Sharpness of Olympus 12mm
- Thread starter ollie
- Start date
Might want to spend some time at Imaging Resources Lens Reviews
If you click on the chart on the right in the lenses that show Lab Reviews, it will open a window where you can move the f/stop and zoom sliders around to find the optimum focus spot. The 12mm prime seems to be sharpest at f/5.6 but does show some edge softness although it is a faster lens than the zoom. Olympus was touting coming out with some 12mm f/1.2 Pro lens to superceed the 2011 12mm f/2 design but haven't done so yet, but it will be too heavy for the drone.
Fwiw, I own the two 45mm of theirs and the f/1.2 is a razor sharp lens but it is their newest design from last year verse the older 2011 f/2 45mm lens. Lens tech seems to run in 5 years cycles and keeps improving. Some of my old"Gold Ring" pro Nikon lenses are really soft compared to the newer ones.
If you click on the chart on the right in the lenses that show Lab Reviews, it will open a window where you can move the f/stop and zoom sliders around to find the optimum focus spot. The 12mm prime seems to be sharpest at f/5.6 but does show some edge softness although it is a faster lens than the zoom. Olympus was touting coming out with some 12mm f/1.2 Pro lens to superceed the 2011 12mm f/2 design but haven't done so yet, but it will be too heavy for the drone.
Fwiw, I own the two 45mm of theirs and the f/1.2 is a razor sharp lens but it is their newest design from last year verse the older 2011 f/2 45mm lens. Lens tech seems to run in 5 years cycles and keeps improving. Some of my old"Gold Ring" pro Nikon lenses are really soft compared to the newer ones.
Thank you very much for the link. I understand. Without grey filter I can´t use f/5.6.
Best regards
Ollie
Best regards
Ollie
I also bought this lens recently for my Inspire2 with X5S and I was experiencing similar softness when taking photos. In my case the softness was result of incorrect calibration. I performed it several times but could not get it right. The infinity focus was always off and towards the edges it looked like a motion blurr. The AF produced better results but only until I nailed the calibration. Now the photos are very sharp in MF even at f2. The edges are only marginally softer but only a tiny bit at f2 and that is to be expected. At f5.6 the sharpnes is excellent from corner to corner. Maybe I got a good copy and yours is not so good?? I always shoot DNG and process in LR with Sharpness settings like these
Amount 66. Radius 0.6 Detail 50 and Mask 25. Then export to PS as 16bit TIFF at 300dpi After further color adjustments and other tweaks in PS I apply USM of 70 with radius of 0.8 to the image before printing.
Thank you for your answer. What do you mean with »nailed the calibration«? Do you mean, you´ve deleted the calibration?
No no. I meant that I finally managed to get it right. It sounds trivially simple but as I found out it is not. The subject which gave me the best calibration was a roof with terracotta tiles under direct sunlight but only about 20m from the camera. When I tried the calibration with distant subjects 50m +, the calibration was always off and then when in MF I got photos showing like motion blurr towards the edges and overall softness. Now my landscape photos are tack sharp in MF when I touch the infinity mark in GO4.
BTW your sample is a typical straight out of camera quality when you shoot JPEG. You have to realise that these cameras have AA filter in front of the sensor which has been fine tuned for shooting movies to avoid aliasing and moire which is very hard to ged rid of in videos in post processing. The AA filter softens the image. To counter act the effect of AA filter sharpening needs to be applied to still photos. Try shooting DNG and process in LR and apply the Sharpening as per my advice and you might be pleasantly surprised by the results. Also when in LR the NR should be Luminosity 0 and Color around 15-25 when shooting with ISO 100.
I have just noticed that you have X5 not X5S, so your sharpening parameters might be different to get the best result. Holding down the Alt key while applying the sharpening in LR shows you which parts of the image are affected and to what extent.
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Not sure what are you asking but in general terms higher ISO requires more Noise Reduction. For ISO 100 I find the optimal amounts for Noise Reduction for Luminosity and Color as stated previously.
Best to watch some video tutorials on YT for LR sharpening. Just search YT and many will pop up.
I bought an Olympus 45mm. What I found out was Olympus had updated that lens a couple of times and the only way to do that online was with an Olympus body, or maybe a Panasonic. since the DJI camera cannot do lens updates. The other option was to send it to Olympus and pay them the $140 to do it -- which I ended up doing and took six weeks due to estimates and sundry back and forths.
So I ended up buying an Olympus Pen-F to do my own lens updates now since I own a few of their lenses and could use it in the event I trash the I2 or need a back-up to check the I2 camera against. I see their 12mm is up to version 1.1 so something changed in 2015 on that lens. My 45mm was two versions old, and even my new 12mm was also on 1.0 so I did it on the Pen-F with the Olympus Updater Tool software in a couple of minutes to version 1.1 (Saved me their $140 fee too!).
When I spoke to Olympus service on the 45mm prior to sending it in, it had something to do with the aperture chattering in video mode and causing blurring. All better now.
So I ended up buying an Olympus Pen-F to do my own lens updates now since I own a few of their lenses and could use it in the event I trash the I2 or need a back-up to check the I2 camera against. I see their 12mm is up to version 1.1 so something changed in 2015 on that lens. My 45mm was two versions old, and even my new 12mm was also on 1.0 so I did it on the Pen-F with the Olympus Updater Tool software in a couple of minutes to version 1.1 (Saved me their $140 fee too!).
When I spoke to Olympus service on the 45mm prior to sending it in, it had something to do with the aperture chattering in video mode and causing blurring. All better now.
Interesting. I honestly did not know that these lenses can be software updated. Is there a way to check my lens version without having an Oly body?
You'll need some body to do it. I don't know what caused me to question the 45mm. When I called Olympus Service is when they told me about updating the firmware in the lens for some issues.
I took mine to the local Best Buy and asked the camera dept. manager "If I could check my lens on one of their Panasonic bodies?" He said "I couldn't as they glue the lenses on their display models that are powered up to keep people from stealing them." When he went to show me the glued-on lens on the Panasonic, it turned out someone already stole the lens off the Panasonic Lumix body so I was good to go to check it there. Glad it was an Olympus lens and not a Panasonic or he'd thought I stole it.
Maybe a normal camera shop that sells either Panasonic or Olympus might check it.
Nothing much of a shot obviously but perhaps a good example of what a DNG file processed in LR, with parameters as described before looks like. Let me know what you think of the sharpness. This is Oly 12mm wide open at f2
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Looks pretty good to me, aside from the reddish chromatic aberration that is visible on the top of the gray roof line in the nearest house. That can be better corrected in other programs than LR. I tried it in DxO Photolab 2 and it cleaned it up much better and much sharper too.
Not sure if I understand what you say. Did you correct my photo in Photolab or some of your own photos? Also not sure what you mean by "much sharper too"? BTW the CA completely disappears when I stop the lens down to f2.8 and further. The sweet spot seems to be at f4.5-6.3, still very good all the way to f8-f11 after that the sharpness starts to visibly deteriorate due to diffraction.
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Hi,
Thank you for your example. It looks like very great for me and I hope to become the same results
Have you used a gray filter?I use the DNG's normally, only for my post I used the jpg out of the camera. I tested many hours to optimize pictures and I find out, the easiest and fastest way is not LR. I tested some demo version software (DxO too) and Capture One from Phase One open the DNG's with less noise und sharpening works fine.
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