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Natural

"PHOTO STYLE"

-0

CONTRAST

+1

SHARPNESS

+4

NOISE

-0

COLOR

-3+2

HIGHLIGHT SHADOW

OFF

iDYNAMIC

OFF

iRESOLUTION

16-255

LUMINANCE LEVEL

 REAL  RATINGS

After testing each lens-sensor combo, I like to know if the rendering is going to look realistic (or not) as this will affect how easy it is to "shot match" (to other lenses).

Greyscale Landscape

CONTRAST

A

 IS THE CONTRAST "REAL"? 

Black and White Building

SHARPNESS

C

 IS THE SHARPNESS "REAL"? 

Lucid

NOISE

C

 IS THE NOISE "REAL"? 

Too-Much-Bokeh.jpg

COLOR

C

 IS THE COLOR "REAL"? 

*Click here to learn more about "REAL" Ratings. These ratings are AFTER my custom settings are applied (most combos don't look real good with default settings).

Published: 

May 11, 2023 at 9:35:39 PM


I will say this lens has really nice bokeh (out of focus areas) yet the glowy, purple fringing (or chromatic aberration) is very noticeable on light-colored subjects, and it shows up as mystery purple patches all over. If you WANT that effect, this is a good lens for that, but 'm trying to find lenses that retain what I call a "sense of reality" so this one isn't high on my list. In terms of overall usefulness, the push-pull zoom is surprisingly easy to use even for video, as it sort of sticks in whatever position you set it because it has an angular groove in the motion travel that keeps it from slipping too much. The copy I have was a little bit loose, but that made it fast to focus or zoom with (which I liked). I'm not going to comment much on the corrections I performed, because the lens differs so much from one aperture value and focal length to another. Let's just say "It has character" and is full of lots of surprises. In comparison to the older Vivitar Series 1 70-210 f/3.5, I prefer the optics of the older one, but the ergonomics (zoom and focus feel) of this newer one are better.

My goal for these camera settings is to improve the "lens-sensor relationship" by adjusting the contrast, sharpness, noise reduction and color with the result that it produces an image that looks less "digital" and more "organic" (more like film, etc). The first step is to apply these settings while shooting (produces an image that looks pretty good straight out of camera) but keep in mind there may need to be slight color grading (or a LUT) applied to finalize each shot.

 SPECIAL THANKS TO
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