Serious Firmware 4.0 issue - Chromatic Aberration

[Noah]

For the most part, I've really been astounded by the new 4.0 firmware. Just installed on on Monday and been testing it all week. Today, took the X-T1 out on a walk w/ the family to the local ice cream shop. Towards the end, I asked my oldest kid to run to me as I crouched stationary. I put the camera in CH w/continuous AF in Zone AF mode. After I let the X-T1 burst about 4-5 pictures, and to my shock, I literally saw the worst CA fringing I have ever seen in any camera in the history of cameras. In a MULTITUDE of colors.

 

It's so bad, it almost looks as if it was photo shopped to deliberately look like neon trees.

 

Green Fringing

 

https://goo.gl/photos/VFyEmnXdQozUwPVt5

 

 purple fringing

 

https://goo.gl/photos/4fHyyPEG9AYZuKcr5

 

the least affected shot

 

https://goo.gl/photos/RCcfycR2u4TDyBDo9

 

more pink neon'ish fringing

 

https://goo.gl/photos/G6viuBPVXactkbZi7

 

teal-green fringing

 

https://goo.gl/photos/L7fkvhqMQYs21Qpb8

 

For context, It was the 23mm f1.4 wide open. Multi metering mode. Auto SS, Auto ISO. Jpegs SOOC. I've been shooting with the 23mm almost excusively for a year in a wide variety of settings, and NEVER have this bad of CA. In fact, I can only recall 1 shot at all where i even SAW CA.

 

Has anyone else had this issue? This is NOT a minor problem. It's the worst CA I've ever seen and in my opinion, makes the camera unusable. It's the most pronounced around the leaves, but it's also very apparent around my kids shirt. 

 

If my X-T1 could potentially be setup incorrectly, please feel free to let me know, but even so, I have a hard time that this level of CA would be acceptable regardless of settings.

[darknj]

I haven't noticed anything of that sort and I remember that we have some ppl shooting with heavy contrast scene and we didn't see any of them have such heavy CA.

 

Just so I get this straight, these are straight jpeg out of the body, right? There was no processing in lightroom or anything like that?

[milandro]

I haven’t experienced anything of the sort but I don’t own a 23mm.

 

Yesterday I got some “ moving targets “ coming out from the shade with leafage in the background, in a situation not unlike the one you are showing us, and I have to say that nothing  like that that you are presenting was showing ( sorry I didn’t keep the shots they were nothing special to me and just made them for the purpose of testing the autofocus tracking).

 

Try re installing the software after putting the whole of the fuctions back to factory standards and then start from factory standards and move back to your preferences.

 

I know it is a pain to do but this is not the way the camera would perform unless something had gone wrong with the update or your setting hasn’t translated well after the updating.

[Antony]

I think we can safely say that the "Beta Testers" by their hundreds would have noticed this issue, so we can safely assume that it is something wrong with your camera.

[Max_Elmar]

JPEG SOOC? Broken or bad copy of the lens. Any other work flow? CA reduction got turned off - or never applied. (Probably not the camera.)

[Noah]

People over at the other fujix forum seem to agree that it's not a defect per se, but rather just a known issue w/ the 23mm. I've been using this lens for a year and haven't seen it before, but then again, I've never tried to do wide open CH with continuous zone AF outdoors in bright sunlight either .

 

I have a few other lens's I can try to recreate the conditions. I have a 56mm coming today that I can try shooting @ f1.4. Supposedly the 56 also has some aberration issues wide open, but not nearly as pronounced as the 23mm. We'll see. 

[milandro]

I can only hope that that is NOT a distinctive trait of lenses overtly MEANT to be used at their maximum opening ( I wonder why on earth they put an aperture on the 56 and 23 if most people declare never stop them down  !) .

 

Would this not to be the case something is rotten in the state of... Japan!

[Vladimir]

can you drop the raw RAF files to check?

[aceflibble]

Wide-angle lens wide open with an almost white-to-black subject? I'd be surprised if there wasn'[/t] fringing everywhere.

[remeife]

I´v tested this and can not find any fringing what so ever. You must have a poor example of lens or camera.

[milandro]

I disagree, the 23, naturally, shouldn't perform well at f1.4 if it doesn’t there is something wrong with the lens or the camera handling the software which administrates the lens (even raws are “ corrected” for the lens)

 

If anyone goes through the bother and expense to make a lens to perform at 1.4 ( whichever focal lens) they want the lens to be used at 1.4 since it is one of the main selling points ( but not for me) and the customers certainly bought it because of the possibility to perform ( and perform well) at that aperture.

 

Besides in this interview Mr. Ueno (product planner for the X series cameras) declares:

 

http://fujifilm-blog.com/2015/06/30/interview-with-mr-takashi-ueno-from-fujifilm-tokyo-why-dont-fujifilm-make-full-frame-dslr/

 

“ Mr. Ueno: Here is an example. It is generally believed that the lens performs at its best with 1 to 2 stop down from the maximum aperture. We tried to break the norm. Because if there is such belief, then the lens is very unlikely to perform at its best from corner to corner with the aperture wide open. But if we can break the norm, then we will achieve bokeh and sharpness that is equivalent to that of a full frame with 1 to 2 stop down. We can achieve the image quality that is equivalent to that of full frame...."

[mjh]

These are fairly typical cases of longitudinal chromatic aberration where the colour of the fringing depends on whether the subject is in front of or behind the plane of sharpness. Even the best corrected lenses (corrected for lateral chromatic aberration that is) can suffer from this phenomenon – see the Leica forum for examples of fringing produced by some much more expensive lenses.

 

Obviously firmware version 4.0 has no bearing on this.

[Trenton Talbot]

There's an issue indeed. After upgrading to 4.0 I've started to get fringing in a situations that previously rendered clean shots. My best guess: Fuji changed something in a moire suppression algorithm, as in this case fringing most often occurs on fuzzy edges, not clean ones. For example, a backlit wool sweater produces the heaviest purple fringing you've ever seen – right in the middle of the frame. Same conditions, leather jacket – no fringing. Backlit human hand with light hair on it – severe color fringing. Backlit mosquito screen at various angles – clean as a test chart in a sales brochure.

[milandro]

It hasn’t yet happened to me but if you say it does it will. If more than one person is crying wolf then there might be a wolf for real.

 

 

Kaizen seems to be another word for “ before we have entirely developed the software for a camera, we sell you the hardware and then provide it with all the things that the market is requiring or which we have discovered that we could put in it while we developed other things...if something appears to be wrong, we will have the time to change it"

 

And so, my guess is that firmware 5.0 isn’t all that far 

[jeremyclarke]

Wow

 

Green Fringing

 

https://goo.gl/photos/VFyEmnXdQozUwPVt5

 

 purple fringing

 

https://goo.gl/photos/4fHyyPEG9AYZuKcr5

 

the least affected shot

 

https://goo.gl/photos/RCcfycR2u4TDyBDo9

 

Wow epic fringes buddy! Maybe it's just the perfect storm of bad luck, but that's incredible! I find plants in front of white skies is the #1 source of CA with my 35mm f/1.4, so it doesn't surprise me that this was the subject that woke you up if this is an old problem. 

 

FWIW if you shot RAW and processed with Lightroom you'd be shocked how much CA is removed by the default algorithm, without even resorting to the CA sliders which would help even more (the default algorithm is harmless to all but CA, while the sliders will desaturate ALL purple/green so use carefully).

 

I was blown away when I switched from Apple Aperture (RIP) to Lightroom and reprocessed some images I remembered having terrible purple fringing (trees in front of sky). There was a slight loss of detail but overall they just felt like images taken with a more expensive lens (I'm just speculating here, but the feeling is like an f/1.2 lens stopped down to f/1.4 rather than f/1.4 wide open). 

 

IMHO it's possible that Fuji changed their internal algorithm, which famously compensates for CA even in the RAW files. FW4 could have changes that make it work in different/less situations, so that an image which would have had CA-correction applied before doesn't now. This would mean the 23mm wide open always had terrible CA but it was just hidden. 

 

Either way in any tests you do DEFINITELY shoot RAW+JPG and make sure that the problem exists in both, as well as processing the RAW with LR and seeing if it makes a difference.

 

Personally I wouldn't go back to a workflow that didn't correct CA automatically. Sure in situations like this you can see it clearly, but there are a lot more situations where it's subtle but destructive to detail/color in ways you wouldn't notice. Having it automatically corrected in those situations is priceless.