Sports lens support

Making one module from one individual lens attached to one individual body will result in a module that might not fit 90% of pairs, just because the tested lens and body were at the edge of the specs. Sometimes I wonder, how a (small) company like DxO can manage to make the modules at all. Rented gear? Borrowed gear? Dependent on the goodwill of manufacturers? Buy the stuff, test it and resell it?

Come on. Do you think DXO is testing all EF lenses again with the R3 to come up with brand new profiles for the combination?

Is DXO testing the Z9 with all previous Z and F mount lenses? Of course they aren’t.

DXO is spot checking a few lenses with these new cameras. And also profiling things like the sensor color rendering and perhaps a few other elements that may relate to how light coming it at certain angles is captured by the sensor. But there is no way they have to recharacterize each lens and body combination.

I am a Sony shooter and the only adapted lens I use is the Canon 200/2.0 which isn’t supported on canon cameras, so I can’t comment on how DXO handles other adapted lenses.

It would be nice if we could manually select a lens profile if the lens wasn’t recognized.

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The process is described here:

Okay, in a model world of 100x100 items, >200 measurements must be made plus 10’000 computer runs. Again, running one test with one lens is simply not good enough, you need several runs with several lenses each in order to get an idea of how good your results will be in a real world of measuring errors and sample variation…

I agree. I wasn’t trying to suggest one lens and one body was enough to make a profile. But the idea that every lens is tested with every body is crazy.

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Yes, I have previously submitted them and previous ones but nothing came of them.

Thanks, Mike

That’s not what your linked article says!!!

“A lens can’t be tested without a camera body, but fortunately each lens doesn’t have to be tested with each body. In fact, for each camera manufacturer, one camera body is selected as the baseline, or reference camera. This is typically one of the highest-end model cameras available, with the highest resolution sensor. That gives the most accurate information for the lens tests.”

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So the problem in users selecting modules for lenses and cameras?

I purchased PL4 Elite in 2021 and quickly stopped using it when I realized there was no lens profile available for some of my lenses (recent full frame Sony e-mount lenses). I don’t know why they can’t add support of the default embedded profile (in RAW) when their optimized profile is not available. I understand why all Pros use Lightroom. I don’t like the subscription model, but the processing flow is definitely faster (no time wasted on unsupported lens profiles).

I’m surprised that you did not discover that some of your lenses were not supported during the 31 day free trial of the software. Have you requested support for the lenses that are not currently supported?

Mark

1- I didn’t test all my lenses during the trial. And I assumed the embedded profile was supported as in CaptureOne that I was using until PL.
2- I replaced some of my lenses after I bought PL
3- I requested support of my unsupported lenses with no success. The latest request was this one = https://forum.dxo.com/t/lens-support-sigma-100-400mm-dg-dn-sony-e-mount/ , in September.

I learned my lesson. Buy PL only if all your current lenses are supported AND you are sure to never replace them.

Even though not all my lenses are supported I use PhotoLab daily. For those unsupported lenses, it’s more work to manually adjust the optical characteristics of the lens to my satisfaction, but I am still happy with the results I’m able to achieve.

Mark

This may hurt some of the purists but I think the concept of perfect lens corrections is overrated.

That said, as mirrorless systems from all major brands now have built in corrections baked into JPG files and embedded in RAW files it’s high time that DXO applies those profiles in the absence of their own profiles.

Some of the latest lenses have quite a bit of distortion “designed in” to produce an otherwise better/sharper image knowing that the camera body can and will undistort the image before saving it.

In fact the Sony’s apply the distortion corrections to the electronic viewfinder so the user doesn’t even see the distortion while framing the image.

As there’s no such a thing like a perfect lens and the lens manufacturers are only too happy to have no longer to care about distortions to lower their prices and compete against better corrected but not perfect lenses, the question pops up “is the software correction hurting anything?”

I used to say “yes, of course it is doing something to the image” together with “and I prefer to have that remain minimal” I actually became a lot easier on that subject. Back in the film days perfect lenses were the major goal. There was no such thing like CA correction, distortion correction or sharpening – even the enlarger’s lens had to be rather good. Today we’re doing “worse” manipulations to our images, so why continuously searching for perfect lenses? If there are well made corrections, what is the difference between software or hardware corrections?

I agree @MikeR DxO should face the fact there are inbuilt corrections in lens firmware which are better than waiting for ages and ages until lenses are “supported by holy DxO”. And honestly, I don’t like the fact so much that DxO also sharpens images with their lens profiles. I prefer to keep that in my hands.

I would happily take better corner sharpness which is harder to correct than geometric distortions which are easy to correct.

I shoot Sony mirrorless now and my lenses are ridiculously sharp and while geometric corrections aren’t huge, they are there, and I’m happy to apply them. (DXO has profiles for my Sony lenses.)

I tend to think it’s not so much about just making the lenses cheaper. These are all design trade offs. From distortion to sharpness to lens size to minimum focus distance to focus breathing to cost.

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I guess I should not have restricted my post heading to "Sports lens support’’!

The bottom line is manufacturer’s lens profiles are better than the DXO alternative - no profile. I can’t see the strategy in providing expensive software with no lens profiles, which is the net effect for me. DXO profiles and DEEPPrime are the two major draws. Take away profiles altogether and you’re left with DEEPprime. Well, that really doesn’t cut it as value. That, in turn, makes you wonder if it’s better to just go to products that have already have good editing, lens corrections and database and just keep DEEPprime without paying for upgrades to PL5, FP and VP @ A$439 or 2.5 years even of an Adobe subscription model.

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That, in turn, makes you wonder if it’s better to just go to products that have already have good editing, lens corrections and database and just keep DEEPprime without paying for upgrades to PL5

This is what I have decided to do. I switched to LR for the editing, and keep PL4 for some occasional DeepPRIME. Will definitely not pay for upgrades to PL5 or newer versions. I feel like I wasted $150 already.

I used to work with a 3D package that have unique wonderful features but lacked some major ones.
A lot of people liked and used this package, but didn’t upgrade for a long while because those major features where not implemented as fast as they would like.
Now this package is dead and those users who did not upgrade, now deplore its disappearance.

It’s quite disappointing. I wish I understood the strategy. I’m not sure if anyone on DXO picks up on the sentiments behind comments, especially as the fix should be so simple to implement. Oh, well, decisions have to be made, on both sides.

There was a thread with a suggestion to add the support of the embedded profiles.
https://forum.dxo.com/t/lens-profiles-offer-both-the-lens-manufacturer-in-lens-profile-and-the-dxo-lens-profile-where-both-are-available/
No feedback from DxO unfortunately.

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Thanks, @Fwed. Just voted on that one. Not sure it’ll make a difference, though, as it’s been there for 2 years.