snegron7
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 p.7 #16 · Why Bother Shooting RAW with Cheap Lenses? | |
Erictator wrote:
You could also ask, why put good oil into a cheap car motor... maybe to make it run better and get the most out of it that you can?
I always thought the opposite question was more intriguing... Why put a cheap filter on the front of an expensive lens. Spend all that money just to get degraded images?
Or, why buy the highest DR capable camera on the market, and instead of getting ~13 DR RAW files only shoot it in 8 bit JPG mode? A cheap lens is still capable of showing banding in sunsets, why not try to avoid that?
There are some cheap lenses in my bag (old MF, vintage glass) that I love the rendering of and some are capable of resolving very sharp images, at least in the center or stopped down, so I still shoot the same lossless RAW and process the same as my modern good glass. Why not give the cheap glass the same opportunity for its best DR, IQ, and editability?
If you just want the convenience of JPG and hate editing, that is a completely different story, then yeah, do your thing. The good news is, the JPG engine in some modern camera's rivals what many are capable in PP. Those with decent PP skills and that have the time and want more control, or the ability to "save" an image, tend to prefer RAW. It's nice to have choices for sure.
Eric...Show more →
No! Not the filter debate!! Just kidding! 😀
I guess I should've clarified my definition of "cheap" lenses. By cheap, I didn't mean inexpensive lenses from years past. I have several inexpensive lenses that are optically fantastic (like most of my 50mm f1.8 lenses from Canon, Nikon and Pentax).
Back in "the old days" I looked for lenses that were designed to have the least amount of optical flaws. Most of these lenses were near perfect when stopped down a bit.
Fast forward to current days. Many manufacturers are relying more on software than on optical construction to achieve good images. These newer lenses are sometimes more compact and lighter in weight than more expensive, optically enhanced lenses. They also sell for less money than their more expensive counterparts like "L" or "GM" series lenses.
And therein lies what I personally consider a problem. When looking at a RAW image taken by these newer, more compact, more "affordable" lenses, you can see their optical design compromises. Yes, there are lens profiles in many photo editing programs, but when many lenses are first released, these profiles are not readily available.
Shooting RAW does provide us with more options to edit an image to our liking, but it can be time consuming, especially when you don't use lens profiles. And this is where my initial "inspiration" for this post started: to my knowledge when I wrote the original post, there were no lens profiles for the RF 16-28mm f2.8 STM that I owned (I confirmed last night that there were lens profiles for that lens thanks to several helpful folks here). Correcting extreme vignetting, softness and extreme distortion in RAW for this lens before getting the chance to work on other image enhancements was a nightmare for me. In my very personal opinion, this was quite frustrating, and promted me to express how I haven't had this issue in RAW when using lenses that don’t rely so heavily on software (like lenses that are designed optically better to begin with). Again, I have older, inexpensive lenses that don’t require so much work in RAW.
Also, if it were not for lens profiles, most of the current, newer RF lenses I own when opened in RAW look terrible in terms of vignetting, distortion and softness. Most of my lenses are not super expensive lenses like the L or GM series, so I call them "cheap" lenses. I should've chosen a better word to describe them, but I couldn't think of one.
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