today I want to do something a little bit different rather than showing you
how to edit photographs I'm going to talk a little bit about some of the
cameras I've owned because over the last 10 years I've owned and sold a lot of
cameras now this isn't a gear review it's actually more to do with software
and how I think I've been tricked into changing the cameras I own far too often
if we look at the image on screen what I've got here is a Sony nex-5 I bought
this when the camera first came out and I'll be honest I wasn't really blown
away with the lenses on there they had a lot of distortion so you tend to get
barrel distortion where the center of the image tends to sort of / TrueHD out
and also around the edges of the frame it was soft there was no real detail
there so if I take this image and I zoom in to 100% and I'll just take it over
and look in the corners and this area here in this area here look a little bit
soft and when I go out to the edges here of the frame it's also soft now I'm not
sure how well this is going to translate into a video but I'm going to zoom in to
200% so you can see what I mean the rock just isn't sharp and the grass here
certainly isn't sharp now I know lenses aren't going to be perfect but I do
expect better performance and this and if I look at the edges out here you can
see that the quality's just gone off completely but in the center is quite
sharp it's not not a bad performance at all but edges and corners of the frame
are terrible this image was processed with the
default settings in the latest version of Lightroom and I have to admit if I
look back to the earlier versions of Lightroom probably 10 years ago or what
you would find is that the image quality was worse than it is now so they've
definitely made some improvements the problem is the image quality isn't as
good as it could be let me show you now an image of pros
test in photo lab - and again this is just using the defaults so if I turn
this layer on you can immediately see much more detail here in the center of
the frame let's come down to the corners and not perfect but it's a lot better
compare the photo lab version with the librarian version and you can see this
distortion there that there isn't in the photo lab and also it made the image
goes soft where the edges of the frame are being stretched let's look at the
top corner now and actually it's not looking too bad
remember we're at 200% magnification in the Lightroom version you can see that
where we've got softness here and I would actually say that the quality of
that is verging on what I wouldn't accept if I look at the photo lab
version the quality is much better both of these images were processed with the
default settings from the raw file and what I'm finding is that the new version
of photo lab is performing much better than the Adobe versions especially when
it comes to doing just standard lens correction I actually think that the
poor performance especially into the corners with some of the cameras I've
owned has actually caused me to sell these cameras needlessly when I
shouldn't have let's have a look at a couple more examples we'll go to the
sony rx10 just to show you that these problems exist whether you're at the
long end the medium or at the wide end of the focal lengths I've got an image
here that was shot with probably the sony rx10 at its extreme 200 millimetres
I almost sold this camera because the lens performance was very poor around
the edges and especially one edge in particular I did end up having the
camera repaired because there was some mold got into the lens I don't know how
considering it was supposed to be a sealed unit once I've had it repaired
actually the edges performed quite well the image I'm seeing on screen now was
actually one I shot with the lens before it was repaired so if I go into a
hundred percent and what we can see in the Lightroom version is quite a bit of
detail it looks quite good I'm almost seeing the network of fencing
that's around here on the image if I scroll down to the bottom though you can
see that there is softening of the lens here coming in and especially as you get
down to the edge let's have a look now at the photo lab version it's still
showing some softness down here but nowhere near the same amount if we come
up see here you can actually start to see there is a faint fencing here I'll
show you if i zoom in so here we are at 200% and you can actually see the match
on the fencing if we turn that off it's just about there in the Adobe version
let's look at the other side of the frame which isn't too bad and I can see
lots of details here you can see the lightning rod and the cabling down the
tower and if I turn that off actually the the Adobe versions not too bad so
what's happening here well I think what we're seeing is poor lens correction if
I look at the photo lab version it's definitely better and I think it's
correcting the distortion a lot better than the Lightroom profiles do one of
the things that actually made me first realize about this problem was getting
some photos I'd submitted to a photo library rejected because of lens
softness especially into the corners but this doesn't seem to happen with all the
cameras certainly the Canon cameras I've owned the lens Corrections within
Lightroom they are quite extreme but they seem to perform much better
Nikon isn't bad either but when you go to things like Sony
they just don't perform as well and the photo lab version is definitely better
let's have another look now but we'll look at a standard image so this is
equivalent of about 50 millimeter in the sony rx10 so if i zoom in to 100%
you can see plenty of detail with the RX 10 you can see a lot of fine detail here
in the arches if I move down to the bottom though it's starting to go soft
again at the edges so let's just zoom in a little bit further and you can see
there isn't a huge amount of detail it's it's there but he's just soft let's
compare that now with photo up and immediately you can see all the detail
that was missing from these steps is there and you can also see there's a
difference in lens correction let's have a look at the details of both as well so
now you've seen lots of very fine detail in the stonework with the Adobe version
it's just soft so there really is a huge amount of difference that some of these
raw converters are making when they convert our files and we seem to accept
that whatever we get is what the camera saw and actually it's probably not the
software is making a big difference in my case it was making enough of a
difference to help me sell some cameras fortunately the our x10 isn't one that I
sold in the end I've hung on to it and what I'm finding is when I'm using the
photolab converter with it the performance of the lens is a lot better
now let's have a look what happens at the wide end so here is an image shot at
the 24 millimeter end of the RX 10 you can actually see that in the corners as
a bit of vignetting don't worry about that that's because I had a protector on
because this was very stormy weather and I was trying to shoot in the rain let's
zoom in now at 100% and we can see a lot of sharpness around the lettering and he
actually looks quite clear if we go out to the corners it's starting to look a
little soft here so it's zoom in to 200% and you can see it it's soft we say the
same problem over on this side as well so let's have a look at what photolab
did with it well it's a lot clearer you still can't read
the writing but remember this is the outside edge of a wide-angle zoom so
that actually is a very good performance and alter on the other side we see this
man a little bit clearer and if we look at the central area in the writing it's
a huge amount of difference between the two now this isn't just down to
sharpening this is down to the way that the image is being processed by the raw
convertor and that it's removing lens Distortion I'm going to show you now a
really extreme example which was shot with a sony rx100 now I've never been
very happy with this camera the center of it was really sharp but the outside
edges were pretty poor frequently I would get a lot of what looked like
chromatic aberration but I just couldn't remove it nothing would get rid of it
no what I'm finding is with the latest version of Lightroom a lot of that
chromatic aberration is gone this image in particular used to suffer from it a
lot around the lower corners and edges of the frame and also around some of the
edges here what I found with the latest version isn't there isn't really any so
let's go in at 100% so I'm not seeing any real CA fringing here what I am
seeing is that the corners are looking a little bit softer so let's just zoom in
a little bit further 200% it's not too bad whereas previously it was very very
much distorted I want to show you the photo lab version immediately there's
lots more detail there if you look at this area here of the rock on the wall
you can see that the photo labs actually reveals so much detail that it makes the
adobe version look soft you can also see it in this bush here we go from
something that's not really acceptable to something that's sharp and that's
crazy now there is something else I need to show you let's
fit this to the screen and in fact I'm gonna zoom out what you may not realize
is that actually the sony takes more of a frame than you actually is seeing here
and if I take the photo lab version of this you can actually see the edges of
the frame so if I actually move this up what Sony and Astor knees captured a lot
more than you actually see when you convert it in Lightroom and in fact if
you look at the Lightroom version it chops it off halfway through this corner
of the stick it seems that Lightroom is making its
its Corrections and then chopping the frame and in doing that it seems to be
wasting and stretching and losing the sharpness in the image I don't know how
photo ops doing it but it's definitely making a lot better job of it I decided
I've got other rock converters as well so let's see what they do so if I look
at luminar three well luminaries done a slightly better job at keeping all the
image information so let's zoom that in again to 100% we'll go into the corner
and although it's recovered the information it's only slightly sharper
into the corners it also doesn't seem to have done such a severe correction of
the lens distortion well let's compare that now with photo rawr 2019 and
there's virtually no difference between the photo reversion and the Lightroom
version let's have a look though at what the detail reveals so let's go into 100%
sorry 200% here and you can see that it's starting to become a little bit
soft but not as soft as the white ruin version but what I would say is that the
on one version is actually performing much better if you look at the detail
here in the bush so even though it's not applying as much sharp think it's
looking better let's have a look at how in skin X
for now I've done two versions of this one with the lens correction module
turned on now the first thing I've noticed is there's actually the red
fringing that I used to get with the Lightroom version and I'm still getting
with Alien Skin if I go into the corners the cropping is very very similar to the
Adobe version and in fact although the contrast isn't as high it is just
slightly sharper than the Adobe version but they're very little in it at all on
this and that's with the lens correction module turned on let's have a look at
what we get with the lens correction module turned off so immediately we
recover that missing information now we've still got the chromatic aberration
I mentioned earlier but look how much sharper in the wall and this Bush the
image is so what I think's happening with alien skin is when they're using
the lens correction like Adobe this stretching the image and that's
degrading the corners and edges what I would say I've learned from this is
there's a big difference between the raw converters and that you would expect
what's really surprised me though as to things what how well photo labs done and
actually converting the image and correcting the distortion but the second
thing which is surprised me more perhaps is that some of the cameras that I've
owned and have sold because I thought the performance was poor in the lenses
actually it's down to the software and not to the camera I hope you found this
useful I'm Robin Whalley I'll see you next time for another video
you