Revisiting Purple "flare" with the OM-D

The coating on the EM5's sensor / filter is purple-ish. Doesn't' anyone think this is the likely source is the purple flaring?

Or is this just too simplistic?

Brian

 

Heh, sure enough there it is... I wonder if this is common to a number of Sony sensors? Someone posted a while ago an article talking about people seeing purple spots like this with the iPhone 5 camera, which also has a Sony sensor.

I am really hoping this isn't present on the GH3 too now that it seems almost certain it's using a tweaked version of the same sensor from the OM-D EM-5. Yet another example of why I hate to see everyone homogenizing the market to one sensor manufacturer.

 

I'm confused as why you think this is related to the OM-D's sensor rather than just lens flare.

 

This has been assigned to the OM-D in particular because the same lens does not apparently cause the same problem on older Olympus bodies or on Panasonic bodies (or at least not to the same degree)

 

I shot the OMD against another camera -- same lens -- and the purple "fringing" was far worse on the OMD than the other cameras. It's one reason I moved the OMD along. Some of the worst pf was not correctable. Some were fine with it, but I could see it everywhere with the OMD. Some similar criticisms have been leveled against the NEX7. The NEX7 (but not the NEX 5) and the OMD have a similar pixel pitch. I wonder if there isn't an issue with the Sony sensor at this pixel density.

This is a reason I'm stalling on getting the EPL5 or EPM2. I want to see if this continues to be an issue or not.

 

Hugely encouraging regarding the newer bodies. Thanks!

 

I see it plenty with the PL25 as well.

 

is this now also true with the E-M1 now having a Panasonic sensor? I wonder....

 

My E-M1 is a little worse than my E-M5 was.

 

Yeah my EM1 is just as bad as my EM5 with the 7-14mm. I don't think it has anything to do with the sensor itself or who makes it, but rather the filter over the sensor, it seems like Panasonic has a strong uv filter on their sensors, and Olympus doesn't.

 

So if one uses a UV filter for their lens, the purple flare won't show up?!

 

Yes - there were several discussions a while back on dpreview that suggested a sharp UV cut would help.

I use a Hoya UV+IR cut filter on the 9-18mm and 12-50mm, and although it does not completely eliminate the purple, it perhaps halves the strength. I do not think that the IR cut is necessary.

Note that most filters will increase the quantity of flare slightly (coatings...) - so you are to some extent trading a slight increase in flare pattern against the flare colour. I usually prefer to use the PL25mm with a hood and no filter at all, and I do not think that I have had a single non-test image where flare was a major problem as a result.

 

I have not tried a UV filter but with a little care the purple flare can be minimized.

E-M1    LUMIX G VARIO 7-14/F4.0    7mm    f/4.0    1/3s    ISO 800

E-M1    LUMIX G VARIO 7-14/F4.0    14mm    f/10.0    1/400s    ISO 640

 

Yeah, I have a love-hate relationship with my 7-14. It performs well when you are not shooting with bright lights in the frame, as the lens is very sharp across the frame, but when you have very bright lights in the frame the purple blobs will rear its ugly head. And I do think too it's worse on the E-M1 than it is on the E-M5. Here's an old shot with the E-M5 where I was able to avoid the purple flare.

Thank goodness Olympus is coming out with their 7-14/2.8 lens. I am willing to bet this is going to be a superb uwa zoom lens.

 

Another option (instead of mounting a filter on the front of the lens) is to mount a filter at the rear of the lens as described in this thread.

 

Presumably you're right, but until we have production samples on our cameras, we don't really know.