Steve Spencer wrote: Knut. wrote:
Rethinking this problem: What makes a lens, cheaper for a manufacturer to produce?
- not correcting distortion
- not correcting lateral chromatic aberrations
- less bright lens (f 2.8 or f4)
- more vignetting
All of these issues can be addressed in post (less bright lens by increasing ISO and reducing the consecutively increased noise in post). Performance of these „software corrections“ improves most, if it is applied to raw images,
Thus, the cheaper a lens is, the more it will profit from shooting raw and adding corrections in post. A clever manufacturer could actually exploit this: He can concentrate on the aberrations that cannot be corrected in post (astigmatism, LOCA, coma) and let the aberrations mentionen above fall as they may, knowing that raw processing will allow to ameliorate them.
Actually all these aberrations can be handled very well in jpeg processing as well. Automatic processing, whether jpeg, heif, or as the file is read into the RAW converter is pretty easy with all these aberrations. It has nothing to do with what type of format being used. And yes, not controlling these aberrations does allow cheaper lenses that still produce very good results. Correcting them does have a small impact most of the time, but the impact is typically small so leaving them uncorrected to a fair degree has become common in modern lenses and especially less expensive ones.
I agree that correction can be done to some extent with jpegs. But with DXO for example, the highest level of noise reduction is only available with raw images. I do not use lightroom, but for DXO this is definitely the case.
I would also expect correction of LACA and distortion to be more efficient and eating less resolution if it is done on raws as well, but here the effect might not be as pronounced.
Considering vignetting correction one has to remember that jpegs only have 8 bit colour depth. Raising the corner illumination will thus yield cleaner results if done on 14 bit raw images.
The question, the OP asked, was: „Why Bother Shooting RAW with Cheap Lenses?“
My strong feeling is that cheap lenses profit even more from raw processing (versus sticking to the in camera jpegs) than expensive, highly corrected lenses with low vignetting, large aperture (lower ISO possible when shooting), less distortion and better LOCA correction.
Steve Spencer wrote: Knut. wrote:
Rethinking this problem: What makes a lens, cheaper for a manufacturer to produce?
- not correcting distortion
- not correcting lateral chromatic aberrations
- less bright lens (f 2.8 or f4)
- more vignetting
All of these issues can be addressed in post (less bright lens by increasing ISO and reducing the consecutively increased noise in post). Performance of these „software corrections“ improves most, if it is applied to raw images,
Thus, the cheaper a lens is, the more it will profit from shooting raw and adding corrections in post. A clever manufacturer could actually exploit this: He can concentrate on the aberrations that cannot be corrected in post (astigmatism, LOCA, coma) and let the aberrations mentionen above fall as they may, knowing that raw processing will allow to ameliorate them.
Actually all these aberrations can be handled very well in jpeg processing as well. Automatic processing, whether jpeg, heif, or as the file is read into the RAW converter is pretty easy with all these aberrations. It has nothing to do with what type of format being used. And yes, not controlling these aberrations does allow cheaper lenses that still produce very good results. Correcting them does have a small impact most of the time, but the impact is typically small so leaving them uncorrected to a fair degree has become common in modern lenses and especially less expensive ones.
I agree that correction can be done to some extent with jpegs. But with DXO for example, the highest level of noise reduction is only available with raw images. I do not use lightroom, but for DXO this is definitely the case.
I would also expect correction of LACA and distortion to be more efficient and eating less resolution if it is done on raws as well, but here the effect might not be as pronounced.
Considering vignetting correction one has to remember that jpegs only have 8 bit colour depth. Raising the corner illumination will thus yield cleaner results if done on 14 bit raw images.
The question, the OP asked, was: „Why Bother Shooting RAW with Cheap Lenses?“
My strong feeling is that cheap lenses profit even more from raw processing (versus sticking to the in camera jpegs) than highly corrected lenses with low vignetting, large aperture (lower ISO), less distortion and better LOCA correction.
Steve Spencer wrote: Knut. wrote:
Rethinking this problem: What makes a lens, cheaper for a manufacturer to produce?
- not correcting distortion
- not correcting lateral chromatic aberrations
- less bright lens (f 2.8 or f4)
- more vignetting
All of these issues can be addressed in post (less bright lens by increasing ISO and reducing the consecutively increased noise in post). Performance of these „software corrections“ improves most, if it is applied to raw images,
Thus, the cheaper a lens is, the more it will profit from shooting raw and adding corrections in post. A clever manufacturer could actually exploit this: He can concentrate on the aberrations that cannot be corrected in post (astigmatism, LOCA, coma) and let the aberrations mentionen above fall as they may, knowing that raw processing will allow to ameliorate them.
Actually all these aberrations can be handled very well in jpeg processing as well. Automatic processing, whether jpeg, heif, or as the file is read into the RAW converter is pretty easy with all these aberrations. It has nothing to do with what type of format being used. And yes, not controlling these aberrations does allow cheaper lenses that still produce very good results. Correcting them does have a small impact most of the time, but the impact is typically small so leaving them uncorrected to a fair degree has become common in modern lenses and especially less expensive ones.
I agree that correction can be done to some extent with jpegs. But with DXO for example, the highest level of noise reduction is only available with raw images. I do not use lightroom, but for DXO this is definitely the case.
I would also expect correction of LACA and distortion to be more efficient and eating less resolution if it is done on raws as well, but here the effect might not be as pronounced.
Considering vignetting correction one has to remember that jpegs only have 8 bit colour depth. Raising the corner illumination will thus yield cleaner results if done on 14 bit raw images.
The question, the OP asked, was: „Why Bother Shooting RAW with Cheap Lenses?“
My strong feeling is that cheap lenses profit even more from raw processing than highly corrected lenses with low vignetting, large aperture (lower ISO), less distortion and better LOCA correction.
Steve Spencer wrote: Knut. wrote:
Rethinking this problem: What makes a lens, cheaper for a manufacturer to produce?
- not correcting distortion
- not correcting lateral chromatic aberrations
- less bright lens (f 2.8 or f4)
- more vignetting
All of these issues can be addressed in post (less bright lens by increasing ISO and reducing the consecutively increased noise in post). Performance of these „software corrections“ improves most, if it is applied to raw images,
Thus, the cheaper a lens is, the more it will profit from shooting raw and adding corrections in post. A clever manufacturer could actually exploit this: He can concentrate on the aberrations that cannot be corrected in post (astigmatism, LOCA, coma) and let the aberrations mentionen above fall as they may, knowing that raw processing will allow to ameliorate them.
Actually all these aberrations can be handled very well in jpeg processing as well. Automatic processing, whether jpeg, heif, or as the file is read into the RAW converter is pretty easy with all these aberrations. It has nothing to do with what type of format being used. And yes, not controlling these aberrations does allow cheaper lenses that still produce very good results. Correcting them does have a small impact most of the time, but the impact is typically small so leaving them uncorrected to a fair degree has become common in modern lenses and especially less expensive ones.
I agree that correction can be done to some extent with jpegs. But with DXO for example, the highest level of noise reduction is only available with raw images. I do not use lightroom, but for DXO this is definitely the case.
I would also expect correction of LACA and distortion to be more efficient and eating less resolution if it is done on raws as well, but here the effect might not be as pronounced.
Considering vignetting correction one has to remember that jpegs only have 8 bit colour depth. Raising the corner illumination will thus yield cleaner results if done on 14 bit raw images.
Feb 09, 2026 at 07:10 AM
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