twosummers Loc: Melbourne Australia or Lincolnshire England

Yesterday my long-awaited new Canon RF F2.8 STM prime lens arrived having been on order for some weeks. I quickly attached it to my EOS R (replacing the bulky EF 16-35 F4 with adapter) and dashed off to a real estate photo shoot. Everything worked on the camera as normal with the control ring working as previously set using a previous RF lens (in my case as ISO adjustment). Did the photo shoot seemingly without issues and dashed home to enjoy the output of my shiny new lens that I'd hoped would render the 16-35 largely redundant.

But when I started to edit the RAW images my heart sank - the barrel distortion was the worst I had ever seen, it was horrific. The latest edition of DXO Photolab (version 5) did no corrections as clearly DXO, whilst recognising the camera/lens combination had no profile to offer. Even manually adjusting the barrel distortion slider to 100% did not quite go far enough. I must say however that the image detail seemed an improvement and adjusting the shadows did not cause the customary deterioration in colour saturation so at least that looked promising.

So then I gave Luminar AI a try - and lo and behold it did a terrific job of correcting the barrel distortion (and in almost all cases did this 100% automatically with only a few images needing manual adjustment)

I have submitted a request to DXO for a new lens/camera profile. Incidentally the camera would not accept auto lens correction and there were no firmware updates available for camera or lens on the Canon website.

My guess is I'll have to wait for DXO and/or Canon to come up with some help but any and all advice from UHH members would be gratefully received.

As always keep safe

Peterfiore Loc: Where DR goes south

Do you have access to Adobe products?

Architect1776 Loc: In my mind

Post example of distortion.

twosummers Loc: Melbourne Australia or Lincolnshire England

Here an example (just saved as jpeg) and one corrected by Canon DPP despite no lens profile available. At least I can work with images a bit quicker, just need to figure out a workflow.

No other editing done on these so no critiques please.....

(Download)


(Download)

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The dpp looks very good, quite straight judging without use of a reference tool. Looks like dpp also cleared up nearly all the corner shading. I think some of the shading might be your lights, but dpp jumped on it anyway ? Nice shotgun shack, btw :-)

Architect1776 Loc: In my mind

DPP looks most excellent.
Also Canon will likely be putting a profile out for your camera to correct the distortion.
If you look at a majority of new lenses today they have vignetting and distortion that the camera corrects so people really never know how the plain lens works unless all corrections are turned off (If really possible).
Not like in the past where there were no camera fixes automatically being performed and you saw how the lens actually was.

mwsilvers Loc: Central New Jersey

I've been looking at both of the images very carefully. The first image seems to show much more extreme barrel distortion on the right than on the left which is concerning. The barrel distortion on both edges should be identical. The second image seems to have corrected a lot of the barrel distortion on the right but created other distortions on the right to replace it.

The corrections in the second image have also affected perspective, mostly on the right side.
In the second image, among other distortions the door on the right and the wall just to the left of it no longer look like they are perpendicular to each other. Additionally the top of that door and the wall to the right of it are now bending outward slightly. A very significant portion of the left and right side of the image have been cropped to repair this distortion.
The amount of barrel distortion seems pretty extreme. You can also see it in the right hand edge of the hallway opening, but not on the left. Considering that is close to the center of the image, I would not expect to see much barrel distortion at that point

I would capture some images in a more symmetrical space to make sure that what I see is not happening consistently and the barrel distortion is equal on both sides. How do the JPEGs look straight out of the camera? Not everybody post processes. If the barrel distortion with the in-camera distortion setting in place is extreme in the JPEGs I would return it for a new copy.

joecichjr Loc: Chicago S. Suburbs, Illinois, USA

Nice shots

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Or simply just ignore it ...

You’re aware of the price of the 16 ?

mwsilvers Loc: Central New Jersey

Thanks for the heads up. I wasn't aware of the price, but I am now. I haven't bought in to the Canon R series but since this was intended by the OP to replace a 16-35mm lens I thought it was a higher quality piece of glass. At $300, clearly it is a budget lens, but the barrel distortion still seems surprisingly extreme even at that low price point. If this is a good copy then the RF 16mm is a poor choice for architecture.

Bill_de Loc: US

The second image is obviously much better!

Just curious, did you often shoot the EF 16-35 F4 at 16mm?

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mwsilvers Loc: Central New Jersey

I just read several reviews of this lens and they all said basically the same thing. The barrel distortion of the RF 16mm f/2.8 STM lens is pretty extreme and has to be fixed in post processing. To fix this issue for architecture shots requires a fairly significant crop. I wonder if your camera's settings fix the issue for SOOC jpegs? This lens doesn't appear to be a good choice for your purpose.

The attached video is a review of the lens and highlights the barrel distortion issue.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpU2Jm265MY

twosummers Loc: Melbourne Australia or Lincolnshire England

That's a great call thank you. I tried with RAW+jpeg and the jpeg was without the barrel distortion - so now I have a way forward until Canon catch up with their new lens. Less flexibility than RAW but I can work with jpeg for now I'm sure. Thanks again

twosummers Loc: Melbourne Australia or Lincolnshire England

Yes - almost always at 16mm hence my choice of new (RF) lens.

amfoto1 Loc: San Jose, Calif. USA

You have one of the very first copies of that lens. It's only just arrived in some stores.

It's not at all unusual for software to not yet have profiles with a very new lens like this. Canon's own Digital Photo Pro RAW conversion software might have an up to date profile in the latest iteration. That's worth a check. Also check the firmware for your camera to see if it's been updated for that lens (but this will likely only effect JPEG shooting, unless you do RAW conversions in DPP). But I wouldn't expect to see it yet in Photoshop, Lightroom, Elements, DXO, or anything else yet. They'll get around to it, but you may need to be patient and/or find a temporary work-around (such as using Luminar).