Fixing soft lens in post?

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shufflemoomin

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This may seem a stupid question, but please bare with me. I know if a shot is soft due to missed focus that there's little you can do in post to fix that, but if a lens is reported to be soft wide open, what are the prospects of overcoming that through PP sharpening to some degree?
 
Depends upon the degree of softness I would have thought, why not post a shot up and challenge people to sharpen it?
 
I don't have the lens yet. I've just heard from many sources that it's soft wide open and was wondering if this is something that can be overcome to any useful degree in post.
 
shufflemoomin said:
This may seem a stupid question, but please bare with me. I know if a shot is soft due to missed focus that there's little you can do in post to fix that, but if a lens is reported to be soft wide open, what are the prospects of overcoming that through PP sharpening to some degree?
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The chance of fixing it in post is the same as it is for an equally missed focus...
 
When I've missed focus slightly, I'll use the adjustment brush carefully and very locally with clarity to trick the viewer into thinking there's detail...but if it's soft then I won't buy it.
 
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All lenses are softer wide open. Don't worry about it. However, if this lens is reported to be softer than usual wide open.. why buy it?

Do you shoot wide open a lot? If so... consider a lens that performs better instead of trying to sharpen it in post, which is actually impossible... you're just adjusting edge contrast, as you already realise I think (judging by your initial comments).

If you don't often shoot wide open... then don't worry about it. I bet it sharpens up a massive amount by the time you hit f2.8.
 
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Stop down to 2.2 perhaps? That works on my Canon 50mm / 1.8

What you might be able to do, in photoshop. Create a duplicate layer. Add a layer mask, paint it all black. On the data layer use a high pass filter, set the pixels to ~10. Then set the blending mode to soft light.
Not 'paint' in edges and details using a white brush on the layer mask.

Seems a lot of hassle, if you can stop down to 2.2 or higher. You might also need to consider whether any 'test images' were properly focused with this lens, the depth of field won't be large....
There used to be a site which showed side-by-side comparisons of lenses, at any focal lenght (well, not important for a prime), and at any f-stop. Can't remember the name though, it was a white test sheet.
 
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