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Some Teasing: Fujinon XF 16-80mm f/4
#11
Yeah, me, too ;-)

If it helps - the Sigma 24-70mm f/2.8 DN review will be out tomorrow.
Chief Editor - opticallimits.com

Doing all things Canon, MFT, Sony and Fuji
#12
Markus, do you have an estimate as to when the review of the 16-80 will be completed?
Thanks!
--Florent

Flickr gallery
#13
I have a feeling...

Optical Quality: ★★1/2
Mechanical Quality: ★★★★
Price/Performance: ★★1/2
#14
(11-29-2020, 03:40 PM)fernandoj Wrote: I have a feeling...

Good guess Wink Not spot-on, but close.
Editor
opticallimits.com

#15
I guess 2¼ for optical, now that you're using not only halves but quarter marks too. Smile
#16
I think fernandoj is close. My guess:

Optical Quality: ★★
Mechanical Quality: ★★★1/2
Price/Performance: ★★1/2
--Florent

Flickr gallery
#17
A "like" for whoever gets closest in their guesstimate (unless I turn out to be the one to nail it). It's the only thing I can do. Smile
#18
(11-28-2020, 08:54 PM)thxbb12 Wrote: Markus, do you have an estimate as to when the review of the 16-80 will be completed?
Thanks!

I honestly don't feel confident giving estimates right now, since all the ones I made in the past didn't work in the end. That would have been the case here again, because the plan was to get the review out last week already.

On the other hand I understand that I'm really stretching your patience (again), so a little bit of background info what's going on here:

As mentioned earlier, there were some issues with the C1 RAW conversion, that I wanted to sort out first. It turned out to be 3 in total, one of which maybe had an influence on the initial MTF results of the XF 16-80. For those interested: in C1 you can copy and paste adjustments from a single file to a selection of others, with adjustments including the lens profile chosen and the settings around it (like which corrections are applied and to what degree). A small annoyance in C1: every time you switch a lens profile (for example from C1-supplied profile to the manufacturer profile embedded in the raw file), C1 enables CA correction, even if it was switched off before. It's of course just a click to uncheck it again, but if you do and then copy-paste the adjustments, the profile chosen is applied to the selected images, but the toggle for CA correction remains on for all the images you just pasted settings to, even if it was unchecked in the source image the settings were copied from. You have to paste the settings twice to also apply this setting to all images.
I found out about this after I had done the conversion of the XF 16-80 files and there was no way for me to identify if the CA correction was toggled on or off afterwards. So, I simply had to do it again (for the 16-80 and a few other lenses).

Btw., it seems this issue is solved with the upcoming version 21 of C1.

C1 will from now on be the only RAW converter I use for MTF analysis, for Fuji XF reviews, Nikon Z and also the future Nikon F reviews (and for the latter I'll redo the few Nikon DX reviews based on the Nikon D7200 that I had published in the past already). It replaces Iridient Developer here, which I never really used for my own work, but was perfect for the MTF analysis, because it can store a predefined set of adjustments as a profile and then batch-apply it to a whole folder structure.
C1 is way more tricky in this regard.

In any case: the whole software workflow for all tests we do is now fully set up again here. In fact, the numbercrunching for most of the XF reviews for weeks and months to come (both new test and retests) is already done.

There is one more thing, though, that kept me busy especially last week: an opportunity opened to move my office to bigger rooms. I wanted some more space for a while already, but this was a chance too good to let it slip: same building, actually just down the corridor, so same landlord and same good conditions (actually a bit better, because I pay a little less per square meter now). The only downside: I had just around a week to renovate and repaint the rooms and move everything in. Both done now, yesterday evening actually... and now I'm sitting in the middle of a nice big office, full of boxes and chaotic piles of stuff and I find myself wondering how all that ever fit the smaller room Wink I'll have to spend some time to sort everything, but I'm not under pressure to do so. The main goal was to have the old room empty by yesterday and hand over the keys today.

This move to bigger rooms is actually review-related, too: the new office offers a bit more space (as in a larger maximum camera to chart distance) than my home, where I have been doing reviews so far. That's why all the review equipment will move here in the next few days, too, and for the first time it will have its own dedicated space. So, more or less a permanent "lab", finally Smile

This will also allow me to do review work during my daytime in the office, instead of my spare time in the evening... where it's often a challenge to find the motivation to set up the equipment and be productive after a long day.

So, in summary: no estimate, but I'll start writing the actual review text today.

(12-01-2020, 09:13 AM)Rover Wrote: A "like" for whoever gets closest in their guesstimate (unless I turn out to be the one to nail it). It's the only thing I can do. Smile

You earned your "like" already Wink
Editor
opticallimits.com

#19
Hey, best of luck with moving out to a better office! Hope the new place is better in every possible aspect, not only price.

I have two questions: first being - why C1? While I use it as a primary tool for exporting RAW files, I don't find it very consistent. A bug or two may slip in (had one that directly affects image rendering), and it applies different default sharpening to each camera. Considering that LR is hit and miss with Fujifilm, and DxO Photolab does not work at all with XTrans files... Maybe the reason why LensTip people use dcraw, but if this is the engine behind RawTherapee, it's not perfect with XTrans either, but at least is consistent.

Second - should image resolution be measured before or after distortion correction is applied? While I'm very curious to see the impact, I wonder whether it makes sense to measure before distortion correction, because that's the actual optical resolution. The correction itself involves some software tricks which can vary across RAW converters, if the profile is available at all, so not exactly consistent.

My predictions:
Optical: 3
Mechanical: 4.5
Value: 3.5
You just can't have too many lenses...
#20
Ahaa...this is a betting site.

I guess:
mechanical 4
optical 2.75
price/perf 3
  


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