Have I bought a dodgy camera?
Last year, in Feb 23 I needed to add a camera capable of shooting quality video to my gear inventory while utilising my existing lenses, so I dived into the used camera market (as always) and purchased a mirrorless Nikon Z6ii from my trusted supplier MPB.
I always research purchases obsessively before taking the plunge, and this seemed to fit the bill in terms of quality, budget, and compatibility. I’ve always been a Nikon user, and I could easily use my lenses with the addition of an F to Z mount converter. The camera shoots 4k footage at 60fps, which allows for editing and slowing movement down to 24fps for Instagram and YouTube output. Its’ low-light capability is admired, and it could always be used as a backup stills camera rather than any of my ageing bulky DSLR’s. I eventually took the plunge and doled out just short of two grand for the body and converter. I later discovered a cheap used 12mm Laowa “Dreamer” zero-D lens which completed the video kit nicely.
There wasn’t much going on in terms of video commissioning at the time, so the camera was fitted with a 24-70mm pro lens and used exclusively for exterior shots. It did the job but didn’t produce any improvement on any of my existing gear - as is always the case. New equipment should only ever be considered if it replaces damaged stock, or provides a huge quality improvement that will make you money in the long term.
In mid-December I was sent to the wilds of the Coquet Valley in Northumberland to shoot a large home with an adjacent converted water pump house being used as a holiday let. It was a small building creatively utilising every inch of floor space to pack living quarters and two bedrooms in. Consequently, it was difficult to capture the rooms in their entirety using my usual 15mm shift lens, so I decided to give the new mirrorless camera and the ultra-wide 12mm a run for their money.
The UFWA view beloved by all amateur cathedral photographers and estate agents the world over snapped into view on my iPad. I continued to shoot the whole place with the camera/lens combo, and headed home to composite all the frames together. It then became apparent that I had a problem.
All the captured raw frames had a bizarre cyan and magenta colour cast around the edges and throughout the white tones. All had been shot with the same flash output at the same auto-white balance. This can be seen clearly in the two example shots above. None of the white walls or ceilings have been captured correctly. Just look at the wardrobe in the first shot - it’s awful. I had to manually desaturate the affected areas in all frames in Photoshop.
I put this down to something I’d set in-camera but just didn’t have time to do full testing using controlled exposures and a pure white target area. I looked up the issue online, but there wasn’t any mention of it anywhere. In the meantime, I decided to retire the camera to video only, as video capture didn’t seem to be affected. In the early part of 2024 I was forced to use the combo again during a shoot described in a previous post and despite using manual white balance settings, it occurred once more:
Very pronounced colour casting on the left and right is evident. Some research and testing was in order. First I shot an A1 white card with a Godox flash bounced off my white dining room ceiling at 1/200s and no lens attached - this gives a true representation of what the sensor is receiving. I increased the cyan and magenta saturation to maximum.
As can be seen - it’s almost completely neutral. I can assume this is not a sensor problem luckily.
Next, I attached the 12mm Laowa lens and repeated the process.
Whoa! The big purple splodge on the right is a bit of shadow cast by myself being so close to the white card, but it’s clear that there’s a very nasty cyan vignette being created by the Laowa lens, and the main image area has a slight magenta bias. No amount of tinkering in Adobe Lightroom can eliminate this level of colour vignetting, so either I’m stuck with a dodgy lens or something else is afoot. I bought this lens on a “well-used” basis for a third of its value as-new, with no warranty, so I’ll crack on with it for now. All online reviews of the lens are honest in terms of quality, but none of them have any mention of this issue. This article on the DPReview website alludes to the very same problem but has no satisfactory explanation or conclusion.
Unfortunately, I’m stuck!
