Lens Profiling – What Is It And Why Could It Be Useful?

Is It Worth Borrowing This Technique From Stills?

I’m kicking off a new short series this week looking at the idea of lens profiling.

If you’ve ever used Lightroom you’ve probably seen the lens profile box.

It applies a preset correction for vignetting and distortion preset for that particular lens.

After a recent grade with a fashion photographer and talking about lightroom I thought could this be useful for us as colorists?

Could It Save Time?

My theory is that if you are on a long project that is shooting with the same lenses for weeks or months at a time is it worth shooting test charts and balancing the lens characteristics?

With modern lenses, it is probably less important but when working with vintage lenses I have come across many situations like this where a 50mm lens is greener than the macro lens, etc… some even have strange colored vignettes around the edges.

In theory, you could have a set of LUTs,  lens correction settings and preset power grades for each lens that is being used.

I’ll be shooting a follow up this week after I’ve done my own testing but I’d love to hear your comments if anyone is doing this currently.

Check out the video below where I discuss my thought process in more detail

If you’ve got any questions, be sure to leave a comment!

-Dan