New Sony E 18-135 with A6000 - Distortion Comp.?

[BlazL]

I have A6000 camera and want to buy new Sony E-mount APS-C lens 18-135. Official page says compatibility with A6300 and A6500. From local Sony support they said lens is compatible with A6000, but lens comp. distortion will be always set to AUTO (and you cant turn off). There is no plan for lens firmware upgrade for new lens for A6000.

 

And now I have question: how AUTO works? Have each lens a profile for distortion at different focal lenght and if yes, where this profiles are saved (in body, in lens)?

 

For example, 18-105 F4 G-lens also have only AUTO comp. distortion. A6000 have lens firmware for that lens. On 18mm this lens have just little distortion and camera fix this by apply distortion compensation.

But, the 18-135 lens at 18mm have big distortion. How camera will know, how to fix distortion? A6000 haven't firmware for 18-135 lens.

 

 

If the picture from 18-135 lens taken with A6000 and A6500 is the same, how the AUTO comp dist. working?

 

I don't have this lens and I can't try..I will when I go to local store to try this.

 

Thank you for your opinions.

[Username]

```````    

    

I checked for a review of the 18-135 and quickly 

found another equally weird example. While this 

situation of extensive in-camera correction may 

soon be the "new normal", to participate at this 

time the user would be an Early Adopter ... not 

recommended for most users of any technology.  

[Guest Jaf-Photo]

I had this lens briefly but returned it. For raw files the lens corrections are applied in software. In Lightroom you can't switch them off but you can in other software, such as the excellent DxO Labs.

 

The reason they try to apply mandatory corrections is to hide the optical defects. The main issue with the lens is that it does not cover the sensor at the wide end and that the lens is soft at most focal lengths. CA actually wasn't too bad.

 

I bought it because it was small an light but I ended up hating the images it took.

[BlazL]

I asking myself, with 18-105 lens at 18mm, A6000 will fix distortion just a little to create perfect distortion compensation (18-105 G lens have small distortion).

If I put on A6000 the new lens 18-135 (there is no lens firware for A6000) and take the same picture at 18mm, what kind of distortion compensation will camera use for picture? If the same as on previos lens, the output will be very distorted picture.

 

So, where is saved distortion profiles (in body or in lens itselfs) and what will camera do if there is no lens firmware? Because on AUTO distortion comp. settings camera can't 'measure' how much is lens distorted to properly add a fix

 

Anybody know something about that? Thank you.

[Guest Jaf-Photo]

The lens writes correction data for chromatic aberrations to the raw file. This will work on A6000.

 

Geometric distortion is not corrected on the A6000. At 18mm the corners are completely black. The correction profile on A6300 "fixes" this by smearing over the black parts. This is no good. The only real fix is to crop them out.

[Pieter]

How does cropping out the black parts fix geometric distortion? Straight lines will still look curved.

 

In my opninion distortion profiles are a blessing of the digital age. Especially zoom lenses can become smaller or better corrected at other aspects if lens makers can worry less about distortion. This comes at a slight loss of sharpness in some areas of the photo (and actual increase in others due to compression) which will generally be of little concern to (super)zoom lens users. All new zoom lenses with longer range, the much acclaimed 24-105 included, have terrible hardware distortion but are perfectly useable after some digital correction.

[Guest Jaf-Photo]

Listen to what I am saying instead of trying to be clever. This lens does not cover the image sensor at the wide end so the corners are completely black. The "correction" profile only masks this by stretching the corners. So basically you get a smudge in each corner. The only true fix is to crop them out. The circular distortion you can leave to the software.

[Pieter]

Isn't this the same as the cheap 16-50 kit lens or the expensive new 24-105? They don't cover the corners at the wide end by design to keep the size of the front element small. They all have barrel distortion at the wide end so correcting the distortion pushes the vignette outside the final image. I think it's actually clever to design a lens as such. The RAW will look awkward but it's the final image that counts.

[Guest Jaf-Photo]

Well it doesn't do that. It stretches the pixels. So, if you take a normal landscape shot with clouds and vegetation, these will be smeared in the corners. It's totally useless and the only viable option is to crop. If you want a semblance of an 18mm view, that means using a 16:9 or 4:3 crop.

 

It's actually not an 18mm lens for APS-C, nor is it any good at any other focal length.

[Pieter]

I'm pretty sure we're talking about the same thing here... If it stretches the RAW file before generating the JPEG it really shouldn't affect corner sharpness much. I can't speak for the 18-135 as I don't own one, but usually these lenses are designed with a wider field of view when uncorrected. This one should be more like 16-17 mm, but after applying distortion compensation resembles an 18mm field of view. Now based on this review the in-camera distortion compensation does indeed seem to create some unwanted artifacts in the corners with this lens, which should not be there when using e.g. Lightroom to process your RAW.

 

The 24-105 is no different here: http://www.opticallimits.com/sonyalphaff/1034-sony24105f4goss?start=1

Terrible distortion and vignetting (near black corners) at 24 mm in the RAW file, which is gone after processing the RAW. Corner sharpness will suffer marginally but in practice won't be noticeable. I really don't see how this makes it a bad lens. It would have been crap in analog photography but it has been designed with digital correction in mind. The digital processing can be poor tho, as shown by the artifacts in the above example.

[Guest Jaf-Photo]

I think the difference in our understanding comes from the fact that I have owned the lens and you haven't. Feel free to continue the conversation on your own.

[Pieter]

Valid argument. But why so snide?

[BlazL]

Yesterday I try 18-135 on my A6000 and surprise - there is no vignetting and no distortion. How is that possible? So, obviously the lens distortion compensation profiles are saved in lens and not in body!

 

Compared to my 18-105G there is no difference with jpeg corrected picture, both are perfect - so camera definitely used proper profile for each lens. For A6000 there is no software update for 18-135, so profile is saved in lens (in lens firmware).

[Guest Jaf-Photo]

Specifically, what focal lengths did use, did you shoot jpeg or raw and did you import the photos in Lightroom or look at them on the camera LCD?

 

I checked my files before replying and on the raw files only CA correction is applied.

[BlazL]

Both at 18mm (18-135 is little wider at 18mm than 18-105), JPEG and RAW. JPEG from both lenses looks great. Raw from 18135 is little distorted (not so much, no black corners), RAW from 18105G have no distortion).

Photos was imported with Sony Play Memories.

 

So, on 18-135 RAW photo some distortion must be also applied, because there are no black corners (like on photo in first post). I think that camera do some crop to avoid this. For jpeg looks camera will apply full distortion fix. This profile must be in lens itselfs, because camera will know, how to fix distortion.

 

I think, if you want to see real distortion of lens, you need to put lens on other camera (mayme nikon, canon etc) with adaptor. Maybe there body don't recognize lens profiles and you can take real RAW photo.

[Guest Jaf-Photo]

I imported my files straight to my PC from the card and got no corrections except CA. Maybe PlayMemories is the difference? Anyway, as long as you are happy that's all that matters.

[BlazL]

Here is results of same photo, taken with E 18-135 @ 18mm. Photo was copied to PC direct from SD card.

 

 

First photo is RAW, opened with non-Sony software RawTheraphee; complete black corrners are visible, lens have a lot distortion.

 

Second photo is opened with Sony Imaging Edge Edit; the same RAW file look fixed most of distortion..looks like Sony hide lens weakness with fixed RAW fale showing in their own software.

 

Third photo is RAW opened with Sony Play Memories - distortion is a little better like second photo and is the same as JPEG camera output.

 

So, if you looking RAW in Sony Imaging Edge, this is not real RAW but have also fixed distortion a liitle, but less then jpeg output. If you open photo in Sony Play Memories, RAW and JPEG is completely the same. Interesting.

[Guest Jaf-Photo]

Basically what I said from the beginning.

[syncusoidal]

I have to say that BlazL (a Newbie) has been both clever and extremely informative.

Maybe one day I'll be an 'Advanced Member' on this forum.

Am I required to be a jerk like Jaf-Photo in order to be promoted to that level? 

 

[Guest Jaf-Photo]

The downside of using multiple accounts is that it takes longer for you to get the post count to advanced level.

I guess people with disassocitive identity disorders have little choice, though.

Edited June 14, 2018 by Jaf-Photo

[syncusoidal]

"No single man can be taken as a model for a perfect figure, for no man lives on earth who is endowed with the whole of beauty."

-- Albrecht Durer

 

[Guest Jaf-Photo]

18 hours ago, syncusoidal said:

"No single man can be taken as a model for a perfect figure, for no man lives on earth who is endowed with the whole of beauty."

-- Albrecht Durer

 

Dürer never said you should skip your meds, get drunk and act crazy on an internet forum.

Edited June 16, 2018 by Jaf-Photo

[sixzeiss]

and you use his self portrait as your 

14 minutes ago, Jaf-Photo said:

Two things:

1. Dürer was an egotist. He printed etchings of himself in the nude because he thought he was so good-looking.

2. Dürer never said you should skip your meds, get drunk and act crazy on an internet forum.

and his self-portrait as your profile picture ?

I have no culture at all!  Its a nice painting. Very nice work.

[BlazL]

It is about E 18-135 Distortion post, please stay on topic and open new topic for other conversation.

Admin, please delete untopic messages.

[Olaf W.]

This thread has been closed due to his age. Contact us to re-open.