Inside an Adidas shop

[Peter McCullough]

This is a basic grab-shot of inside an Adidas shop with my Samyang 14mm f/2.8 wide angle lens (j-peg);

I do love black n' white!

 

[Davie Hudson]

I do love Adidas

 

[Hamish Gill]

You really get a sence for the wide fov here don't you!?
I shouldn't worry about boring people ...
WE LIKE PHOTOS!!

 

[Eric Swenson]

While I love the wide-angle shot and perspective, the moustache distortion that often characterizes photos with the Samyang 14mm f/2.8 on FF is (at least to me) quite noticeable, and somewhat distracting... And yet an absolute nightmare to remove. I can't wait to see what you can do with the highly useful tool in the future! And hopefully I'll get over the distortion eventually haha.

 

[Peter McCullough]

Thanks Eric,

I've no way of changing/adjusting any photo's I shoot as I only shoot in j-peg, I've NIL editing skills/knowledge so I only shoot in hi-res jpeg all the time.

This was literally a grab shot, a short time after I shot this photo the Adidas manager told me off for taking photo's!

 

[Hamish Gill]

Have you used one Eric?
The distortion looks quite even ... I would have thought Lightroom would be capable of reasonable adjustment?
It may even have this lens built into its lens bank for auto adjustments??

 

[Eric Swenson]

Have you used one Eric?
The distortion looks quite even ... I would have thought Lightroom would be capable of reasonable adjustment?
It may even have this lens built into its lens bank for auto adjustments??

I have, and read multiple reviews plus heard it from multiple owners (only for FF use though). You only notice it if you know where to look. Look at the horizontal bars across the ceiling. That's the only place it's visible, though once I noticed it was there, it did continue to distract me (or perhaps that's just my problem). Lightroom is not the best for removing moustache distortion, I'd personally go with nothing short of Dxo or PTLens from my experience (those have always worked the best for distortion removal). Though I honestly must admit I don't use many lens profiles in lightroom (as they are somewhat few and far between).

 

[Hamish Gill]

yeah, yeah, i know exactly what you are talking about ... I call it barrel distortion, the opposite being pin cushion distortion...
It does indeed look fairly extensive, but you have to take into account the price of this lens!
For the money it is a great option for those not looking to spend c.£1000 or more!

Lightrooms lens correction is perfectly acceptable in my view!
What specifically do you feel makes DxO a better option ... ive read about it in the past being better, but i cant remember why! and after having huge success combining auto and manual corrections in lightroom for commercial and product photography that i have done in the past I cant see how using any different software would be an advantage to me?
Maybe it is down to it having better interpolation algorithms?

 

[Eric Swenson]

yeah, yeah, i know exactly what you are talking about ... I call it barrel distortion, the opposite being pin cushion distortion...
It does indeed look fairly extensive, but you have to take into account the price of this lens!
For the money it is a great option for those not looking to spend c.£1000 or more!

Lightrooms lens correction is perfectly acceptable in my view!
What specifically do you feel makes DxO a better option ... ive read about it in the past being better, but i cant remember why! and after having huge success combining auto and manual corrections in lightroom for commercial and product photography that i have done in the past I cant see how using any different software would be an advantage to me?
Maybe it is down to it having better interpolation algorithms?

Normally I find it's just Barrel distortion as you suggested, but with the Samyang 14mm f/2.8 there's the barrel distortion outward with a slight... curve again at the end. If you look at it like a graph (for lack of a better way to describe it), most barrel distortion (for the most part) would present itself as a concave down curve. The "moustache" complex distortion goes two ways, with barrel distortion in the middle, and not really pincushion, but what can almost be described as pincushion appearing at the end. So the curve is concave up at first, then concave down for most of the image, then concave up at the end. At least for me, that's not what I consider simple barrel distortion.

I've found that lightroom presets are few and far between for many lenses, and that Dxo just does a more accurate job of correcting perspective, barrel, and pincushion distortion, let alone the more complex distortions that do rarely appear. Dxo also does a better job of dealing with aberrations (in my experience) than Lightroom, both when done manually or using lens preset data. That doesn't mean Lightroom CAN'T do the job, just that I prefer Dxo as a tool that does the job better and faster (in my opinion).

 

[Hamish Gill]

Oh I see what you mean by moustach, I've not heard that phrase before...
I can't see that in the photo but I shall take your word for it if you have seen a graphical reprepresentation of it...

I suppose it all depends on your standards, what you feel you can see in real world situations and what you can afford
I personally have never been overly exacting when I comes to this sort of thing... I trust my eye, and LR's adjustments are good enough to correct what I can see as distortions on my lenses

The thing that strike me though is that with good enough lenses distortion should be fairly minimal and relatively easy to correct...
Take my Nikon 16-35 ... It suffers from barrel at the wide end, fairly uniform barrel distortion though, none of the moustachioed effect ... I can correct it very easily in Lightroom ... To my eye ...
I use this lens professionally, I could only really justify it as a pro, in fact it doesn't actually belong to me, it belongs to f8 creates ... As a professional I have to be able to produce a certain standard of image ... But I always trust my eye over corrective software ...

Now if I had this cheaper lens, I probably wouldn't be a pro, if I wasn't a pro, would I need to have such exacting standards ... Maybe... But only for personal satisfaction ... But for personal satisfaction could I justify DXO?

I guess this is why I have never been tempted by more advanced tools ..
Do you see what I'm angling at?
Once in a situation where exacting standard are required, the quality of kit supersedes te requirement for anything more than what LR can do either automatically or with the extensive manual adjustment!

Same goes for other aberrations ... At least ime so far ...

Maybe I'm far off the track here and of I tried DxO I would feel otherwise ... Do you think??

 

[Peter McCullough]

That all sounds complicated to me, I just shoot photo's as best I can and don't get hung-up about small imperfections.

But that's just me...

 

[Hamish Gill]

I'm somewhere in between ... Sometimes it's nice to obses
There is a massive satisfaction in not picking for hours over one image!
But sometimes it's nice just to point shoot and by happy!

 

[Eric Swenson]

Oh I see what you mean by moustach, I've not heard that phrase before...
I can't see that in the photo but I shall take your word for it if you have seen a graphical reprepresentation of it...

I suppose it all depends on your standards, what you feel you can see in real world situations and what you can afford
I personally have never been overly exacting when I comes to this sort of thing... I trust my eye, and LR's adjustments are good enough to correct what I can see as distortions on my lenses

The thing that strike me though is that with good enough lenses distortion should be fairly minimal and relatively easy to correct...
Take my Nikon 16-35 ... It suffers from barrel at the wide end, fairly uniform barrel distortion though, none of the moustachioed effect ... I can correct it very easily in Lightroom ... To my eye ...
I use this lens professionally, I could only really justify it as a pro, in fact it doesn't actually belong to me, it belongs to f8 creates ... As a professional I have to be able to produce a certain standard of image ... But I always trust my eye over corrective software ...

Now if I had this cheaper lens, I probably wouldn't be a pro, if I wasn't a pro, would I need to have such exacting standards ... Maybe... But only for personal satisfaction ... But for personal satisfaction could I justify DXO?

I guess this is why I have never been tempted by more advanced tools ..
Do you see what I'm angling at?
Once in a situation where exacting standard are required, the quality of kit supersedes te requirement for anything more than what LR can do either automatically or with the extensive manual adjustment!

Same goes for other aberrations ... At least ime so far ...

Maybe I'm far off the track here and of I tried DxO I would feel otherwise ... Do you think??

It's present in the photo, but only slightly, and not of a major concern to anyone. Actually, I know professionals who do use the Samyang 14mm f/2.8 as a fast, very wide angle prime on FF. It may be a cheaper lens, but it's as sharp as the impressive Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8 AF-S. And when you're working with something that wide, DoF is not longer the biggest issue.

It's not as though Dxo is only usable for optical corrections. It's also an image editor on a similar caliber to Lightroom, though nowhere near as effective in terms of archiving files. There are many aspects to Dxo that I prefer over Lightroom when it comes to editing files, however at the same time, the idiosyncratic quirks of the program can be quite a pain. It's not for everyone, and not everyone needs the software. However it is a useful tool to have at hand for certain situations where you find some sort (and dxo corrects almost all types) of optical challenge, whether you need to remove perspective distortion, lens distortions, CA, or do localized lens softness "fixing" (can't fix it, but it works to counteract it in PP). Sometimes it's useful, sometimes it isn't. It's a tool for which people have to decide whether to use it or not to use it.

 

[Rense Haveman]

Nice one....

 

[Peter McCullough]

Adidas photo up-dated, aisle straight etc...