Lens corrections on the Nex 6

I notice several reviews of Sony e-mount zooms refer to geometric distortion. I thought all the more recent APS-C cameras (Nex 6, 7, A5000, 6000, etc) had built-in distortion correction with all the e-mount lenses (at least those that needed it, like the cheap zooms).

Is this incorrect? And if so, which lenses and/or cameras don't give it?

I've been unable to find a compatibility table like the one I used for A-mount here and all I can find is a page of lens pictures with little actual information on it like this.

Miranda F wrote: I notice several reviews of Sony e-mount zooms refer to geometric distortion. I thought all the more recent APS-C cameras (Nex 6, 7, A5000, 6000, etc) had built-in distortion correction with all the e-mount lenses (at least those that needed it, like the cheap zooms). Is this incorrect? And if so, which lenses and/or cameras don't give it? I've been unable to find a compatibility table like the one I used for A-mount here and all I can find is a page of lens pictures with little actual information on it like this.

Some raw converters allow the user to not apply the embedded distortion corrections. I believe Lightroom doesn't allow it, but I've never used Lightroom. It is a bit silly that Sony doesn't allow disabling the distortion correction on some lenses. Camera firmware updates after the 16-50PZ forced that behavior on the earlier cameras. The original 5, 3, and C3 NEX models don't support Lens Compensation.

Sony E-mount lenses have Lens Compensation profiles stored in the lens. I don't know when the profile data was added to the early lenses. Most of the early lenses had firmware updates to support Hybrid AF. Third-party lenses can also have that information too, but the manufacturer needs to include it. I am not sure if my Rokinon AF FE lenses have it. The Sigma DN lenses do as well as their MC-11 adapted Global Vision lenses.

I am a little annoyed with how the MC-11 identifies non-Global Vision lenses. It labels other EF lenses as "DT ... SAM" lenses, so lens profiles are not automatically applied in raw developers.

Edited by QuietOC - 14 February 2019 at 15:24

QuietOC wrote: Some raw converters allow the user to not apply the embedded distortion corrections. I believe Lightroom doesn't allow it, but I've never used Lightroom. It is a bit silly that Sony doesn't allow disabling the distortion correction on some lenses. Camera firmware updates after the 16-50PZ forced that behavior on the earlier cameras. The original 5, 3, and C3 NEX models don't support Lens Compensation.

At least for Lightroom (version 6.14) you can disable the "Built-in Lens Profile" (see the "Lens Corrections" tab) by unchecking the "Enable Profile Corrections" checkbox. For instance unchecking that will make all my wide 16-50PZ images look like they're taken with mild fish-eye lens

You can even disable the distortion correction and vignetting correction independently by pulling the "Distortion" or "Vignetting" sliders to 0 individually.

For me that works for all lenses with built-in profiles on all E-mount bodies.

Miranda F wrote: Okay, I should have said I take almost exclusively jpegs. So is the consensus that all the cameras that support corrections will correct with all the lenses (at least those made up to the camera release date)?

That for sure, and even later lenses if there are subsequent firmware updates that allow the corrections to be made automatically. Even my FE70-300G (first release 2016) uses the built in correction on my NEX6 (first release 2012) with firmware 1.03 and my A6000 (first release 2014) with firmware version 2.0

Oh, that's interesting. I guess it's possible with the later comms protocol.