As Mads points out, I do agree the 20-200mm does perform better in terms of CA, distortion and sharpness at medium and long focal lengths, with the wider focal lengths not as good. Here is a test shot with my 20-200 taken at 20mm f8. No in-camera corrections. In LR I did the default correct for CA (which was not that noticeable in this image), but did not correct distortion or any crops, so you are seeing the actual un-cropped corners. I did do my typical exposure, clarity, sharpening edits and manually corrected vignetting in LR.
To me, the biggest problem at 20mm or the wide end is the complex distortion pattern. It's barrel in the middle zone only, so when you correct for barrel distortion manually in LR, the outer zone gets a pin cushion effect. I'm hoping that the upcoming distortion correction profile in LR will correct for this. As for sharpness (which is not that bad), since this is as bad as it gets, and considering the versatility of the focal range, I can live with it as long as I'm not using it for paid architectural or fine art photography.
Note: I don't know why my sample images posted here on FM always seem a little soft and blurry. For higher or full resolution image, click on the link below the image to see it on my Flickr page and then zoom in, or follow the download link there for high res samples.
As Mads points out, I do agree the 20-200mm does perform better in terms of CA, distortion and sharpness at medium and long focal lengths, with the wider focal lengths not as good. Here is a test shot with my 20-200 taken at 20mm f8. No in-camera corrections. In LR I did the default correct for CA (which was not that noticeable in this image), but did not correct distortion or any crops, so you are seeing the actual un-cropped corners. I did do my typical exposure, clarity, sharpening edits and manually corrected vignetting in LR.
To me, the biggest problem at 20mm or the wide end is the complex distortion pattern. It's barrel in the middle zone only, so when you correct for barrel distortion manually in LR, the outer zone gets a pin cushion effect. I'm hoping that the upcoming distortion correction profile in LR will correct for this. As for sharpness, since this is as bad as it gets, and considering the versatility of the focal range, I can live with it as long as I'm not using it for serious architectural or fine art photography.
Note: I don't know why my sample images posted here on FM always seem a little soft and blurry. For higher or full resolution image, click on the link below the image to see it on my Flickr page and then zoom in, or follow the download link there for high res samples.
