Colour Aberration

Stoker

Stoker

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Big problem here friends and wondering if anyone can help.

I seem to be plagued by chromatic aberration .... my Nikon Capture NX calls it colour aberration; I call it a nasty violet/purple edging to tree tops against a sky background.

I have a Nikon D300 with a Sigma 17-70mm lens attached. Is this the camera, lens, exposure settings or my shooting technique. The camera cost a packet and I'm not a happy chappie.

Oh! and the 'correction' feature in Nikon NX is totally useless.
 
Are you shooting trees against a blown out white sky?
 
It's almost certainly caused by the lens, due to the contrast between the sky and twigs/tree, nothing to do with the D300 itself.

The Sigma is at the budget end of the market and as such, won't be as optically corrected to cope with CA.
 
markta, I must admit that I thought the lens did not match the quality of the camera but at the time it was all I could afford. I see you are a Cannon owner but do you have and recommendations for a Nikon lens and preferably with VR. My main subjects are landscape and also plant photography.
 
Are you shooting wide open?? There doesn't seem to be too much CA on my 450D with a 17-70 attached - I find it very good in that respect.

Mebbe it's a Neyekon thing?? ;) :D
 
Stoker said:
Yes puddleduck it is very bad against a white sky.
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Don't worry about it then, seriously with that sort of poor light you'll be hard pressed to produce a decent image, so I wouldn't worry about it.

In nice light it won't be a problem, and nice light is the best time to take photos :)

BTW the D300 doesn't have magical CA removal properties - some reviews claim it does, but CA is still present in the base raw file.
 
Members like Puddleduck are very Nikon and would be able to give you better advice..

IIRC, the Sigma 17-70 is a very good lens but frequently falls down when it comes to CA. Even a high end Canon 50mm 1.2 suffers from CA, so may not be down to lens quality itself but maybe the design and focal length of it. Really cannot say for sure :thinking:

The other solution would be to continue using the 17-70 but get different software which would correct the chromatic aberation. Adobe Lightroom does a good job, as does Photoshop Elements or Photoshop itself.

Hopefully Puddleduck or someone similar will be able to point you in the direction of better glass ;)
 
markta said:
Hopefully Puddleduck or someone similar will be able to point you in the direction of better glass ;)
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I think the 17-70 is a fine lens actually.

You can provoke CA is pretty much any lens in the shooting situation described, especially if shot close to wide open.

Before trying to replace the lens, I'd try with better light as contrast-y back lit situations are challenging photographically.
 
Chromatic aberration shows itself where there are bright areas adjoining dark areas in your shots. The 'trees against the sky' situation is a typical one where you're highly likely to see CA. It's a problem with the lens rather than the camera, and all lenses are affected by it to some degree, but it tends to be more prominent with lenses in lower price brackets.

CA is very easily eliminated in processing in Canon's DPP RAW processing sofware, where it has to be done from a RAW image (not a Tiff or jpeg). There's an adjustable filter specifically to remove CA. I'd be surprised if Nikon's RAW software didn't have something similar?

There are stand alone applications and proprietory plugins for Photoshop which work well I'm sure.
 
Stoker, strange as the D300 corrects for CA in camera, or at least that is what I was led to believe, and in all honesty having used one since they were first available it is not something that I have encountered. In fact it is usually referenced as a plus point in reviews.

CA is the effect of the lens not bringing together the wavelengths of light at the same place, cheap lens or not the Sigma should not be that bad that the camera of software cannot rectify it.

I wonder if you have a poorly collimated lens, it may benefit to get it sent back to Sigma for adjustment / calibration, or if fairly new return to the dealer and swap for another.
 
Thanks to all for your help - I think I've been expecting too much from the combination of D300 and Sigma lens. Also, not realising that CA was such difficult situation to resolve in one stroke. Perhaps a better quality lens and more attention to my shooting situation. Even some dedicated software to reduce the effect when post processing.
 
Bet its not as bad as the Fuji S100FS, a brilliant Camera spoiled by very bad CA/PF under the same circumstances

Capture.jpg


Paul
 
Yes, that's a powerful example Paul. I've had some almost as bad. Perhaps we should set up a competition how to produce the worst CA :lol:
 
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