DxO Camera Lens Database

[Knight of Clear Skies]

Just came across this site and thought it might be useful when planning purchases and widefield sessions. It's an online database comparing lens quality, with metrics for sharpness, distortion, CA, vignetting and light transmission. For example, I notice that my kit lens has a T-stop (F-number adjusted for light transmission through the lens) of 5 at f3.5, which explains why it's slower than I expected for a given aperture. This isn't surprising as zoom lenses tend to have more elements than primes, and hence more light loss.

There are some subtleties to note, some lens might perform better on a different sensor. This is because some of them are less sensitive to light falling on them at an angle. In some cases fitting a larger aperture lens doesn't deliver the expected improvement in performance because of this.

[happy-kat]

Interesting for new lens and hopefully that 24mm pancake will be reviewed soon

[hazegood]

the pre processing software they do for raw files, DXO Optics, ain't to shabby either,  it has profiles of all the lenses, and will recognise what lens you used, then download a module if you don't already have it, that will automatically make corrections for coma vignetting etc,

Keep an eye on the photography magazine, they quite often give away a licence key for a slightly older version, you have to download it, but other than that no restrictions