gvarner Loc: Central Oregon Coast

There’s a penalty to pay in PP, you’ll lose some dimension when the photo gets cropped from leveling. I shoot crooked all the time and sometimes it’s so bad I lose quite a bit of the composition as the PP crops to fit the new frame. I usually try to level in RAW and then just accept the loss.

Jay Pat Loc: Round Rock, Texas, USA

What do you use to determine, "level"?
Land meeting the sky is not always level.
Water and land is not always level.
Just looking for guidelines.
Pat

architect Loc: Chattanooga

Having a level horizon is essential for most professional level photography. It does take discipline. If unwilling to try to shoot level, include extra surroundings so that leveling in post retains your desired composition.

CPR Loc: Nature Coast of Florida

In Photoshop Crop Tool, if you turn on Content Aware Fill, you will be surprised at how well the software creates the missing area and fills it in. A little touch of the Healing Brush and all's well............................

gvarner Loc: Central Oregon Coast

Elements works the same way but sometimes I’m so far off of level that the Fill looks too artificial so I try to do it in RAW. I agree that small corrections can be fixed easily in PP with the Content Aware feature.

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

My work, prior to editing, is notorious for being unleveled. I've been having some success using the bottom (or top) of the frame as a quick, last-second guide, before shooting. That is: get the exposure, focus and framing, then quickly raise the camera and level via the bottom of the frame across the natural horizon, lower directly and shoot. I'd rather have nearly level than grossly unlevel and the resulting issues in cropping relevant content while leveling.

speters Loc: Grangeville/Idaho

There's a pretty easy fix to that, don't shoot crooked!

KTJohnson Loc: Northern Michigan

My camera, fairly old now, a Sony A77 has a level display, both for horizontal level and front/back tilt level. I don't know how many others have this.

Using those can make the composition level TECHNICALLY, however, sometimes I have to tweek it in Lightroom to make it LOOK level.

Rongnongno Loc: FL

Your self observation is correct. Level is an issue for 99.99% of photographers using handheld cameras. This includes so-called pros.

Pros use a tripod and do not mess with handheld unless absolutely necessary.

"Why is it crooked?" and "Is there a possible correction?" should be the questions.

Why:
This is not about posture but about our eyes and the way we look at things. When I learned to shoot in the military that was the first thing we learned: To adjust our rifle to our vision.
- Basically no one holds a rifle the same way
- Few but highly trained folks are able to hold their breath at the exact same time when firing using a gentle pressure on the trigger.
Yet our eyes (and brain) still say it is 'straight one'. It is a lie.

Camera is a lot like shooting w/o the deadly effect. The same issues of aiming and stability arise. While we have more options when holding the camera for stability one still needs to be gentle when pushing the trigger. Camera do not offer a 'hardware solution' to what is a physical issue so correcting for level is not simple. You are not firing bullets so you cannot have a Line of Sight correction to accurately predict where a projectile will land.

Possible corrections:
- Cameras (some of them) offer a virtual level but one can be distracted by it
- Do not to fill frame so much as to lose part of the capture when level correcting. The degree of level to correct is at most three degree (That is a lot) so learn your weakness and deal with it as you see fit.
- Use a vertical reference in your capture instead of the horizon, this is significantly easier to do.

chasgroh Loc: Buena Park, CA

....agreed on the "land" part. Water, however, is a great indicator of level. There are "water levels" in the trades, emanating from such things as the builders of the pyramids in Egypt, who used simple things like plumb bobs (a weight on a string) for vertical, and a huge trench filled with water for horizontal. I live next to the ocean and commonly will use *it* for my horizontal reference. Now, to justify your comment, Jay, an uneven shoreline at the lake might produce problems, but that house or barn along that shore does provide a great vertical. Comment to the OP: do you use the grid feature common to most modern DSLR's? That's all I use most of the time...it's an old habit with me to line the vertical with adjacent buildings or poles or even trees to the internal grid, and if none available just try for a good "general" horizontal by just backing off of the viewfinder and "seeing" the scene, then transferring to the interior grid and shooting the pic. Using this method produces very little adjustment necessary in LR, where I do the bulk of my work (in the crop feature you can option for a small grid and it's dirt simple to level your photos...and if more help is needed there is a fine level adjustment in the crop tool next to the word "angle" that will finalize.).

bleirer

I think our sense of the world comes from our relationship to gravity. From infancy we develop and rely on it to navigate in space and so our sense of depth and distance emanates from it. So when we throw a ball at a target we dont even realize we are automatically adjusting for the parabolic path gravity forces the falling object into. We keep our heads level and can level by eye because fluid in our inner ears (vestibule) is sensed by special nerve endings, giving us our vestibular sense. I think images that make things that should be upright look like they are falling over make us uncomfortable, but can also be purposely dynamic. Also shapes like pyramids are 'stable' to our eye because they are not falling over, where upside down pyramids are 'unstable' because gravity would make them fall over. So our eyes expect water to be level, and the distant unobstructed horizon, sides of houses and buildings to be vertical.

DaveO Loc: Northeast CT

Depends on how you look at it.

chasgroh Loc: Buena Park, CA

Haha...yes!

Silverrails

Why do you shoot Crooked "All the Time", ??use the horizon in outdoor shots as a tool to level, or a ceiling in the house, just a couple of ideas.

Scruples Loc: Brooklyn, New York

I'm not sure if I understand this post. If you want your camera to be level, you can buy a spirit level that will mount onto the hot shot. They are relatively inexpensive and usually under $20.