Hot answers tagged distortion
16
The terms are fisheye (circular distortion) and rectilinear (straight edges).
Fisheye lenses are often unfairly branded as "special effect" lenses by some photographers, due to their near ubiquitous use in skateboarding magazines in the 90s, and the ease at which you can create unusual images when trained on nearly any subject.
However fisheyes have sever ...
15
These are known as Chromatic Aberrations or Colour Fringing. These predominantly occur around areas with high contrast such as sharp edges in photographs or around the white water bottle and dark background in your case.
A wider apeture can affect the lenses sensitivity to aberrations although certain lenses can see this "effect" vary depending on focal ...
13
The two types of lenses you refer to are:
Rectilinear - lenses which produce straight horizontals and verticals across the image
Fisheye - lenses with circular distortion
Rectilinear lenses produce more 'natural' looking images but tend to stretch features towards the edges of the frame, so some subjects, e.g. faces, look odd. But they work well for ...
7
Actually to avoid distortion the opposite of what you said holds true.
Move faces or features you don't want to distort such as fingers away from the edge of the frame
Keep the lens parallel to the subject if at all possible
Step back and shoot, planning to crop to the desired framing later
Consider using the distortion to your advantage for "fun" shots; ...
7
This effect is called fisheye effect
You can either get this effect by using a fisheye lens or using photoshop. Try googling fisheye effect photoshop. I found there great tutorials there.
http://www.marcofolio.net/photoshop/create_a_fish_eye_lens_effect_in_photoshop.html
...
6
It's very difficult to correct by hand, but very very easy for a computer to correct, given a formula for how the distortion behaves.
The reason the Photozone review states that this distortion is difficult to detect, is that most software only offers very simple correction based on radially symmetric distortions based on simple formulas. You can usually ...
4
As a photojournalist I must say I prefer a fixed aperture lens with some versatility, say a 2.8 24-70mm. This allows for more of the real world variables you run into. Wide angles are great for so many things, but it's so nice, especially in instances like you're describing, to zoom to 50mm and make a portrait.
However, portraits can be made with wide ...
2
You have a D800 which has enormous resolution, so I think the way I would tackle this is to pull back a little and crop the result rather than filling the full frame. Your 50 f/1.8 was designed for a full frame camera (if I recall correctly) which means that on the T2i, you were hitting the lens center sweet spot. That's basically what I'm suggesting with ...
2
There's a somewhat similar question here, although it was more geared towards which camera was better I still think there's some value in looking into it for other misc info.
As for distortion, pretty much every lens has distortion, the difference is that it's sometimes a bit more obvious in certain lens due to its design. Fortunately something like this ...
2
Does sensor size affect lens distortion?
Short answer: Yes.
The reason is only because most if not all distortion happens on the edges of the lens glass.
Using a cropped sensor is indeed
like printing off a 8x10 picture and then cutting out the 4x6.
and therefore by trimming the edges you will most likely get rid of some of the distortion.
Just ...
2
What changes is perspective. It's not lens distortion (barrel distortion) that makes wide-angle closeups unflattering, it's how close you need to get to the subject to fill the frame. For a given focal length lens, you need to be closer to fill the frame using a full-frame camera than you do with a crop-sensor camera. That means that, proportionally, the ...
1
Except in the case of fisheye lenses barrel distortion is an unwanted side effect of wide angle lenses, something lens designers work hard to minimise. Typically the more expensive a lens the lesser the degree of barrel distortion but it's always there, even in small amounts.
There's two important things to bear in mind with regards to focal length as ...
1
I also have to make mention of a shooting technique to reduce the distortion to whatever the optical design presents by ensuring you have a PERFECTLY level camera in a perfect parallel plane with the artwork.
An extreme example is tilting your camera upwards and shooting a skyscraper. It makes those buildings look very tilted.
1
I once had a bad sensor do this sort of thing. Canon had recalled the camera, but by the time I'd found this out it was too late for mine to be repaired/replaced.
Sometimes an overheating camera will behave differently so switch it off after a photography session to let the sensor and electronics cool down a bit.
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