Nikon Lateral Fringing? Something else?

dermaus

Regular
Location
Pacific Northwest, USA
Name
Jeff
I posted this on a Nikon Z Facebook group so I apologize if anyone here is a member and saw this there. This is 100% zoomed into an image I took. It may be hard to see here, but much easier on my laptop screen. On the right hand side you can see the edits I made in Lightroom Classic 10.1.1, which I feel are fairly conservative and significantly less than what I originally had intended. Not sure if you can tell on this format, but there are color spots of purple and yellow dotting the image. They seem to appear in grasses, bushes, trees, and fencing and not in empty areas of the snow. This is a RAW file and Nikon seems to provide image correction based on the lens used (even on the RAW files). The accompanying JPEGS seem to be free of these artifacts. Is this lateral fringing? I had a different image with the FTZ adapted Nikon 50 mm f1.8 G synced with the same edits that shows the same artifacts/fringing. There were several other images that day showing the same. I have had to correct aberrations and fringing on files from other cameras before, but not anywhere near this amount. Any ideas?

Details:
Z5
24-200mm f/4-6.3 VR @ 100mm
1/200
f9
ISO 100
This was a significantly overcast day providing for fairly flat lighting (i.e. no harsh sun highlights).

colorspots.jpg
 
The only thing I can begin to see (sorry, JPEG conversion and forum compression certainly don't help) is what I'd suspect is LoCA - longitudinal chromatic aberrations; the Z 24-200mm produces quite a few of those, but fortunately, they appear as "simple" fringing and can be controlled with the respective tools. And yes, the old 50mm f/1.8G does have similar issues.

Do you see them at normal viewing sizes or only at 100% or higher? Do you print large? If you answer "yes" to both questions, it may actually be a problem you have to learn to solve. If not, well - yes, optical aberrations are a thing. All lenses produce them to a certain extend, and it's cheap (and needs a lot of glass) to tame them. A superzoom (one that I really like, btw., and I'm no fan of CA) and a cheap-ish normal are prime suspects. That said, the Z 24-200mm isn't especially bad - far from it, in fact, and nor is the 50mm f/1.G (its little brother, the 35mm f/1.8G DX, is way worse, just to name one example). Modern lenses are generally better corrected than older designs.

M.
 
It doesn't look like lateral CA to me, but more like bad raw interpretation, an easy way to tell CA is that with most modern lenses, it goes away when stopped down 2 to 3 stops.
 
Thanks, guys. I understand what it is now. I am surprised at how much there is at 100mm and f9. Of course, my adjustments accentuate it, as well. I have played around with some of the lens correction sliders and am able to take care of most of it and I think I need to work on my Lightroom skills more when it comes to image editing. Thank you!
 
Back
Top