Hmm, I’m turning in my pixel peeping credentials. It wasn’t the lens, it was the bright sunlight. The artifacts from using UniWB for interpolating the raw file are much less noticeable for images shot under incandescent light. I wonder how obvious these artifacts might be for images shot under complete overcast skies.
At 400% and 800% zoom the artifacts become easy to see, even for images shot under incandescent light, once there is something to compare to. But - as I’m sure everyone else already knew - there really are artifacts from using UniWB as the whtie balance for interpolating the raw file: noisier shadows (color noise) and the wrong color and brightness for highlight pixels and along edges. In the future I’ll use the correct white balance for the raw files even if it means outputting multiple versions for mixed lighting.