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ML cameras, adapted lenses and CA

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Belgarchi

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In your experience, how bad is Chromatic Aberration using adapted lenses on one of the big family of Mirrorless cameras?

- Sony FF

- Sony APS-C

- Fujifilm APS-C

- Olympus M43

- Panasonic M43

The only thing I can say is that Fujifilm seems to be less sensitive than Olympus.
 
Greatly depends on the lens on my Sony.
Belgarchi said:
In your experience, how bad is Chromatic Aberration using adapted lenses on one of the big family of Mirrorless cameras?

- Sony FF

- Sony APS-C

- Fujifilm APS-C

- Olympus M43

- Panasonic M43

The only thing I can say is that Fujifilm seems to be less sensitive than Olympus.
Click to expand...
 
Mathieu18 said:
Greatly depends on the lens on my Sony.
Click to expand...
Yes, CA is lens-dependent... but I suspect that some cameras will make things systematically worse, with all lenses, compared to other cameras.

Member said:
Belgarchi said:
In your experience, how bad is Chromatic Aberration using adapted lenses on one of the big family of Mirrorless cameras?

- Sony FF

- Sony APS-C

- Fujifilm APS-C

- Olympus M43

- Panasonic M43

The only thing I can say is that Fujifilm seems to be less sensitive than Olympus.
Click to expand...
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Belgarchi said:
Mathieu18 said:
Greatly depends on the lens on my Sony.
Click to expand...
Yes, CA is lens-dependent... but I suspect that some cameras will make things systematically worse, with all lenses, compared to other cameras.
Click to expand...
Yup. Four major things I know of in order of roughly decreasing importance:
  1. How small are the pixels? Basically, smaller pixels mean the same absolute CA width covers more pixels.
  2. How thick is the cover glass (or sensor stack)? Old lenses assumed it was zero (for film it was), and introducing an optical flat creates CA all by itself... as well as potentially magnifying what's there.
  3. Spectral sensitivity? Film was only sensitive to relatively narrow bands of the spectrum, but sensors aren't. Sensors have particularly high sensitivity in NIR (near infrared), which is hopefully cut at least 7 stops by an NIR-cut filter in the sensor stack, but what remains is still more than for film. NUV (near ultraviolet) is largely cut by glass, but sensors still see more of it than film did. Most lenses were designed only making sure two visible wavelengths can to focus at the same plane (three or more for apochromatic lenses), and big divergence from that outside of the bands film detected are common.
  4. Fill-factor and microlens issues? Smaller pixels tend to have smaller fill factors, which can mean that, combined with the simple microlenses, you can get spatially incidence-angle and color-dependent sensitivity. This is largely known as causing the odd color shifts going far off-axis with some rangefinder lenses on FF sensors, but it can enforce CA too.
MFT is a worst-case for #2 and also bad on #1. The bigger the sensor, e.g., GFX or FF, the worse the angles on #4 tend to be, but smaller sensors tend to have much poorer fill factors; #4 depends on various factors. Beyond that, truth is how severe CA appears depends a lot on not just the camera brand, but even model-specific details.

For example, my old Sony A100 shows a lot less purple fringe than my other Sonys, probably because of some quirks of the CCD (vs. CMOS sensor) and particular sensor stack used.

Keep in mind that, as a general rule, axial (bokeh) CA is near impossible to fix in post while transverse CA is trivially fixed. So, all types of CA are not equal even if the magnitude is comparable....
 
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Hi,

I recognize Prof Hank's expertise in his response above and in other threads, but have to add that in my experience it certainly seems to be lens-dependent within any one camera system. (I only have one system - Fuji.)

And lenses vary significantly, even within brands. I know for example that my Minolta MD 100/4 macro causes less of both lateral and axial CAs than its contemporary sibling, my MD 100/2.5. Why? I don't know. And my Canon FD 300/4L causes far less than the FD 200/4. In that comparison it's no doubt down to the 'L' glass. Further, it doesn't seem to be determined solely by price - sometimes relatively expensive lenses are worse than cheaper ones. Presumably the designers never anticipated the development of digital and while a lens might be good in many metrics, it happens to be that it's not in the CA aspect.

Regards, Rod
 
Rod McD said:
I recognize Prof Hank's expertise in his response above and in other threads, but have to add that in my experience it certainly seems to be lens-dependent within any one camera system. (I only have one system - Fuji.)

And lenses vary significantly, even within brands.
Click to expand...
Absolutely; variations between lenses are huge.

However, I don't think that's what the OP asked about. I think he was trying to find out if some particular mirrorless lines had more/fewer issues than others using a wide array of the same lenses on different bodies. My answer, BTW, sums up as MFT is generally touchier than most, but it really depends on many factors.
 
Not really seeing any difference between the same lenses on m4/3, APS-C or FF. With how I shoot I don't get too many issues with CA.

All the best.

Danny.
 
Despite playing with loads of lenses on MFT, I've not found CA to be a significant issue on any of my adapted lenses - even on the full spectrum camera.

It may well be responsible for softenning many of the images, but isn't noticable at a casual glance.
 
nzmacro said:
Not really seeing any difference between the same lenses on m4/3, APS-C or FF. With how I shoot I don't get too many issues with CA.
Click to expand...
You probably don't use often your lenses at full aperture. I do.

nzmacro said:
All the best.

Danny.

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Worry about the image that comes out of the box rather than the box itself
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The need for speed ..... https://www.flickr.com/photos/130646821@N03/albums
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Hi,

It may depend on what you're shooting. If it includes things like skylight behind trees, silvery branches against shadow, white birds against dark vegetation, white cars with black trim, or specular reflections, they tend to be more noticeable than subjects with routine levels of contrast.

And I guess some of us probably just notice color-fringing more than others. Like those that notice distortion. Unfortunately, my brain notices both...... ;-)

Cheers, Rod
 
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nzmacro said:
Not really seeing any difference between the same lenses on m4/3, APS-C or FF. With how I shoot I don't get too many issues with CA.
Click to expand...
Also, I love to take backlight landscapes..... Well, when the lens has low flare and low CA.

I try to have my camera in the shadow, it helps.
nzmacro said:
All the best.

Danny.

--
Worry about the image that comes out of the box rather than the box itself
-----------
Birds and BIF's ..... https://www.flickr.com/photos/124733969@N06/sets/
The need for speed ..... https://www.flickr.com/photos/130646821@N03/albums
Click to expand...
 
Belgarchi said:
nzmacro said:
Not really seeing any difference between the same lenses on m4/3, APS-C or FF. With how I shoot I don't get too many issues with CA.
Click to expand...
You probably don't use often your lenses at full aperture. I do.
Click to expand...
I never stop my lenses down. Always wide open. I bought them to be used wide open for higher shutter speeds and lower ISO's when possible.

All the best.

Danny.
 
nzmacro said:
Belgarchi said:
nzmacro said:
Not really seeing any difference between the same lenses on m4/3, APS-C or FF. With how I shoot I don't get too many issues with CA.
Click to expand...
You probably don't use often your lenses at full aperture. I do.
Click to expand...
I never stop my lenses down. Always wide open. I bought them to be used wide open for higher shutter speeds and lower ISO's when possible.
Click to expand...
That's strange, CA is my bigger problem, What lenses do you use?
nzmacro said:
All the best.

Danny.

--
Worry about the image that comes out of the box rather than the box itself
-----------
Birds and BIF's ..... https://www.flickr.com/photos/124733969@N06/sets/
The need for speed ..... https://www.flickr.com/photos/130646821@N03/albums
Click to expand...
 
Belgarchi said:
nzmacro said:
Belgarchi said:
nzmacro said:
Not really seeing any difference between the same lenses on m4/3, APS-C or FF. With how I shoot I don't get too many issues with CA.
Click to expand...
You probably don't use often your lenses at full aperture. I do.
Click to expand...
I never stop my lenses down. Always wide open. I bought them to be used wide open for higher shutter speeds and lower ISO's when possible.
Click to expand...
That's strange, CA is my bigger problem, What lenses do you use?
Belgarchi said:
All the best.

Danny.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
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