A question to members re. this section of the forum

[MarkS]

Hi

I have a question re. this section of the forum and would love to see other peoples opinions


If people post pictures on this section to show the capabilities of a lens, do memebers feel that the pictures should be heavily post processed, or remain in pretty much the state taken, which I believe shows the lenses capbilities rather than post processing capabilities


Heavily worked on images should do in the MF Gallery rather than in this section IMHO


Views welcomed on this

[Rigel]

For me the answer is pretty obvious ... If "flaws" in the picture have been removed/corrected in post, then how does the picture reflect the "naked" characteristics of the lens ?
I want to see the raw performance of a lens, not the post-processing skills of the owner

[MarkS]

I agree!

[Oldhand]

A lens captures everything that you point it at, on the sensor that it is mated to.
The exposure settings at the time may not be optimal, and the ISO chosen may not be appropriate.
Just as in the old film darkroom, some tweeking may be necessary to produce the image. This was called darkroom skill in the old days and today goes by the name of post processing for digital.
In neither case does it reflect on the ability of the lens which captured all the data in the first place.
PP and darkroom manipulation simply present an image that shows the best of the conditions and the lens in question.
I wouldn't get too hung up on it.
T

[miran]

And a further question. Should you be allowed to seek interesting subjects, good light and solid compositions for photos in this section? Or rather use boring subjects, plain light and give no thought to composition? After all, you're showing the capabilities of the lens not the photographer, right? Well then better stick to standard test targets.

[tb_a]

[kryss]

Well put Thomas,art is still subjective and youth is wasted on the young....

[MarkS]

It has been interesting to see peoples views - I am not hung up on this

I just (IMHO) thought tha heavily processed pictures should go in the MF Gallery section rather than this - but it is not an issue either way. It is always good to see what other people like to takeand whatlenses they use

[blotafton]

As someone who only use raw and doesn't mind light editing. Should we use jpeg and auto WB?

[Teemō]

[jamaeolus]

I don't care either way, but IMHO if a photo is heavily modified in post then the posting party should indicate such in the captions. Which most of the regulars on here already do.

[Sciolist]

[visualopsins]

I wouldn't use sharpen/unsharpen during PP of images made to exhibit sharpness differences between lenses.

The section is useless for direct comparisons between lenses using more than one post, because of PP, and, because of sensor model & size differences.

However, by by looking at many images on web from lenses to be compared, a rough comparison can (sometimes) be made for assessing lens qualities.

There is the question whether some lens renderings PP into better images than others, when the before-PP images are nearly identical.

Some have argued PP images show the best a lens can do, while I think this is comparable to images from a lens wide open versus images from the same lens stopped down -- the stopped down images of all lenses approach the same degree of quality...

The question is really what is purpose of this section? For comparing lenses by comparing images from separate posts, the section is useless, because there is no standard of posted images. To be useful the section would require no PP, and specify camera sensor.

[Lloydy]

I usually post pictures to demonstrate a lens' capability that have been shot by me as part of my love of photography using my old lenses on a modern digital camera, so they are very rarely shot just for demonstration purposes, and are often processed a bit. I always shoot RAW so they are at minimum converted and sized in Faststone. Then they are sometimes adjusted for levels and contrast etc, and rarely sharpened.
To my view, it's still showing the capability of the lens, as long as the detail is stated. Basic processing is available to everyone, it's easy enough to do, it's expected even.

As long as the detail is given, then real world pictures for demonstrating lens performance is what I personally like to see.

[Rigel]

[stevemark]

[marcusBMG]

[dan_]

Usually when I test a lens for myself I try to see how useful it is for me. For instance when I test a portrait lens I'm not interested in its corner sharpness at all and when I test a wider landscape lens its Bokeh is not relevant to me.

The "technical" details and absolute numbers don't interest me very much - for instance instead of knowing the absolute sharpness of a lens what really interests me is how large a print can be made with the files it can produce.

In other words what really interests me is not the "scientific" and "super technical" kind of testing, revealing all the capabilities of a lens, but that kind of testings outlining how useful the lens could be for the kind of photography it was intended/proposed by the OP. Of course all these can be deduced from the "super technical" tests but it is an indirect, puzzling, not elegant, potentially misleading and cumbersome approach. Unfortunately almost all the dedicated sites of lens testing are following the "super technical" path and I have seen portrait lenses getting lower ratings because of their lower corner sharpness.

In this regard, in some cases, showing how a lens could accomplish a task after PP could be both useful and inspiring if the PP applied is mentioned by the OP. It could be useful in this section of the forum, too, not only in the MF Gallery. Above all this forum is neither a lens testing site nor a database of lens measurements, but a forum where we share our experience with different lenses and the PP is part of this experience.

I know others may have other opinions and I respect that.

[jamaeolus]

[Lloydy]

[l9magen]

As someone who does work as a scientist, our job involves making observations of "reality" and testing hypotheses to understand the governing conditions controlling that reality. This is done to enable predictions.

I wonder if Art could be described as perceptions of reality while science attempts to understand the underlying conditions governing observed behaviour. Perceptions are tested, real ones become true and non-real are false. To the artist however, all that exists is the perception, real or false. It merely has to "look good".

Personally speaking, I've used this site to help me evaluate the potential performance of lenses, bearing in mind that an individual image may have been "processed" beyond what
1. the lens,
2. camera settings (WB, ISO, aperture, shutter speed and indeed in-camera scene profiles - who shoots in "Standard" all the time?)
3. the sensor
...combined to capture.

In other words, there are hardware/software interactions even at the earliest stages of image capture that create an interpretation of the scene. How often have we read here, and on other forum, that the camera cannot match the dynamic bandwidth of our visual acuity?

As someone also mentioned, the mere generation of a JPG also modifies the original RAW file after in-camera settings have had their influence.

Therefore, I think I fall into the group that hopes members might keep the PP to a minimum, indicate what was done and if they think there is a defining characteristic for a lens, take repeated images of different scenes which demonstrate this characteristic behaviour.

[jamaeolus]

As indicated a specific lens even without any PP editing only tells you how that specific lens performs under those circumstances on that film or sensor. How representative of other copies of that lens or used in other cameras with different film or sensors is not going to be clear. I generally search google images to try to get multiple images from a specific lens, then read reviews or comments in this or other forums.

[cooltouch]

When I'm posting a lens test or comparison (example, my most recent wide angle to short tele zoom lens comparison), I usually do not perform any post processing on the image. But I should mention that I shoot raw photos and I use Photoshop's great raw converter to convert my images to jpg. Photoshop's raw converter is special. It allows one to perform many of the operations normally conducted in PP. Do I mention this? Yeah, for the most part, I do. But you know, because I'm manipulating a raw image, it takes to the adjustments much better than if I were to manipulate the image as a jpg file. I guess that's just the nature of raw.

One thing I think deserves mentioning that I haven't seen mentioned yet is camera settings. I have my NEX 7 set up so that contrast and sharpness are on the soft side. So my camera is losing detail that is usually recoverable with the converter. I have it set this way because I use my NEX for duplicating slides and B&W negs and if I have either the contrast or sharpness set too high, the detail blocks up too fast resulting in loss of detail that I can't always recover in raw. So sometimes, after conversion, I may still tweak sharpness and contrast some. But if the image is a test or evaluation shot, I'll usually mention any PP I've done.

Personally, I think it's important to mention this sort of thing because it amounts to "full disclosure."

[miran]

I think there are two different things we're talking about. One thing are controlled tests with the purpose of finding a certain lens' weak points, possibly (and preferably) compared to some other lens that is a known quantity (because raw test data doesn't mean much without a reference point). In this case all you need to do is to be consistent. Shoot with a tripod in the same light, the same scene, the same camera, the same settings, and the same raw conversion parameters. It doesn't really matter how much you process the images, as long as you keep everything the same and have a good reference point, that will be enough to judge the performance of one lens in comparison with another. Of course in such tests it doesn't make much sense to overprocess anyway so this shouldn't be an issue at all. To keep things level, you shoot raw and convert with close to neutral settings. That's it. All you need is a base tone curve, white balance (identical for all shots), minimal noise reduction and input sharpening (just to compensate for bayer array and AA filter). Perhaps some exposure compensation if you made a mistake when shooting (but try to avoid that), and especially no lens correction magic. In some cases it might be beneficial to enhance contrast, saturation or sharpness in order to magnify a certain aberration that might be difficult to observe otherwise, but this should be clearly marked and it can only be used to compare two or more lenses.

A completely different thing are "tests" where you're trying to show the potential of a certain lens. Here anything within reason goes, including stronger tone curve adjustments, sharpening, contrast/lightness/colour manipulations, minor cropping, etc. The purpose of this is not to find weak points of a lens and compare to another, but rather maximise its creative potential. Not to evaluate technical aspects of a piece of equipment but rather show what can be done with it if you apply some creativity. Such "tests" in my opinon have a place in the "Manual Focus Lenses" section as long as you make it clear they're not meant to be "scientific" examinations but rather a "show what this or that lens can do". The "MF Galleries" on the other hand can be used for more arty projects where the lens itself doesn't play the main role but is rather just one of the tools that were used in creating the particular piece of art.

[Lightshow]

I don't care either way so long as any editing or manipulation is explained next to the image so you/I can make a determination on how much whatever we're look for has been altered, for example, I won't use pictures that have heavy sharpening to judge lens sharpness, but I can still make a judgment on rendering, or I can't compare distortion if it's been through lens compensation.
I'm generally not a heavy handed editor unless I'm trying to save a picture from a weak capture.