction

My conclusion still stands:
So my conclusion is that overall the Zeiss is a little sharper at most apertures but there is still a lot of great pictures this 55 year old Rokkor can help make.

I still can't reason its very high price considering it has no OSS and has to rely on camera software to correct some of its weaknesses in a major way.

The Rokkor still works after 55 years, will there still be E-mount or adaptability of E-Mount in 55 years ?

 

[mattia]

What software correction? The 55/1.8 has barely any distortion, no relevant CA, excellent transmission and acceptable vingetting and excellent performance from wide open. Even without corrections.

Would I have like stabilisation? Sure. But it remains my favorite 50 - native or adapted, and I have some nice adapted glass - to date and currently the most compelling reason to own an A7 series camera.


Sent from my iPhone using TalkEmount

 

[tomO2013]

FE glass, like m43, Fuji X, Etc... Are all designed for optimum sharpness and software distortion correction is part of the optical design. These Zeiss zooms are digital lenses end to end. The intention is to use the built in lens profile or the lens profiles provided by 3rd parties.
I don't get why many reviewers just do not take this into account. Even from a m43 perspective where the spec explicitly states this, there are reviewers who turn off all corrections and then complain. Crazy. Personally I don't really care if software corrections are part of the design it not once the corrected results are fantastic. Which in the case of this lens they are. This lens performs fantastic. See Tim Ashley's review of the best 24-70 money can buy and the relationship between software corrections and bisto

 

[WestOkid]

FE glass, like m43, Fuji X, Etc... Are all designed for optimum sharpness and software distortion correction is part of the optical design. These Zeiss zooms are digital lenses end to end. The intention is to use the built in lens profile or the lens profiles provided by 3rd parties.
I don't get why many reviewers just do not take this into account. Even from a m43 perspective where the spec explicitly states this, there are reviewers who turn off all corrections and then complain. Crazy. Personally I don't really care if software corrections are part of the design it not once the corrected results are fantastic. Which in the case of this lens they are. This lens performs fantastic. See Tim Ashley's review of the best 24-70 money can buy and the relationship between software corrections and bisto

I totally agree. I think it's a throwback thought process to when correcting distortion in the lens was the only effective way to do it. Less distortion meant higher quality. It also meant larger and more complicated designs. With everything being digital today, I fail to see the problem with software correction. Would people really prefer larger, heavier lenses just to have optical correction? I don't.

Also, before people say, lenses used to be smaller, they didn't have, AF, stabilization, and computer chips in them.

 

[Vincepad]

Give me a smaller, lighter lens needing software correction than a bigger, heavier lens that has zero distortion every day of the week! And this comes from a dude who does a pretty good amount of large format format film with some really excellent lenses specifically to get undistorted photos. Use the tools as they are designed! Make pictures and quit worrying!

BTW, as a portrait photographer, I actually like the very moderate pincushion distortion in the Sony Zeiss 55. I don't correct it in LR. It tends to flatter faces.

Learn your tools and put their strengths and weaknesses to use to meet your artistic goals!

 

[Lisandra]

FE glass, like m43, Fuji X, Etc... Are all designed for optimum sharpness and software distortion correction is part of the optical design. These Zeiss zooms are digital lenses end to end. The intention is to use the built in lens profile or the lens profiles provided by 3rd parties.
I don't get why many reviewers just do not take this into account. Even from a m43 perspective where the spec explicitly states this, there are reviewers who turn off all corrections and then complain. Crazy. Personally I don't really care if software corrections are part of the design it not once the corrected results are fantastic. Which in the case of this lens they are. This lens performs fantastic. See Tim Ashley's review of the best 24-70 money can buy and the relationship between software corrections and bisto

Well this is gonna be a fun first post...
Sorry man, but the problem with this is that the correction is not embeded on the file like m43s does. With m43s and say, the 12-35, correction is applied on the raw file as well so when you open it on LR and other supported softwares and boom, its already corrected. Is it a one click thing? yes (well no, its a 4 click thing: profile, enable correction, make, model) but no clicks is way better than any click. This is especially true when youre editing a wedding and have 200+ photos from different cameras and lenses to go through. And forget m43s and that whole issue...the real question here is why not get the zeiss 24-70 f2.8?? even when taking the LAEA4 into account the lens is not that much bigger (3/4 of an inch) and its a much better resolving lens. way more even from corner to corner too (a more important thing if you ask me..). Plus its f2.8 if you need it be.

 

[michelb]

What software correction? The 55/1.8 has barely any distortion, no relevant CA, excellent transmission and acceptable vingetting and excellent performance from wide open. Even without corrections.

Would I have like stabilisation? Sure. But it remains my favorite 50 - native or adapted, and I have some nice adapted glass - to date and currently the most compelling reason to own an A7 series camera.


Sent from my iPhone using TalkEmount

If you look in camera menus, you will find the lens correction menu somewhere in the first group of menus. It is on by default. You get 3 choices (or less depending on the lens you use )

For the tests i referred to, i took one series with in camera lens correction and one series without since an adapted lens can not benefit from this.
I was surprised at the amount of CA and vignetting with the Zeiss compared to with camera correction. The 55 year old Minolta Rokkor had less vignetting at wide apertures but its corner sharpness was not too impressive until i used about F4. On many stopped down pictures the Zeiss also showed more Moiré than the Rokkor.

This lens correction in camera software is what is making people think they are buying the greatest of all times when actually the camera manufacturer analyses its lens weaknesses and tries to correct for them in software making you think you are buying the greatest 1000$ + lens when it would probably be worth a lot less if uncorrected.

Just my 2 cents

 

[WestOkid]

Well this is gonna be a fun first post...
Sorry man, but the problem with this is that the correction is not embeded on the file like m43s does. With m43s and say, the 12-35, correction is applied on the raw file as well so when you open it on LR and other supported softwares and boom, its already corrected. Is it a one click thing? yes (well no, its a 4 click thing: profile, enable correction, make, model) but no clicks is way better than any click. This is especially true when youre editing a wedding and have 200+ photos from different cameras and lenses to go through. And forget m43s and that whole issue...the real question here is why not get the zeiss 24-70 f2.8?? even when taking the LAEA4 into account the lens is not that much bigger (3/4 of an inch) and its a much better resolving lens. way more even from corner to corner too (a more important thing if you ask me..). Plus its f2.8 if you need it be.

I don't get it. All my e-mount lenses are automatically corrected in LR. All I did was enable it on import for the specific camera. I don't click anything going forward. So what's the difference?

 

[WoodWorks]

Is it a one click thing? yes (well no, its a 4 click thing: profile, enable correction, make, model) but no clicks is way better than any click. This is especially true when youre editing a wedding and have 200+ photos from different cameras and lenses to go through.

In Lightroom you can easily set up lens corrections to be the default with any camera/lens combo. So no, it's not a four- or a one-click correction. It's a NO-click correction. Every photo I shoot with the SEL2470Z (or any other lens that has a Lightroom profile), automatically has the lens correction applied. So 200, or 400, or 4000 images taken with the lens require zero clicks to correct for distortion.

Edit: I see Gary beat me to it!

 

[tomO2013]

Fun first post. I'm really glad to see you over here. Can't wait to see some of your image posts - anybody here that has not met you yet should check out your stuff over on m43 and your 60 foot prints from 16mp. You'll be a very welcome addition here

The m43 spec states that it is part of the lens profile but that it is up to the raw processor itself to decide to either use the profile correction provided in the raw file or ignore it altogether. The spec however does not provide info on how to interrpret the embedded profile. The profile that is embedded is proprietary in nature. It's the same for Sony, Fuji and some others that follow similar lens design principals.
For example, I use PhotoNinja with my EM1... I was very disappointed that out of the box it didn't look to optically correct my 12-40 despite knowing that Olympus provide this as part of the lens profile itself.
I was so disappointed that I mailed the developer ('Bill') of PhotoNinja and he kindly replied to me with the following. I find the developers of this app, fantastic to deal with and very responsive to emails. :

"NOTE:
Fuji, Sony [Olympus, Panasonic in the context of our earlier conversation]and other manufacturers that embed lens correction metadata do so using proprietary methods. There is no standard. So far, these manufacturers have not shared details with us regarding this embedded lens metadata. Until that changes or we have time to reverse engineer this information, we cannot use this embedded proprietary information. Currently, it takes very little effort, one time, to automate your lens distortion correction yielding a high quality result.

To create your lens correction profile, take a shot like this one (just find a straight edge close by you and take a couple of shots):"

Similar posts have been made by users of Dark Table. Data is there but proprietary in nature. It's also likely that the camera identifies the type of lens attached so that it can correct for corrections (in line with the menu option to enable/disable distortion correction etc..). Sony Image Data Viewer (similar to Olympus Viewer 3) automatically picks up the lens used to shoot and applies a profile specific for your lens/body. Lightroom and DXO use similar lens profiles but developed in house. If you ever compare the distortion correction from DXO and Olympus Viewer 3 you'll see fairly obvious differences. The fact remains that software distortion correction is very much a part of the modern digital mounts be it Sony FE, Fuji X or m43 etc...

Well this is gonna be a fun first post...
Sorry man, but the problem with this is that the correction is not embeded on the file like m43s does. With m43s and say, the 12-35, correction is applied on the raw file as well so when you open it on LR and other supported softwares and boom, its already corrected. Is it a one click thing? yes (well no, its a 4 click thing: profile, enable correction, make, model) but no clicks is way better than any click. This is especially true when youre editing a wedding and have 200+ photos from different cameras and lenses to go through. And forget m43s and that whole issue...the real question here is why not get the zeiss 24-70 f2.8?? even when taking the LAEA4 into account the lens is not that much bigger (3/4 of an inch) and its a much better resolving lens. way more even from corner to corner too (a more important thing if you ask me..). Plus its f2.8 if you need it be.

On the Zeiss 24-70 2.8 vs 24-70 F4. I don't agree to be honest. Both are fantastic pieces of glass. And i would prefer the zeiss colours from either to Canon equiv. DXO rates the F4 a better lens for whatever thats worth. Ignoring their results and using my eyes. I'd agree. Extreme edges may be better on F2.8 but the correction profiles tend to give me better images from the F4 than the F2.8 in the focal ranges ranges that I tend to shoot a standard zoom. Considering the loss of light on the LAEA4 (1/3 stop minimum), it brings it's light gathering closer to the F4's T values. I also found the 24-70 F4 sharper in the centre and across the frame (ignoring extreme edges of frame on both) for portraits so it represented a option to me on an FE body - with or without adapter. Thankfully cost is not an issue as you can pick up the 24-70 2.8 for the same price as the F4 on eBay or keh. I considered both and went with the F4 in the end for my needs...natively optimized for the sensor, profile corrected gives me an image that I prefer, OSS + IBIS gives you greater stability than you would otherwise get with 24-70 2.8 and a quieter focus motor for video. Importantly where I'm from... It's also weather sealed! These are all very compelling reasons for me - entirely subjective - to choose the F4 variant over the 2.8 and of course a closer MFD.
Your mileage may very well vary - it appears to be a lot of lens sample variation out there on both lenses unfortunately. My first copy of 24-70 F4 was rubbish.
http://tashley1.zenfolio.com/blog/2...ario-tessar-t-fe-24-70mm-f4-za-oss-hallelujah

 

[Dan Euritt]

This lens correction in camera software is what is making people think they are buying the greatest of all times when actually the camera manufacturer analyses its lens weaknesses and tries to correct for them in software making you think you are buying the greatest 1000$ + lens when it would probably be worth a lot less if uncorrected.

agreed... lens correction lowers resolution, and the worse the distortion is, the less resolution you'll get after correction... you pay for an a7r, but you get a7 resolution after correction? or worse?

lens correction that fixes vignetting brightens the dark areas, which stretches well into the picture frame... when you turn up gain on the sensor in those areas, it lowers the amount of latitude that you have available for manipulation in post.

you can't fix field curvature with any kind of lens correction, and the 24-70 f/4 at 24mm definitely has field curvature issues.

the fe 16-35 sounds like the lens to get.

 

[WoodWorks]

All that is certainly true, Dan. But what's also true is that my eyes aren't able to discern the loss of resolution from the software correction on the 24-70, nor the negligible loss in latitude from the vignette correction. Eagle-eyed pixel peepers may be able to detect the difference. But my 58 year-old eyes certainly can't. So for me the choice comes down to buying a prohibitively expensive, large, and heavy optically-corrected lens, or a less expensive, smaller and lighter software corrected lens. It may not be true for you, but both lenses will give me the same result.

 

[WestOkid]

agreed... lens correction lowers resolution, and the worse the distortion is, the less resolution you'll get after correction... you pay for an a7r, but you get a7 resolution after correction? or worse?

lens correction that fixes vignetting brightens the dark areas, which stretches well into the picture frame... when you turn up gain on the sensor in those areas, it lowers the amount of latitude that you have available for manipulation in post.

you can't fix field curvature with any kind of lens correction, and the 24-70 f/4 at 24mm definitely has field curvature issues.

the fe 16-35 sounds like the lens to get.

I would not debate there are side effects to software correction. However, it wouldn't be fair to highlight the side effects of software correction without providing viable comparable alternatives that use optical correction and the same price point.

Legacy options? - I won't even discuss legacy zooms that can cover the uwa-normal range and outperform the 24-70, because they don't exist. So we are forced to sacrifice range or go with primes. If you go with primes, the only benefit you will get is field curvature correction. Most, if not all legacy uwas and wides at any price will suffer from vignetting, low resolution, and even smearing in the corners. They will also be large and heavy. Those properties were expected shortcomings. We have revised history to call those shortcomings character. In the end you will be carrying a bunch of heavy, single focal length lenses with no AF, no stabilization and bad corners.

Modern options? - Not many 24-70 full frame F4 that I know of. People may argue that Canon's 24-70 f/4L is better, but it is larger heavier by about a 1/2 pound.

So are there real alternatives?