Alan321
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I find image colours are far more affected by the white balance setting than the lens, and this varies so much that I rarely have what I'd call the right colours without doing some work. Auto WB is so easily fooled and any other setting demands that I know what to use before I shoot. There are ways around that but they take work at the shooting stage - e.g. shoot a grey card or white card in the same light - so that there is something to set WB with later on. The result is that I could not tell you what effects each lens has on colours because it is largely insignificant compared to what the lighting and the WB do.
On top of that I find that most people over cook colours by cranking up colour saturation beyond what is natural regardless of the lens they used. Even the "standard" camera profiles do that. I'm old fashioned and prefer realistic "neutral" colours to "artistic" colours.
Lens contrast, or the lack of it, can sometimes be overcome with the application of local contrast enhancement. That could be called other things in some programs (e.g. "clarity" or "definition") but it can also be created with unsharp mask by using a low amount (say 10 percent) and a large radius (large as in 50 pixels or more - far more than you would use for sharpening). This has minimal effect on the overall contrast of the image (unlike using the contrast control) but seems to give better contrast at edges or in areas containing details. It works well in a fairly natural looking way, and again "natural" is what I like. If I can't have natural then I at least insist on "plausible".
There's no doubt that a better lens gives a better starting point for any further processing, especially for shots taken at or near maximum aperture where the resolution is generally superior, but whether it matters or not varies a lot with subject detail and print size and viewing conditions plus the viewer. Even a high-noise low-ISO image will look sharper to most people simply because the noise gives some artificial fine detail to look at. I guess my lenses are all fairly good and so I have not come across one that adds a definite colour cast that I'd easily notice. I have had no trouble telling a sharper lens from a softer one in an image with fine detail unless the effect has been masked by a slow shutter speed or poor shooting technique or different apertures. While post processing (especially sharpening) will enhance many photos from ordinary lenses it only needs to be applied in a less obvious manner if the lens is sharp to begin with. Also it cannot create sharpness from nothing - it needs something to work with and again that's why a sharp lens helps with fine details.
cheers,
- Alan
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