Tuesday February 3
 
17:38
 
G1 Review: Kit lens – Purple Fringing

Top: Original test image, RAW with Lightroom 2.2, default conversion
Middle: Crop from above
Bottom: With CA Definge set to “All Edges”

This is something which was quite a shock to me on my first day out, because my pre-purchase testing in store hadn’t picked this up. The kit lens has significant purple fringing – as bad as, or worse than, my Sigma 30mm F1.4.

In Lightroom this can be partially corrected by setting Defringe to All Edges in Develop (my G1 preset in Lightroom has this set for all images). However even with correction in Lightroom, the effect can still be severe.

The G1 also has in-camera correction for this. Once again I have to wonder whether Panasonic used the in-camera correction of purple fringing and raw correction of distortion as an excuse to design a lower quality lens. Since there are only two Micro Four Thirds lenses, I expected a little more attention to detail in lens quality.

That said, when the kit lens doesn’t have purple fringing, and after distortion is corrected, it’s reasonably sharp.

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Panasonic Lumix DMC-G1 Review
1. Introduction
2. EVF, LCD, and Focus
3. RAW Magnification
4. RAW vs JPEG
5. High ISO
6. Kit lens – Barrel Distortion
7. Kit lens – Purple Fringing
8. Miscellaneous Observations
9. Conclusion

Panasonic Lumix DMC-G1 – Main Page