The CA on my 75-300 kit lens seems particularly bad (1 Viewer)

[Weiss1]

I think it's time for me to buy a non-kit lens for my camera.
Can anyone tell me what the CA is like on the Tamron 200-500? I'm finding it so bad on my current kit lens that the 500 Mirror lens is also becoming a serious contender for my next lens.

 

[Peter_Perfect]

I have this lens, although sharp does suffer from CA in this lens instance known as "purple fringing". It turned out that the photo processing I use, Corel Paint Shop Pro 12, has an excellent single process called "Purple Fringe Remover". If you think of buying this package, make sure your camera is covered in the RAW processing section. (RAW files are proprietary to a manufacturer and need to be included for each camera.

 

[gowerboy]

Without knowing which camera body and lens model you are using it is difficult to give an opinion.
Some newer DSLR have micro adjustment for focus and a load of in camera settings to improve image quality.
If all these settings have been tried then a new lens might help, so long long as the problem is not with the camera body.

Clive

 

[Peter_Perfect]

An example

Sorry, I forgot here is an example of the lens with "Purple Fringe" removed. The shot should not have been taken with a X2 multiplier but I could not get any closer.

http://www.birdforum.net/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=204492

 

[Leicaman]

How cropped is you image?

I use the Tamron 200-500mm lens a lot and have had exellent result with it as long as the bird fills a good proportion of the screen. See my gallery for some examples. I'm jusy about to upload a gull (a good test for chromatic aberation), grebe and woodpecker taken with the lens today.

 

[Weiss1]

Sorry I'm using the Sony A300.
The picture was a pretty heavy crop but even with a bird in full frame i often find that really white areas all have a purple edge.
I can do a bit of fixing with Photoshop but the purple fringing seems to be in every picture i take which is getting really annoying.

 

[KC Foggin]

I've got the lens and have to say, I really don't suffer with CA at all. You can check out my gallery too. When I had my first Digital which was Sony, I did suffer a lot of CA though.

 

[Peter_Perfect]

About the 70 - 300

Weiss1, my comments are about the 70 - 300. I talked about the way of getting rid of the purple fringing, because the price difference between the 70 - 300 and the 200 - 500 is immense. Also you talked of a mirror lens, look into these as well, they also have their drawbacks.

 

[Weiss1]

I've been using photoshop to reduce the saturation of the fringing but i don't like the loss of detail and it often gives a grey edge to it instead which is not as noticeable but still not ideal.
I might try paintshop pro and see how it goes but I'm still tempted to get a lens that goes to 500mm just for the reach.

 

[valzuniga]

The build of the Sony kit lenses, leave something to be desired. Even the standard kit lens, is mostly a piece of junk that I keep only for its wide angle capabilities. Do yourself a favor, and buy some of the older Minolta gear, you'll quickly notice that the older minolta stuff is heavier, and better built.

The old lenses, in my opinion, produce far better results than the newer Sony branded consumer stuff.

 

[Weiss1]

Well i ended up getting the Tamron 200-500 two weeks ago and haven't gone back to the kit lens since.
I do so much less post-processing on my images now it's much better; a quick adjustment in Lightroom and whatever CA is in the images is gone.

 

[Leicaman]

I'm glad you have a solution, even if it has cost quite a bit.