A6000 softer on right side?

[andrewD2]

Just got a A6000, it is really puzzling me.

The image is *fractionally* softer on the right side.

1) it is NOT the lens, it is outresolving the 5R on the left side, but not on the right side

2) it doesn't seem to be off the focal plane, the fisheye at f8 has enough depth of field and it is softer foreground, midground and at infinity.

3) I can see it with more than one lens.

4) it is really slight like just getting a small amount of diffraction on one side.

Anyone else seen the same?

Andrew

 

[Digital Nigel]

Just got a A6000, it is really puzzling me.

The image is *fractionally* softer on the right side.

1) it is NOT the lens, it is outresolving the 5R on the left side, but not on the right side

2) it doesn't seem to be off the focal plane, the fisheye at f8 has enough depth of field and it is softer foreground, midground and at infinity.

3) I can see it with more than one lens.

4) it is really slight like just getting a small amount of diffraction on one side.

Anyone else seen the same?

Yes, I suspect the same is true of my a6000. I posted some lens tests a couple of days ago in this forum, and some lenses were soft on the right. I think I'll repeatedly the test with my NEX-7 when I get a chance, but my subjective feel right now is that my NEX-7 shots are sharper with the same lenses than my a6000 shots.

See http://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/3721300 and the other three posts in this series. If I repeat the tests, I'll keep a constant aperture in all the shots, to remove that as a possible factor.

 

[osv]

i thought that i had something similar going on with the a7r, but i've come to think that it's the glass instead.

probably half of all your lenses are defective in one way or the other.

shoot 'em wide open, post it up, lets see what it looks like.

 

[viking79]

I have wondered similar. I think same A7/R users were wondering if their sensors were not parallel with the mount, or maybe the glass cover is off. If it is similar with all your lenses, then maybe camera, if it is just with one lens, most likely your lens.

Eric

 

[andrewD2]

i thought that i had something similar going on with the a7r, but i've come to think that it's the glass instead.

probably half of all your lenses are defective in one way or the other.

shoot 'em wide open, post it up, lets see what it looks like.

 

[andrewD2]

I have wondered similar. I think same A7/R users were wondering if their sensors were not parallel with the mount, or maybe the glass cover is off. If it is similar with all your lenses, then maybe camera, if it is just with one lens, most likely your lens.

Eric

The glass cover is my thought. It is very slight.

Andrew

 

[andrewD2]

Just got a A6000, it is really puzzling me.

The image is *fractionally* softer on the right side.

1) it is NOT the lens, it is outresolving the 5R on the left side, but not on the right side

2) it doesn't seem to be off the focal plane, the fisheye at f8 has enough depth of field and it is softer foreground, midground and at infinity.

3) I can see it with more than one lens.

4) it is really slight like just getting a small amount of diffraction on one side.

Anyone else seen the same?

Yes, I suspect the same is true of my a6000. I posted some lens tests a couple of days ago in this forum, and some lenses were soft on the right. I think I'll repeatedly the test with my NEX-7 when I get a chance, but my subjective feel right now is that my NEX-7 shots are sharper with the same lenses than my a6000 shots.

See http://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/3721300 and the other three posts in this series. If I repeat the tests, I'll keep a constant aperture in all the shots, to remove that as a possible factor.

That is more extreme than mine by far. Could be the same reason. You only have one plane there so it is difficult to see if the focal plane is off. I have near, far and middle and they are all ever so slightly soft.

Andrew

 

[osv]

i thought that i had something similar going on with the a7r, but i've come to think that it's the glass instead.

probably half of all your lenses are defective in one way or the other.

shoot 'em wide open, post it up, lets see what it looks like.

 

[photohanked]

any samples? hard to tell without seeing them. just sayin

 

[osv]

Just got a A6000, it is really puzzling me.

The image is *fractionally* softer on the right side.

1) it is NOT the lens, it is outresolving the 5R on the left side, but not on the right side

2) it doesn't seem to be off the focal plane, the fisheye at f8 has enough depth of field and it is softer foreground, midground and at infinity.

3) I can see it with more than one lens.

4) it is really slight like just getting a small amount of diffraction on one side.

Anyone else seen the same?

Yes, I suspect the same is true of my a6000. I posted some lens tests a couple of days ago in this forum, and some lenses were soft on the right. I think I'll repeatedly the test with my NEX-7 when I get a chance, but my subjective feel right now is that my NEX-7 shots are sharper with the same lenses than my a6000 shots.

See http://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/3721300 and the other three posts in this series. If I repeat the tests, I'll keep a constant aperture in all the shots, to remove that as a possible factor.

That is more extreme than mine by far. Could be the same reason. You only have one plane there so it is difficult to see if the focal plane is off. I have near, far and middle and they are all ever so slightly soft.

his 50mm prime is soft at all distances, on the very right side edge, but the rest of his lenses aren't nearly as bad there.

can you see the problem with full-frame legacy glass? it should be cleaner on the sides than crop glass.

 

[photohanked]

I can't see the problem maybe my eyes aren't that good anymore. Far right building is back from the rest and a little out of focus from what I can see but other than that all looks ok to me.

 

[andrewD2]

i thought that i had something similar going on with the a7r, but i've come to think that it's the glass instead.

probably half of all your lenses are defective in one way or the other.

shoot 'em wide open, post it up, lets see what it looks like.

 

[andrewD2]

Like I say it is slight, but the 5R can't better the first image (left side of A6000) but it does beat the second image (right side of A6000)

If the resolution was that impressive over the whole area I'd be very pleased.

 

[Fraulain Uebermueller]

If indeed all the regular possible culprits have been eliminated - I'm not saying if that is the case or not - then what comes to mind is that maybe in the manufacturing the microlens array has been placed a minute amount into incorrect position. This would increase cross-talk and thus decrease resoltution. This would also be assymmetrical and one side would suffer more than the other. Also likely the edges would suffer the most.

It also would decrease the SNR slightly from the SNR should be.

Usually it is user error (or paranoia ) and/or lens - even two or three lenses may just coincidently be weaker on the same side.

 

[andrewD2]

I came to the same conclusion. If I didn't have the 5r I'd have kept it anyway. In fact with nothing to compare it to you'd probably
not notice. Wasn't a big deal but no point in having 24MP images with only extra detail over the 16MP on one side.
Thanks everyone for your time.
Did add one A6000 image (light trails) to my fisheye Manchester page:

http://photoluminaire.co.uk/wp/fisheye-manchester/

Cheers,
Andrew

 

[Digital Nigel]

I came to the same conclusion. If I didn't have the 5r I'd have kept it anyway. In fact with nothing to compare it to you'd probably
not notice. Wasn't a big deal but no point in having 24MP images with only extra detail over the 16MP on one side.
Thanks everyone for your time.
Did add one A6000 image (light trails) to my fisheye Manchester page:
http://photoluminaire.co.uk/wp/fisheye-manchester/

I've done some more tests, this time with a boring, battered garage door as the subject, and my conclusion is that the problem is definitely with the a6000, not the lenses. Here's two pics I took this morning, both OOC JPEGs. The first surprise is how different the colours are, considering both had AWB (notmally I don't care, as I shoot RAW). Both were on a pripode, with the same settings on my a6000 and NEX-7, and both are uploaded full-size. Both were f/4.5 and they were both shot using my 50mm prime lens:

a6000, SEL50f18 lens, AWB, f/4.5

Lest anyone think it's all down to the lens, here are equivalent shots with my 55-210 lens, at 55mm:

a6000, SEL55210, f/4.5

NEX-7, SEL55210, f/4.5

and, just for comparison with a pocket camera, this is what my RX100 m1 produced:

RX100

The colours are much more similar between the NEX-7 and the RX100.

I also did tests at f/8, and both the a6000 and NEX-7 pictures were close in terms of sharpness, but not colour.

 

[osv]

have you tried using magnify to manually focus in just the soft area?

--
dan

The depth of field covers the whole of the scene front to back on the first test image.

What I did with the second test was focus on the object 2m away (yes magnified) and have the target off to the right. Then rotated the tripod head so that the same object was on the left of the image, same distance from the other edge. The distance to the object doesn't change.

the object in this exercise is to find out if the soft side ever gets in clear focus, not to compare the sides.

if the soft side never gets in clear focus with any lens, it's definitely something weird.

--
dan

 

[osv]

I came to the same conclusion. If I didn't have the 5r I'd have kept it anyway. In fact with nothing to compare it to you'd probably
not notice. Wasn't a big deal but no point in having 24MP images with only extra detail over the 16MP on one side.
Thanks everyone for your time.
Did add one A6000 image (light trails) to my fisheye Manchester page:
http://photoluminaire.co.uk/wp/fisheye-manchester/

I've done some more tests, this time with a boring, battered garage door as the subject, and my conclusion is that the problem is definitely with the a6000, not the lenses. Here's two pics I took this morning, both OOC JPEGs. The first surprise is how different the colours are, considering both had AWB (notmally I don't care, as I shoot RAW). Both were on a pripode, with the same settings on my a6000 and NEX-7, and both are uploaded full-size. Both were f/4.5 and they were both shot using my 50mm prime lens:

shooting it wide open, or near wide open, will show defects a lot better than f/4.5

the nex-7/50mm does looks better on the right side, i see what you are saying, but it's still weaker on the right than the left.

the a6000/zoom shot is completely oof across the entire frame, it can't be used.

 

[Digital Nigel]

have you tried using magnify to manually focus in just the soft area?

--
dan

The depth of field covers the whole of the scene front to back on the first test image.

What I did with the second test was focus on the object 2m away (yes magnified) and have the target off to the right. Then rotated the tripod head so that the same object was on the left of the image, same distance from the other edge. The distance to the object doesn't change.

the object in this exercise is to find out if the soft side ever gets in clear focus, not to compare the sides.

if the soft side never gets in clear focus with any lens, it's definitely something weird.

I find that the right hand side goes get in reasonable focus with stopped down images. It's as though the sensor is mounted at a slight angle. For example, here are two images with my 50mm prime, one at f/4.5 and one at f/8. The softness is really only evident with the first image (when I next get a chance, I'll try it with a wider range of apertures).

a6000, f/4.5

a6000, f/8

Lest you think it's a lens problem, here's the same f/4.5 shot with the same lens on my NEX-7 (yes, I know their AWBs have produced very different colours):

NEX-7, f/4.5

The problem definitely is with the a6000, and I think it must be a sensor misalignment.

 

[Digital Nigel]

I came to the same conclusion. If I didn't have the 5r I'd have kept it anyway. In fact with nothing to compare it to you'd probably
not notice. Wasn't a big deal but no point in having 24MP images with only extra detail over the 16MP on one side.
Thanks everyone for your time.
Did add one A6000 image (light trails) to my fisheye Manchester page:
http://photoluminaire.co.uk/wp/fisheye-manchester/

I've done some more tests, this time with a boring, battered garage door as the subject, and my conclusion is that the problem is definitely with the a6000, not the lenses. Here's two pics I took this morning, both OOC JPEGs. The first surprise is how different the colours are, considering both had AWB (notmally I don't care, as I shoot RAW). Both were on a pripode, with the same settings on my a6000 and NEX-7, and both are uploaded full-size. Both were f/4.5 and they were both shot using my 50mm prime lens:

shooting it wide open, or near wide open, will show defects a lot better than f/4.5

Yes, I agree. I chose an aperture that zoom lenses could handle as I thought was comparing lenses more than cameras, but if only testing the prime, I'll open it up all the way to f/1.8. After my previous tests, it looked like some of my lenses were faulty, but they all look pretty good on the NEX-7 (which is what I'd always thought), so the a6000 is definitely the culprit. I wonder if this is a common fault with this camera?

the nex-7/50mm does looks better on the right side, i see what you are saying, but it's still weaker on the right than the left.

the a6000/zoom shot is completely oof across the entire frame, it can't be used.

Yes, it's worse than the NEX-7 right across the frame, but especially on the right edge.