f1.4 shots cleaning up nicely thanks to DT and Lensfun

[Mike_Bing]

Had been overlooking my Sigma 85mm/f1.4

For quite some time, I’ve had the Sigma 85mm f1.4 (non-Art version) and have always found it hard to nail focus, the outcome so-so because of the busy background bokeh and really harsh purple fringing on contrasty edges.

Of course you can close the aperture down to f8 and leave the precise focus to the extended DOF, but that was not the reason I bought an f1.4 lens. And at f8, I might as well take my DA*50-135mm/f2.8 with me which weighs less and nails focus.

After many years, my post processing skills are slowly improving, Darktable is getting better and better by leaps and bounds and the Lensfun correction libraries are finetuning parameters for some more 3rd-party lenses. This lens and I are becoming better friends. On my Pentax KP and under the right circumstances I am enjoying the results whereas before I kind of regretted spending the money on this lens, dubbed “the Beast” in my house due its size and weight.

[Mike_Bing]

Oh, and just as a “by the way”, I started to use more options in DT which I did not explore in the past.

With image nr.1 (that of my dog this morning) I used the tone equalizer module to pull back a little on the white hair in the dog’s neck to keep detail and allow the individual hairs to show rather than blowing out the area.

With image nr. 2, I used a parametric mask on a higpass layer so it only affected the leaf itself and not the background.