Canon Officially Announces 4 new RF Lenses

#161
neuroanatomist said:
There’s also a school of thought that the Earth is flat. :oops: It’s just not a very good school.

I have no problem with people preferring the ‘rendering’ of a lens like the EF 85/1.2L over the ‘sharpness’ of a lens RF 85/1.2L. For that matter, I have no problem with people preferring optical corrections over digital corrections for distortion just because that’s the way they want it.

But I do have a problem when people claim that digital correction is inherently worse than optical, without presenting any evidence to support their claim and in the face of empirical evidence to refute it.
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Agreed, and optical corrections are worse than the natural state of things, hence we should just all travel, go see with our eyes, burn scenes into memory and call it a day!

On a serious note though, as much as I like Canon's new RF line-up, I could see the potential of these RF lenses to not be able to age as well since Canon has to support their digital correction profiles. Once the profiles/mount become unsupported or unavailable, the lenses will lose purpose and value. Old classic lenses are still adapted and used today because they are pure optical and mechanical creations and are versatile. Can't say the same for the new ones that are electronically driven by wire and require digital corrections.
 
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#163
mxwphoto said:
On a serious note though, as much as I like Canon's new RF line-up, I could see the potential of these RF lenses to not be able to age as well since Canon has to support their digital correction profiles. Once the profiles/mount become unsupported or unavailable, the lenses will lose purpose and value. Old classic lenses are still adapted and used today because they are pure optical and mechanical creations and are versatile. Can't say the same for the new ones that are electronically driven by wire and require digital corrections.
Click to expand...

I was actually very surprised how well @neuroanatomist s comparison shots look. When shooting JPEG it really doesn't seem to matter. It also doesn't matter if you're someone that uses LR, edits the pictures and then saves the edited results.

Personally however, I've come across a lack of RAW corrections a bunch of times. Years ago I was a hardcore Linux and open-source software user, and getting correct profiles was hard and sometimes impossible. So I mostly skipped them and lived with the distortion.

More recently, I moved everything family-related into me and my wife's shared iCloud (Apple Photos), as she wants to use the JPEGs immediately. So I uploaded the RAW+JPEG pairs, which Apple supports. Light editing is easily possible, but once you go to the RAW e.g. to lift some shadows suddenly all the distortion comes back.

I very quickly realized that once in iCloud, there's actually no (!) software that can apply RAW corrections without duplicating photos. LR and most others require export/import or a separate Adobe ecosystem and can't work directly on Apple Photos files. The app "RAW Power" is the closest and really great, but also doesn't do lens profiles.

For a working professional this all sounds cute and is in no way an issue, I realize that. But if you're dealing with "consumer" software and just hobby photos there's little alternative to either shoot in JPEG or have optically corrected lenses. Or get a LR subscription every time I want to touch up an old image.
 
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#167
vikingar said:
For a working professional this all sounds cute and is in no way an issue, I realize that. But if you're dealing with "consumer" software and just hobby photos there's little alternative to either shoot in JPEG or have optically corrected lenses. Or get a LR subscription every time I want to touch up an old image.
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Little alternative? There’s DPP, the software that Canon gives you for free to process raw images.

Personally, I doubt there are many people who would spend over a thousand dollars (at least!) on camera gear, decide to shoot RAW but not be willing/able to spend $70 on Affinity Photo or $120 on DxO PureRaw, both of which are one time purchases and do not need to be upgraded unless you buy a camera newer than your version of the software.

Or is the issue a personal mandate that images be stored and processed in the cloud? What is the concern about duplicating the raw image to process it in a better software package? If it’s the effort of making a copy, fine…but processing a RAW file is already effort. If it’s storage space, multiple copies of files don’t take up more space in internal storage unless you’re running macOS 10.11 (from 2015) or older.
 
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#168
vikingar said:
I was actually very surprised how well @neuroanatomist s comparison shots look. When shooting JPEG it really doesn't seem to matter. It also doesn't matter if you're someone that uses LR, edits the pictures and then saves the edited results.

Personally however, I've come across a lack of RAW corrections a bunch of times. Years ago I was a hardcore Linux and open-source software user, and getting correct profiles was hard and sometimes impossible. So I mostly skipped them and lived with the distortion.

More recently, I moved everything family-related into me and my wife's shared iCloud (Apple Photos), as she wants to use the JPEGs immediately. So I uploaded the RAW+JPEG pairs, which Apple supports. Light editing is easily possible, but once you go to the RAW e.g. to lift some shadows suddenly all the distortion comes back.

I very quickly realized that once in iCloud, there's actually no (!) software that can apply RAW corrections without duplicating photos. LR and most others require export/import or a separate Adobe ecosystem and can't work directly on Apple Photos files. The app "RAW Power" is the closest and really great, but also doesn't do lens profiles.

For a working professional this all sounds cute and is in no way an issue, I realize that. But if you're dealing with "consumer" software and just hobby photos there's little alternative to either shoot in JPEG or have optically corrected lenses. Or get a LR subscription every time I want to touch up an old image.
Click to expand...
You are indeed at the mercy of your RAW converter and sharing ecosystem! We’ve settled on using LR for editing and the exporting jpeg(-xl) to icloud. For immediate gratification I use the wifi feature to transfer a picture to my phone, and will properly edit it later.

For the high ISO shots DxO pureraw is great, I rarely worry about noise ‘ruining’ the shot nowadays.

And it would be very nice if the capture, processing and sharing pipelining was much more streamlined and integrated!
 
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#169
David_B said:
That has more curvey lines than the graph for the RF-50/1.4. Need a legend for both graphs.
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Canon never labels the axes on their MTF charts, presumably because If you don't know that MTFs go from 0-1 and the radial distance from the centre of FF is 0-21.6mm then the plot is not for you.
 
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#170
0x2102 said:
I think the expectation comes with the asking price. It sounds like some people want premium hardware for a premium price and not a "mixed bag" lens that is fixed up via software correction.
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I can understand expecting digitally corrected lenses to cost less but there is a lack of evidence that optically corrected lenses to be any better.
Distortion was a big deal with DSLRs since the viewfinder was also optical.
There just is not much of any advantage for mirrorless.
I am not sure why people assume that Sony is not doing the same thing.
 
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#171
mxwphoto said:
Old classic lenses are still adapted and used today because they are pure optical and mechanical creations and are versatile
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That is kind of true but I use vintage lenses and they still have plenty of flaws.
Since there are no correction profiles I have to fix them myself.
These new lenses would be no different in that regard.
I can also assure you that those will not be as good as these lenses after correction.
You do make a good point when compared to the RF f/1.2 L primes however.
Those lenses are nearly perfect with optical corrections other than the heavy vignetting.
 
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#172
vikingar said:
For a working professional this all sounds cute and is in no way an issue, I realize that. But if you're dealing with "consumer" software and just hobby photos there's little alternative to either shoot in JPEG or have optically corrected lenses. Or get a LR subscription every time I want to touch up an old image.
Click to expand...
Consumer software and DPP have lens profiles as well.
Linux is a different animal.
If you are that DIY then maybe mirrorless is not for you.
 
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#173
neuroanatomist said:
We were discussing thermal issues and materials used in lens construction. I stated, “If there was a compelling engineering reason…”

Is it your contention that the on-set distraction of a lens color is an engineering problem? If so, you have an unorthodox definition of the word ‘engineering’.
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The way I read his comment you're responding to, was that in a studio where light control is paramount, you want the least amount of white stuff as possible, since white stuff may cause stray reflections that you do not want. Just a clarification. I've personally done a number of studio shoots and I've never chanced on a shoot where such level of light control was needed (and don't tell that to my much-adored and very white EF 200 2L :love: , which saw a lot of studio use)
 
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#174
AlanF said:
Canon never labels the axes on their MTF charts, presumably because If you don't know that MTFs go from 0-1 and the radial distance from the centre of FF is 0-21.6mm then the plot is not for you.
Click to expand...

It isn't the axes that are important but what the lines on the graph represent, hence why I said legends are necessary, so that you know what each line represents. e.g which ones are wide open, which are stopped down, sagiterial, etc.
 
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#176
David_B said:
It isn't the axes that are important but what the lines on the graph represent, hence why I said legends are necessary, so that you know what each line represents. e.g which ones are wide open, which are stopped down, sagiterial, etc.
Click to expand...
There are no sagiterial lines on MTF plots, or indeed anywhere I know of.
 
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#179
EOS 4 Life said:
I am not sure why people assume that Sony is not doing the same thing.
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Are you referring to software correction in general (like the smallest amount is a no-go) or like me the never before seen amount of software correction required to correct a lens? The Sony 24mm GM 1.4 (released in 2018) is smaller, 10% lighter and it's optical design requires night and day less software correction. Canon had 6 years to make the Sony 24mm 1.4 GM look old and ready for a version II.
 
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#180
roby17269 said:
The way I read his comment you're responding to, was that in a studio where light control is paramount, you want the least amount of white stuff as possible, since white stuff may cause stray reflections that you do not want. Just a clarification. I've personally done a number of studio shoots and I've never chanced on a shoot where such level of light control was needed (and don't tell that to my much-adored and very white EF 200 2L :love: , which saw a lot of studio use)
Click to expand...
I was referring mostly to video recording. With moving subjects and/or moving cameras, it can easily become a thing.
Photography...not so much.

0x2102 said:
Are you referring to software correction in general (like the smallest amount is a no-go) or like me the never before seen amount of software correction required to correct a lens? The Sony 24mm GM 1.4 (released in 2018) is smaller, 10% lighter and it's optical design requires night and day less software correction. Canon had 6 years to make the Sony 24mm 1.4 GM look old and ready for a version II.
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While the Sony 24mm may have less software corrections than the Canon RF 24mm L, some Sony lenses also have severe software corrections.

Here you have two of them
www.the-digital-picture.com

Sony FE 20-70mm F4 G Lens Distortion

Review distortion test results for the Sony FE 20-70mm F4 G Lens and compare the performance of this lens with other lenses.
www.the-digital-picture.com www.the-digital-picture.com
 
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