LANewsman
Newbie
If I use my MP9P with a lens profile enabled, should I also enable the profile for that same lens when I'm working with the image in Lightroom? Could that over-do the lens correction being applied?
I think the camera and LR profiles deal with different aspects of lens performance... I don't set lens profiles in Lightroom, but I do like the camera to "know" what lens is used, if only for recording in EXIF. Why don't you try LR with and without setting the profile, maybe try different profiles and see what works for you and your gear?
According to Sean Reid, its best to use one or the other correction sets, but not both.
Stephen
Stephen
SDK
Exposing since 1969.
Doug is correct. The Leica M9 lens profiles and LR/ACR profiles for Leica lenses are different. The camera's profiles attempt to correct lens vignetting and corner color cast errors recorded by the sensor to the saved DNG or JPG file. This helps for wide angles especially, but isn't perfect at doing this corrections. The camera profiles do not correct distortion at all, which is just as well because that reduces resolution in an image. Lightroom or ACR profiles for Leica lenses only correct distortion, but do not correct for vignetting or color cast problems. This is unlike LR/ACR lens profiles for DSLR lenses which do correct for vignetting based on the aperture used in the image file. I assume this is because Leica M digital cameras only guess at the aperture because the body won't know the true aperture due to the lack of mechanical or electronic linkage of aperture to the body.
Often residual color casts or vignetting remain in my files from my M9P with wide angles (the 24mm/3.8 and 28mm/2.8 ASPH lenses are particularly not well corrected by the M9P with my lenses, your mileage may vary). I use the Adobe DNG Flat Field plugin to correct these shooting a reference photo through a credit card sized piece of opaque white plexiglas that I carry with me. The plugin software does a good job cleaning up the residual color cast (or color cast & vignetting if you choose) and saves a new DNG file with the corrections. This plugin only works with LR, not Photoshop & ACR though.
You could use the Flat Field plugin with uncoded lenses or coding turned off, though I don't do the latter because the EXIF information would be wrong for all my Leica lenses. There might be a slight increase in image quality with only the Flat Field Plugin alone, but it would probably be hard to spot, and the convenience of being sure which lens you used would be gone, and if you apply the the wrong reference image in the plugin, your results look really bad.
So I leave auto coding turned on for my camera for the Leica lenses, but I don't code my Zeiss ZM lenses any more, as the Leica codes are even more unsatisfactory for Zeiss lenses to my eye than they are for the lenses they are intended for. The uncoded Zeiss lens DNGs are perfectly cleaned up with the Flat Field plugin, and the coded Leica Lens DNGs are coded satisfactorily for me. The only lenses that I have that don't really need flat field correction for critical color work are the 75mm/2 Apo ASPH and an old Nikkor 85mm/2, but they are my only telephotos for M mount now. I rarely correct distortion in my digital images unless I think the distraction of the distortion is worse for the image than the resolution loss will be.
Often residual color casts or vignetting remain in my files from my M9P with wide angles (the 24mm/3.8 and 28mm/2.8 ASPH lenses are particularly not well corrected by the M9P with my lenses, your mileage may vary). I use the Adobe DNG Flat Field plugin to correct these shooting a reference photo through a credit card sized piece of opaque white plexiglas that I carry with me. The plugin software does a good job cleaning up the residual color cast (or color cast & vignetting if you choose) and saves a new DNG file with the corrections. This plugin only works with LR, not Photoshop & ACR though.
You could use the Flat Field plugin with uncoded lenses or coding turned off, though I don't do the latter because the EXIF information would be wrong for all my Leica lenses. There might be a slight increase in image quality with only the Flat Field Plugin alone, but it would probably be hard to spot, and the convenience of being sure which lens you used would be gone, and if you apply the the wrong reference image in the plugin, your results look really bad.
So I leave auto coding turned on for my camera for the Leica lenses, but I don't code my Zeiss ZM lenses any more, as the Leica codes are even more unsatisfactory for Zeiss lenses to my eye than they are for the lenses they are intended for. The uncoded Zeiss lens DNGs are perfectly cleaned up with the Flat Field plugin, and the coded Leica Lens DNGs are coded satisfactorily for me. The only lenses that I have that don't really need flat field correction for critical color work are the 75mm/2 Apo ASPH and an old Nikkor 85mm/2, but they are my only telephotos for M mount now. I rarely correct distortion in my digital images unless I think the distraction of the distortion is worse for the image than the resolution loss will be.