Still No Leica Lens Profiles in LR3?

[texasrancher]

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I have read some of the posts from earlier this year, but cannot seem to find any updated info. Does Adobe ever intend to provide a set of Leica M lens profiles for Lightroom 3 similar to what has been done for Zeiss lenses? Are there some existing Leica lens profiles contributed by Leica Forum members that can be added to Lightroom? I have used some of the supplied Zeiss profiles for similar Leica lenses (Zeiss 18mm profile for Leica WATE) with my M9 with good results, but I may be adding corrections where none were needed.

[sabrewolf]

Isn't the lens being corrected in camera already???

[texasrancher]

This is not the first time I have been found guilty of failing to see the forest for the trees. You are exactly correct that the 6-bit coding informs the on-board processor of the M-9 which adjustments to perform on the raw image to correspond to the focal length of the lens and its inherent drawing of the image. Thanks for reminding me of the adjustments made by the M-9 itself.

[hoppyman]

That is not to say that the firmware corrections will always do everything that you want though. You may be aware that the corrections applied in camera (M8/M9) are for the best case for that specific lens? That is to say that they are not (and cannot be) aperture dependant since the camera can not accurately determine that value. Leica Camera's thinking there is that they want to avoid over correction. Vignetting for example varies with aperture in use. Sandy's Corner Fix is a good example of a specialised process that can be used for specific improvements.

 

You can search or post to the Adobe Forums however, do keep in mind that Leica lenses in the wild are very much a smaller body than the big volume sellers, hence less demand.

Another aspect of that is that the typical Leica prime is much less in need of help than say a modest kit zoom from Canon/Nikon (aberrations control etc)

You can have some fun and learn from creating and experimenting with your own corrections of course.

[Alnitak]

This is not the first time I have been found guilty of failing to see the forest for the trees. You are exactly correct that the 6-bit coding informs the on-board processor of the M-9 which adjustments to perform on the raw image to correspond to the focal length of the lens and its inherent drawing of the image. Thanks for reminding me of the adjustments made by the M-9 itself.

 

 

Whoa...wait a second here. All the in-camera corrections do are fix color drift and vignetting. The LR corrections are quite different, and can correct for distortion, including complex distortion. I would certainly hope that Leica will work with Adobe to profile their lenses and get corrections into LR. By all accounts, it's not a super-complicated process, and Adobe even distributes a tool so you can do it yourself. Given the partnership between Adobe and Leica I'd like to think it will happen soon, but given how Leica seems to move on these sorts of things, I have to think we won't see it at all.

 

Jeff

[jan_brittenson]

There's a profile creator available for download from Adobe. They supply a checkerboard PDF which you print, then tape to a wall and take images of. For each camera+lens you take 9 shots at each aperture, import the DNGs to the profile creator, then generate a profile bundle out of this. However, the tool looks at the aperture EXIF data, so you may need to edit this to make sure it's correct first. I didn't look close enough to tell if it's possible to override the EXIF aperture tag directly from the builder or if you need an EXIF editor. Also, I haven't looked if LR allows overriding the aperture, but the estimate from the camera might be close enough. Profiles are then uploaded to Adobe to share them.

 

Obviously, a good testing setup is critical to create a good profile.

 

LR3.3 will also have a profile downloader (available as a prerelease download as well), so when people create and upload profiles they will become available to us all. There are no Leica profiles available yet. Maybe Leica could create some for us.

[sabrewolf]

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Whoa...wait a second here. All the in-camera corrections do are fix color drift and vignetting. The LR corrections are quite different, and can correct for distortion, including complex distortion. I would certainly hope that Leica will work with Adobe to profile their lenses and get corrections into LR. By all accounts, it's not a super-complicated process, and Adobe even distributes a tool so you can do it yourself. Given the partnership between Adobe and Leica I'd like to think it will happen soon, but given how Leica seems to move on these sorts of things, I have to think we won't see it at all.

 

Jeff

 

I like to think that lens distortion contributes to the look of a lens

[ho_co]

If I understand correctly, the in-camera corrections in the M9 are primarily to compensate for digital-related effects, not optical ones. That is, for several reasons some lenses vignette more on a sensor than on film, and that's the primary correction applied in the M9.

 

On the M8, the corrections were also used to compensate for unwanted effects of the UV/IR-Cut filter, which caused a cyan drift toward the image edges.

 

 

But, as Jeff said, Adobe's lens correction modules are designed to make more general, optical, corrections.

 

If you've got a Nikkor 18-200, you know how badly it distorts, particularly at the wide end. It seems to me that's the kind of thing the lens modules are designed for.

 

Since Leica lenses are quite highly corrected (that's what we pay for, after all), and since they aren't as common as other brands, they'll likely be among the last to get profiled.

 

IOW, we paid for good glass so that we wouldn't need profiling.

 

 

Here's a shot from the 18-200 Nikkor at 18mm:

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[photolandscape]

If I understand correctly, the in-camera corrections in the M9 are primarily to compensate for digital-related effects, not optical ones. That is, for several reasons some lenses vignette more on a sensor than on film, and that's the primary correction applied in the M9.

 

On the M8, the corrections were also used to compensate for unwanted effects of the UV/IR-Cut filter, which caused a cyan drift toward the image edges.

 

 

But, as Jeff said, Adobe's lens correction modules are designed to make more general, optical, corrections.

 

If you've got a Nikkor 18-200, you know how badly it distorts, particularly at the wide end. It seems to me that's the kind of thing the lens modules are designed for.

 

Since Leica lenses are quite highly corrected (that's what we pay for, after all), and since they aren't as common as other brands, they'll likely be among the last to get profiled.

 

IOW, we paid for good glass so that we wouldn't need profiling.

 

 

Here's a shot from the 18-200 Nikkor at 18mm:

 

That's some pretty serious barrel distortion.

[ho_co]

Ain't it, though? And it's got not-quite-as-bad pincushion at the long end. Every focal length is just a little different.

 

But the lens has an impeccable image stabilization.

 

 

It would become usable if Lightroom were to automatically correct for it. (I haven't bought LR3 yet, so maybe it does.)

[Alnitak]

Ain't it, though? And it's got not-quite-as-bad pincushion at the long end. Every focal length is just a little different.

 

But the lens has an impeccable image stabilization.

 

 

It would become usable if Lightroom were to automatically correct for it. (I haven't bought LR3 yet, so maybe it does.)

 

The lens is listed in the Nikon lenses that LR3 has a correction profile for.

 

Jeff

[brill64]

i've found the worst and most difficult distortion to come from the 16-18-21 wate tri-elmar which if you were to photograph a shopfront straight on, for example, it creates a sort of double wave often referred to as moustache distortion. this was very difficult to correct prior to lightroom 3 which now does a pretty good job of straightening things out using the available zeiss profile. this is definitely not corrected in-camera.