06-29-2012, 05:10 PM
i too was somewhat disappointed with the performance of the 18-55 kitlens on the NEX 7 as far as corner and side sharpness and distortion are concerned. however, i found out that when shooting RAW images and processing them in DXO with the appropriate modules for both selective sharpening and barrel/pincushion corrections results improve quite a bit.
of course the distortion can also be removed with the appropriate module in Lightroom, but improving sharpness on a selective basis is not included. in DXO there is a possibility to correct what is called "lens softness", which in the accompanying help file is described as:
[indent]DxO Optics Modules have been created by measuring, for each camera body and each lens, the amount of blur at every point in the image area. Matching the shooting parameters contained in the EXIF data (aperture, focal length, etc.) and the map provided by the DxO Optics Module, DxO Optics Pro can apply precisely-tailored correction according to the position of each pixel in the image field. This correction is not the same over the whole image, since lenses are sharper in the centre, therefore central pixels need less correction. [/indent]
Although the above may look like a ad, the results are indeed quite good and far better then what can be obtained by using standard "sharpening" algorithms. Of course you cannot add sharpness where it isn't in the original file, but by improving local microcontrast in a subtle way things do look like quite a bit better.
Unfortunately this option is only available for native NEX lenses and when using non-NEX lenses with a adapter this option cannot be used - because of the lack of data.
If interested and you wanted to try it yourself, DXO can be downloaded for a limited free trial period.
of course the distortion can also be removed with the appropriate module in Lightroom, but improving sharpness on a selective basis is not included. in DXO there is a possibility to correct what is called "lens softness", which in the accompanying help file is described as:
[indent]DxO Optics Modules have been created by measuring, for each camera body and each lens, the amount of blur at every point in the image area. Matching the shooting parameters contained in the EXIF data (aperture, focal length, etc.) and the map provided by the DxO Optics Module, DxO Optics Pro can apply precisely-tailored correction according to the position of each pixel in the image field. This correction is not the same over the whole image, since lenses are sharper in the centre, therefore central pixels need less correction. [/indent]
Although the above may look like a ad, the results are indeed quite good and far better then what can be obtained by using standard "sharpening" algorithms. Of course you cannot add sharpness where it isn't in the original file, but by improving local microcontrast in a subtle way things do look like quite a bit better.
Unfortunately this option is only available for native NEX lenses and when using non-NEX lenses with a adapter this option cannot be used - because of the lack of data.
If interested and you wanted to try it yourself, DXO can be downloaded for a limited free trial period.