
This really should be the last nerd entry. Promise.
Up for grabs today are colour profiles for all my lenses (technically peaking, they are camera profiles, but colour profiles is more to the point), both measured on two different camera bodies, the Sony Alpha 900 and Sony Alpha 55.
What are they for? Well, they are meant to create rather neutral and consistent colours among all the different lenses (with their different kinds of glas, coatings, etc.) in my camera bag. I use them all the time and they have served me very well.
All profiles were measured using a Gretag Macbeth® Color Checker® under both day light and tungsten light, in conjunction with Adobe’s free DNG Profile Editor. The lenses included are:
| Prime lenses: | Zoom lenses: |
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| 8mm F3.5 Fisheye (Peleng) | 10-24mm F3.5 – 4.5 (Tamron) | | 16mm F2.8 Fisheye (Sony) | 17-35mm F2.8 – 4 (Minolta) | | 35mm F1.4 G (Sony) | 24-70mm F2.8 ZA SSM (Sony) | | 50mm F1.4 (Minolta) | 70-200mm F2.8 G SSM (Sony) | | 85mm F1.4 G (Minolta) | 70-300mm F4.5 – 5.6 G SSM (Sony) | | 100mm F2.8 Macro (Minolta) | | | 135mm F1.8 ZA (Sony) | |
You can read more about installing these profiles here. And now, for the download:
Color profiles for the Sony A55 Download Downloaded 941 times | Color profiles for the Sony A900 Download Downloaded 733 times |
As always, I’d like to ask for a small donation for the time and work involved in creating these profiles and polishing them for public release.
Thank you!
| Focal length: | 50 mm |
| Aperture: | ƒ/2.8 |
| Exposure: | 1/8000 s |
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Posted at 16:55

Ok, one more no-so-artsy but rather technical post.
I recently got a new camera, mainly to shoot video with it. However, this camera (the Sony Alpha SLT 55) has generated quite some stir due to its unique and somewhat novel design, and apart from that, as always when there’s a new camera and sensor folks on forums have shown themselves quite controversy about its noise performance.
To see for myself I decided to shoot this ISO series. The setup is not ideal (in hindsight, I should have had some more darker areas in the frame too) but it should do for now. It shows a bunch of toys lit indirectly by rather dim light (a 40W incandescent light bulb lamp shining up a wall about 2m away). To give you an idea of the dimly-ness of the shot, the EXIF reports a brightness value of –2.75 EV, and the ISO 800 shots for instance needed a 6s exposure at ƒ/8. All pictures were taken from a tripod, from the same position, but at different focal lengths to get identical crops, with a 2s timer and SSS off to get as sharp pictures as possible.

The series shows the photos from the α55 and the α900 right next to each other at equal ISOs, running the ISO from 200 to 12800. Since the α900 only goes up to 6400 I shot an extra frame at ISO 6400 but one stop underexposed and then raised the exposure again by one stop in post-processing to simulate ISO 12800 that way.
Speaking of post-processing — all images were shot in RAW mode and then converted with Adobe LightRoom 3 (with the 2010 process version) with zero noise reduction and zero sharpening applied. All other sliders were also left alone, except for the white balance which was set to 2600. Then I reduced the size of the α900 pictures to the exact pixel dimension of the α55 to make for a fair comparison. In other words, all strips are taken from 16 megapixel images.
Phew. So much for the experimental setup. The result? Well, see for yourself. But in my eyes, both cameras are pretty much identical in terms of noise performance, provided you take the different resoultions into account! (That reminds me of the α900 vs Nikon D700 debate back in the day…). And, guys, it’s really not as bad as many pixel peepers are trying to make you think.
| Focal length: | 35 mm (≈52 mm) |
| Aperture: | ƒ/8.0 |
| Exposure: | 0.4 s |
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Posted at 21:47

Ok, one last one more …
Here are some profiles for the Peleng MC 8mm F3.5 Fisheye, profiled on a Sony Alpha 900 (DSLR-A900) body. For some reason, the lens, when mounted to my A900, is somewhat decentered, that is the image circle it creates is offset a little bit to the right, and also cropped ever so slightly on the long edges.
I shot the following series: 5 Apertures [4.0, 5.6, 8.0, 11.0, 16.0] x 1 focus distance [0.40m], resulting in a total of 45 pictures used in the calibration process. Again, the ZIP file contains a two different files — one that contains the lens profile and one that contains the DNG color profile to give you more accurate colours. Since this purely manual lens does not exchange any information with the camera, in order to make these profiles work for you, I recommand that you manually set the aperture for this lens. I’ll might write a post on how to do this further down the line.
Download Downloaded 219 times
As you may know, creating such profiles takes a considerable amount of time and large prints of the calibration charts as well as a colour checker. If you find these profiles useful, please consider a small donation (conveniently via PayPal):
Thank you!
Posted at 17:30

For now that’ll be it (all the other lenses I use have been profiled by other people already) — the last lens in my series of Adobe Camera Raw Lens Profiles is my favourite “portrait machine”.
It’s the Minolta AF 85mm F1.4 G fast prime, profiled on a Sony Alpha 900 (DSLR-A900) body. However, this profile should also work well for its other Minolta versions as well as when mounted on an Alpha 850 body.
I shot the following series: 8 Apertures [1.4, 2.0 2.8, 4.0, 5.6, 8.0, 11.0, 16.0] x 3 Focus distances [0.85m, 2m, 6m], resulting in a total of almost 200 pictures used in the calibration process. Again, the ZIP file contains a bunch of different files — one that contains all the sub profiles in one file, as well as three separate files for the different focus distances (since you can’t select sub profiles in LightRoom at the time of writing).
And again, there’s more. As a goodie I’m also throwing in my DNG colour profile for this lens (again, mounted to an A900), measured both for tungsten and day light (using a MacBeth ColorChecker and Adobe’s DNG profile editor) which should give you much more accurate colours than using the default profiles supplied by Adobe.
Download Downloaded 308 times
As you may know, creating such profiles takes a considerable amount of time and large prints of the calibration charts as well as a colour checker. If you find these profiles useful, please consider a small donation (conveniently via PayPal):
Thank you!
Posted at 23:14

Oh boy … I know, it’s very pink. But what can you do?
Here’s another “SOOC” shot. Yes, really. The strong distortions are created by more of a toy than a lens — a “Lensbaby” (in my case the Composer). It’s a fun lens with an intentionally “bad” optical design (only a small area is sharp, the rest is blurred) combined with a ball and socket design which allows you to move that “sweet spot” around in the image and place it where you want. It’s quite difficult you handly though, and the fact that it’s a manual focus lens doesn’t help.
Yet, it’s fun, fun, fun!
This images was shot back in January; I place the little missis right next to our large balcony window which gives this lovely, flattering soft light.
And just for the record: All of the pink coloured items in the image were given to us. While it’s a tad “kitsch”, we’re still very grateful for the gifts and donations!
| Focal length: | 55 mm |
| Aperture: | ƒ/5.6 |
| Exposure: | 1/30 s |
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Posted at 23:18

Next up in my series of Adobe Camera Raw Lens Profiles is a lens that many people use, but no-one seems to have gone through the rather laborious process of creating a profile for it.
Well, here it is. This one’s for the Minolta AF 17-35mm F2.8 – 4 D wide angle lens, profiled on a Sony Alpha 900 (DSLR-A900) body. However, this profile should also work well for its Tamron incarnation (with the long name “Tamron SP AF17-35/2.8 – 4 Di LD Aspherical (IF)” or just “A05S”) as well as when mounted on an Alpha 850 body.
I shot the following series: 3 Focal Lengths [17mm, 24mm, 35mm ] x 6 Apertures [2.8, 4.0, 5.6, 8.0, 11.0, 16.0] x 2 Focus distances [≈0.4m, ≈2.5m], resulting in a total of over 360 pictures used in the calibration process, the shooting of which alone took over 4 hours… The ZIP file again contains several files — one that contains all the sub profiles in one file, as well as two separate files for “close” and “far” focus (since you can’t select sub profiles in LightRoom at the time of writing).
But wait, there’s more. As a goodie I’m also throwing in my DNG colour profile for this lens (again, mounted to an A900), measured both for tungsten and day light (using a MacBeth ColorChecker and Adobe’s DNG profile editor) which should give you much more accurate colours than using the default profiles supplied by Adobe.
Download Downloaded 482 times
As you may know, creating such profiles takes a considerable amount of time and large prints of the calibration charts as well as a colour checker. If you find these profiles useful, please consider a small donation (conveniently via PayPal):
Thank you!
Posted at 0:33
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