Nikon 28mm 1.8G

[pierods]

View attachment 426107

Here's a quick test I just did.
Top: Tamron 17-35 Di LD etc. etc.
Middle: Canon EF 35/2 IS
Bottom: Canon EF-s 15-85 IS etc.
Both zooms were set at the 35mm mark as indicated on the lens housing. Exposure was identical across all three: 1/25 f/8 ISO 100, camera (EOS 7D) mounted on a tripod. Lighting is open shade on a sunny day. White balance manually set to 'shade' on camera and kept unaltered in post processing. Post processing involved making no changes whatever to any of the files as loaded into RawTherapee, only exported to JPG and then assembled in GIMP in a single file as shown above.

As you can see, there is a color signature, but it's very subtle indeed and none of it involves anything like one lens producing very strongly saturated colors that are difficult to manage etc.

Honestly, you're breaking your head over the wrong factor.

There's one exception, which is strongly tinted lenses due to the use of thorium glass, which turns strongly yellow over time. This will produce a strong color cast. None of the lenses discussed so far in this thread fall in this category.

PS the Tamron lens in the top frame is the most strongly biased lens I have used on the EOS system. I specifically included it in this test for this reason. As you can see, it's still pretty close to the Canon lenses in color rendition. You'll also note that some of the (subtle) differences between the frames is not so much color rendition, but contrast, with the affordable EF-s zoom lens taking the cake with noticeably better contrast than the other two lenses.

Very cool, thanks

 

[skahde]

That's not what @skahde suggests in the message you quoted!

Thanks for the clarification. I should have been a bit more elaborate and your pictures fixed that nicely.

 

[koraks]

We do know lenses coatings improve saturation and contrast, right?
And we can assume that various lenses have different coatings?

There's a catch in what you say about "saturation and contrast". Actually, two. The first is that saturation is different from color balance. The second is that the effect of a coating on saturation is likely through contrast as an mediating variable. Coatings reduce flare and as such improve contrast, and less flare (and thus higher contrast) also means the colors look more pure and less 'washed out' - i.e. more saturated (or, better: "less unsaturated").

Coatings can and do affect color balance, but I think the relationship is kind of complex as is seen in the case of e.g. wide angle lenses, where the color balance in the corner of the frame can be distinctly different from the center of the frame due to the effect of coatings used on the lens. This is apparent in esp. older lenses with simpler coatings than used on modern lenses. For instance, I have older Canon 24mm lenses that show distinctly bluish corners even if the center of the image is balanced neutral.

However, even that 'corner story' is complicated by other effects. E.g. on those lenses, purple fringing can appear to shift color balance esp. in the corners if the image features a lot of fine detail with strong contrast (e.g. the crown of a tree with no leaves against a bright sky). The purple fringing will affect the overall impression of the color rendition, making it seem like a color cast is present (which will be angle-dependent since it's stronger towards the edges), even though this is a complex interaction between image structure and lens imperfections.

So the story can get pretty complicated. I think you do have a point in there somewhere, in the sense that coatings can affect color balance, but it's not as straightforward as looking at the lens to see what color the coatings have in order to determine what color rendition the lens will give. Moreover, if you look at an average fairly modern lens at an oblique angle, you'll notice that there's generally not a single color to the coating. There's a whole range of colors reflecting at different angles off of different lens elements or groups.

 

[IpseLux]

There's a catch in what you say about "saturation and contrast". Actually, two. The first is that saturation is different from color balance. The second is that the effect of a coating on saturation is likely through contrast as an mediating variable. Coatings reduce flare and as such improve contrast, and less flare (and thus higher contrast) also means the colors look more pure and less 'washed out' - i.e. more saturated (or, better: "less unsaturated").

Coatings can and do affect color balance, but I think the relationship is kind of complex as is seen in the case of e.g. wide angle lenses, where the color balance in the corner of the frame can be distinctly different from the center of the frame due to the effect of coatings used on the lens. This is apparent in esp. older lenses with simpler coatings than used on modern lenses. For instance, I have older Canon 24mm lenses that show distinctly bluish corners even if the center of the image is balanced neutral.

However, even that 'corner story' is complicated by other effects. E.g. on those lenses, purple fringing can appear to shift color balance esp. in the corners if the image features a lot of fine detail with strong contrast (e.g. the crown of a tree with no leaves against a bright sky). The purple fringing will affect the overall impression of the color rendition, making it seem like a color cast is present (which will be angle-dependent since it's stronger towards the edges), even though this is a complex interaction between image structure and lens imperfections.

So the story can get pretty complicated. I think you do have a point in there somewhere, in the sense that coatings can affect color balance, but it's not as straightforward as looking at the lens to see what color the coatings have in order to determine what color rendition the lens will give. Moreover, if you look at an average fairly modern lens at an oblique angle, you'll notice that there's generally not a single color to the coating. There's a whole range of colors reflecting at different angles off of different lens elements or groups.

Well stated. And good points between contrast, saturation and color shifts.

 

[George Mann]

Would you extend your statement to "and lenses from brand x and a certain year/collection also share a color signature"?

No.