I've just discovered why there's no (or hardly any) 28mm wide-angle distortion with the FZ18

It's not the optics but the Venus III processing engine that's fixing the wide-angle distortions,

I only found this out (this afternoon) because recently I've started shooting almost everything in RAW and just spotted I was getting vignetting with a filter while developing my photo in Silkypix and had never had that problem while using Jpeg,

so I then compared the side-car Jpeg from the RAW+Jpeg and there's no filter vignetting or distortion,

after seeing that I just carried out a further test, here's the results!
it's only subtle but it's there,
Below is the RAW
http://aycu38.webshots.com/image/29037/2000175875039791147_rs.jpg

Below is the Side-car Jpeg
http://aycu03.webshots.com/image/28762/2000129407186549854_rs.jpg

further example (no vignetting as this one was shot without a filter)
Below is the RAW
http://aycu39.webshots.com/image/28358/2000123932671896483_rs.jpg

Below is the Jpeg
http://aycu01.webshots.com/image/29080/2000192673542523684_rs.jpg

(There's no PP on these photo's just size reduction.)

PS: I know the distortion can be fixed in Silkypix but thought it might be interesting to share this.

PPS: I still think the FZ18 has a fantastic lens and is an amazing camera.



Hope this hasn't been posted before and helps explain why some people are seeing distortion while others aren't.
Cheers,
Dcuk