Canon R8 In camera distortion control

Dcweather · Jul 21, 2024

I have the RF 16mm f2.8 STM attached to my R8. In jpeg shooting I understood that distortion control would take place automatically. When I go into that option in the menu <distortion> option is greyed out. And says "restricted due to following settings or conditions <current lens attached>. It previously also said <clarity> which was +1 and I have changed back to zero which then didn't show as one of the reasons. Any ideas as it is giving massive uncorrected barrel distortion, especially with verticals on buildings.
Any ideas much appreciated.

David Berry · Jul 21, 2024

From the message displayed, it seems that the RF 28mm f/2.8 is not compatible with distortion control; however, let's try changing a few settings/options:

Are you able to check availability of the feature with another lens?
- Swap lenses, and check again.
Are you shooting in raw or jpg?
- Swap to the file type you are not using, and check again.
- Maybe, distortion control is automatic in jpg.
Is the lens's firmware up to date?
- Connect your R8 to the Canon Connect app on your smartphone.
Could you also let us know your R8's shooting mode.
- Swap to another mode (e.g. Manual), and check again.
Change the Control Ring's setting, and check again.

Dcweather · Jul 21, 2024

David Berry said:
From the message displayed, it seems that the RF 28mm f/2.8 is not compatible with distortion control; however, let's try changing a few settings/options:

Are you able to check availability of the feature with another lens?

Swap lenses, and check again.

Are you shooting in raw or jpg?

Swap to the file type you are not using, and check again.

Maybe, distortion control is automatic in jpg.

Is the lens's firmware up to date?

Connect your R8 to the Canon Connect app on your smartphone.

Could you also let us know your R8's shooting mode.

Swap to another mode (e.g. Manual), and check again.

Change the Control Ring's setting, and check again.

The distortion control should be automatic for this lens in JPG. The results indicate it isn't happening or not working as well as I had been led to believe. I read many reviews beforehand and whilst I appreciate your suggestions I have enough knowledge to know that some won't be relevant. The firmware is up to date. I shoot in various modes, mostly AV, TV and M.
"A lens with this much distortion simply wouldn’t have been acceptable in the film days, but thanks to digital corrections, many photographers who shoot with the RF 16mm f/2.8 will never even notice how bad the distortion gets. Most post-processing software has corrections turned on by default, and if you shoot JPEG, Canon doesn’t even let you turn off the distortion corrections when you’re using this lens."

I suppose the crux is when the auto in camera corrections are applied would the distortion option be greyed out?

AntonLargiader · Jul 21, 2024

Do you use DPP? If so, or maybe you can try it for this, you can apply the lens correction there. At least it might tell you if the camera is doing anything about it.

Also, maybe post a sample pic. I’m wondering if the message you get means that you can’t turn it OFF, and therefore it is already in effect.

Dcweather · Jul 22, 2024

I have more or less resolved this. The R8 is automatically correcting the distortion of this lens if shot in JPG because the lens data is compatible and Digital Lens Optimiser is turned on. It just so happens that if you shoot in raw but the image file is displayed as jpg some software like Faststone Viewer and canon DPP will automatically carry out the correction. If you display the actual raw file in ON 1 Phot Raw or Affinity you can see the un mcorrected image which you can correct manually or with downloaded lens profiles. I believe this is why lens distortion is greyed out in the menu because it is happening automatically in the background. I hope this helps others as judging from the responses (and lack of them) this is not widely understood wrt to RF lenses.
It is interesting that the verticals and horizontals are much improved but the round bucket is didtorted by the corrections.

distortion craw affinity uncorrected.jpg

Canon R8 In camera distortion control

Dcweather

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Dcweather

David Berry

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Dcweather

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AntonLargiader

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Dcweather

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