Lightroom, Capture One, Distortion Correction, and the Olympus 17mm f/1.8

[Amin]

I recently presented some crops taken with the Voigtlander 17.5mm f/0.95 Nokton and Olympus 17mm f/1.8. By comparison, the Olympus corners appeared rather soft, and in the comments that followed, I alluded to the fact that much of this softness was a result of the way Lightroom applies barrel distortion correction automatically. A lot of edge sharpness is lost as a result of this distortion correction, and unfortunately Lightroom doesn't allow you to disable the correction. The same is true for nearly all Micro 4/3 wide angle lenses, the Voigtlander 17.5mm f/0.95 being an exception to the rule.

To demonstrate this issue, here is a resized f/5 handheld snap taken with the E-PM2 and Olympus 17mm f/1.8 lens at f/5:

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Below is the center 100% crop as default processed by Lightroom 5.3 (left), Capture One Pro 7.1.5 (middle), and Capture One Pro 7.1.5 with distortion correction disabled (right).

As you can see, the colors are different, Capture One (C1) corrects chromatic aberration automatically by default, and C1 also boosts local contrast and does some more noise reduction by default. The apparent level of detail is similar, however:

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Moving to the extreme bottom left corner is another story. Again the color and contrast differences are clear, but the crop processed by C1 without distortion correction (far right) has noticeably greater detail than the other two:

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The same is true in the extreme bottom left corner:

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The extreme upper left corner is a bit outside of the depth of field for this shot, but still the distortion correction has sacrificed a noticeable amount of detail:

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The point here is that corner sharpness is significantly better without distortion correction. Not all images need complete correction of distortion, and by doing less correction (again, Lightroom doesn't allow this), you can preserve more detail.

Even when complete correction of distortion is desirable, I find that I can get the best results by processing from RAW without distortion correction in C1, doing the distortion correction using PTLens, and then sharpening to taste in Photoshop.

 

[klee]

How does the LR5 and C1 distortion correction compare to OV3?

 

[Serhan]

Thanks for the comparison. I like lightroom but I don't like that auto distortion controls. As you say it is better to keep it off unless it is required. I tried to use rawtherapee in a few cases but it is not very optimal also. Capture One file crops look better.

 

[Amin]

How does the LR5 and C1 distortion correction compare to OV3?

OV3 is like Lightroom. Distortion correction is baked in without option to disable.

 

[Amin]

Thanks for the comparison. I like lightroom but I don't like that auto distortion controls. As you say it is better to keep it off unless it is required. I tried to use rawtherapee in a few cases but it is not very optimal also. Capture One file crops look better.

The more I use C1, the more I am tempted to abandon Lightroom. Only problem is that I've been using Lightroom for forever. Hard to change habits. Full disclosure: Phase One gave me a review copy of C1 Pro for free (also disclosed in the link in my sig).

 

[klee]

Did you add a lens profile into LR5 for the 17mm f1.8?

I don't get any distortion correction in LR5 on my ORFs.

Here are my samples:

 

[jyc860923]

OV3 is like Lightroom. Distortion correction is baked in without option to disable.

but if you're using sigma 19, 30 and 60 lenses, OV3 can let you choose whether to do the correction.

I use DxO, and sometimes I don't correct for distortion

 

[Amin]

Did you add a lens profile into LR5 for the 17mm f1.8?

I don't get any distortion correction in LR5 on my ORFs.

Here are my samples:

Can you share that RAW file for me to process in C1 and show crops?

Sent from my SCH-I535 using Mu-43 mobile app

 

[vtsteevo]

I tried C1 v7 last year and definitely liked the results better when compared to LR v4. I could even get used to the change in workflow, but C1 just ate up the memory on my machine and just felt clunky and a lot slower.

 

[macalterego]

I tested c7 pro but it wasn't compellingly better than my workflow with Aperture as my DAM and Lightroom and PS CC as my editors. I don't think Aperture does lens corrections, am I right. At least I am careful to not send a raw file set into LR if I'm planning on doing any layer/compositing in PS until the end or I might have versions of an exposure that don't match versions that didn't pass through LR. But maybe I need to relook at this, particularly with my landscape shooting or panorama sets. I have not used LR much but with v5 I have been impressed with the editing enough to consider doing more with it. However based on this thread I may just stick to PS. Or think about c1pro. I can upgrade pretty cheaply from earlier version.

 

[dav1dz]

It would be nice if we can add Aperture to this test.

 

[dav1dz]

Did you add a lens profile into LR5 for the 17mm f1.8?

I don't get any distortion correction in LR5 on my ORFs.

Here are my samples:

The lens corrections are not transparent, they are directly applied by any compatible RAW converter. There are no MFT lens profiles for Lightroom unless you add your own for this reason.

 

[klee]

raw
https://app.box.com/s/gco9d8bpi9jm0r90nocm

comparison tiff
https://app.box.com/s/53rqbamdct3uhyrgj02l

 

[klee]

OV3 allows you to disable distortion correction. you can choose between auto, manual, and choose to use lens information.

My LR5 exports all display the same distortion as in the original ORF. I cant seem to get any distortion correction out of LR5.3. Only color profiles. (i used camera natural)

 

[theanser]

it seems that Capture 7.1.5 doesn't support E-M1 RAWs yet?

 

[klee]

OV3 allows you to disable distortion correction. you can choose between auto, manual, and choose to use lens information. My LR5 exports all display the same distortion as in the original ORF. I cant seem to get any distortion correction out of LR5.3. Only color profiles. (i used camera natural)

also, in my comparison I dropped the default sharpening in LR5.3 to 0, and in OV3 to -2.

 

[lombardispot]

it seems that Capture 7.1.5 doesn't support E-M1 RAWs yet?

Did you happen to download and try it to come to that conclusion? Just wondering.

I'm afraid to download a trial for fear that once I start a trial, I'll discover that the em-1 is not supported, and then my trial will expire before they provide support.

I sent an email to their usa office asking for a date for em-1 support.




Sent from my iPhone using Mu-43 mobile app

 

[Amin]

Did you add a lens profile into LR5 for the 17mm f1.8?

I don't get any distortion correction in LR5 on my ORFs.

Here are my samples:

Thanks for uploading the samples. I didn't add any profiles. You are getting some distortion correction in both LR5 and OV3.

Here is the full-res JPEG of the C1 conversion of your file: https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2891/11351346734_26e850435b_o.jpg

Here is your comparison with C1 added in the right pane:

 

[tomO2013]

I thought that it might also be interesing to see how DXO fares on this. Supposedly they do selective sharpening on different parts of the frame to compensate for distortion softness etc.. depending on the lens body combo.

For this I opened the Raw provide here, clicked DXO Standard profile (all lens correction enabled - without purple fringe correction).
Only change I made to default DXO profile is that I turned off luminence noise reduction entirely but left colour reduction enabled - purely to see what level of detail it is able to pull out.

I don't have time now to do a side to side comparison myself, but maybe somebody else could take the DXO output that i've provided here and wouldn't mind adding the DXO output to the Amin's output above so that we have another Raw processor in the mix

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/9467492/dxo9.1_export_NO-luminanceNR.jpg

 

[klee]

does anybody know how to do mouse overs?