Lens distortion: Good Morning In the attached image the lighthouse and flag pole are tilted towards each other. The pic was taken with a Nikon Z 14-30 F4. The lens correction is...

Hamltnblue Loc: Springfield PA

Good Morning
In the attached image the lighthouse and flag pole are tilted towards each other.
The pic was taken with a Nikon Z 14-30 F4.
The lens correction is automatic and I would think should have done it's job (unless I'm missing something)
I have ON-1, Luminar, and Nikons NX-D, and all are automatically applying the built in profile.
If I try to correct for keystoning the building shrinks significantly out of proportion and the fenceline tilts right.

Is there anything I'm missing?
I have a pic taken by another photographer that has his signature on it if it's ok to post.
Thanks
Jim

(Download)

rmalarz Loc: Tempe, Arizona

Jim,
This is typical of wide-angle lenses that are pointed upwards. Obviously, the camera had to be pointed upwards to capture that much sky. More than likely you had chosen the widest setting of 14mm. That is what you most likely overlooked. These are optical characteristics which can be very difficult to correct.
--Bob

Hamltnblue wrote:

Good Morning br In the attached image the lighthou... (show quote)

47greyfox Loc: on the edge of the Colorado front range

Do all your software applications have a profile for the lens you are using? I only ask that because I use ON1 and profiles is one area where I find it inconsistent and poorly executed whether it be poor profiles or flat missing for popular lenses. I’m also assuming you tried the straighten tools available. All that said, the previous comment about use of wide angle lens is certainly a likely possibility.

SonyA580 Loc: FL in the winter & MN in the summer

The effects of a very wide angle lens, aimed upwards, can be corrected in Photoshop but in doing that, you will lose a lot of the picture and some of the resolution. Picture in your mind trying to stretch a triangle into a square and you get an idea of what you are up against. One solution to get a lot of sky in the picture is to shoot vertical, holding the camera as close to level as you can.

Jim-Pops Loc: Granbury, Texas

I agree with Bob. Looked up you information and see your lens was set at 14 mm. From your example we can see the outer edges has a lot of distortion. I must say I am surprised to see this much with this camera and lens combination. I did some work on you picture to see if it could be repaired. Most of it got corrected using Photoshop's 2020 lens correction tools although as it fixed the distortion it also remove part of the sides. I ended up with a nice 16 wide x 20" high image. I can PM you this results if you like.
Jim

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

This is not lens distortion, it is perspective distortion.

UTMike Loc: South Jordan, UT

This is your photo after use of Transform in Lightroom.

(Download)

Hamltnblue Loc: Springfield PA

Thank you all for tye feedback, lessons, and suggestions. This is the first time I’ve tried astro photography. The subject is the East point lighthouse in NJ. The shot is about 150 feet from the building.

There is only one clearing where you can get a good shot of the lighthouse.
The milky way is to the south.
I saw a pic where someone had used a 14mm with the same shot but managed to get things straight. Wondering how.

Hamltnblue Loc: Springfield PA

Jim-Pops wrote:

I agree with Bob. Looked up you information and se... (show quote)

Jim
Yes, please send it and post it here so others can see as well.
Thank you.

Hamltnblue Loc: Springfield PA

47greyfox wrote:

Do all your software applications have a profile for the lens you are using? I only ask that because I use ON1 and profiles is one area where I find it inconsistent and poorly executed whether it be poor profiles or flat missing for popular lenses. I’m also assuming you tried the straighten tools available. All that said, the previous comment about use of wide angle lens is certainly a likely possibility.

What I read is the profile is embedded in the raw file and the camera is supposed to apply the correction. The manual tools don’t even come close to correcting. As noted earlier, probably because camera is looking up and to the right of the building with it in the peripheral vision of the camera.

JohnSwanda Loc: San Francisco

The lens profile only fixes distortion inherent in the lens, not perspective distortion. If you saw the same shot with the same lens with no perspective distortion, they must have fixed it in post.

larryepage Loc: North Texas area

Hamltnblue wrote:

Thank you all for tye feedback, lessons, and suggestions. This is the first time I’ve tried astro photography. The subject is the East point lighthouse in NJ. The shot is about 150 feet from the building.

There is only one clearing where you can get a good shot of the lighthouse.
The milky way is to the south.
I saw a pic where someone had used a 14mm with the same shot but managed to get things straight. Wondering how.

A quick and easy way to avoid the perspective distortion would be to put your camera in portrait orientation, level it on the tripod, and do an easy 3 or 4 shot panorama. After assembling the panorama, you could crop some of the foreground, if desired. This is a technique that you will want to use anyway if you do a full arch image of the Milky Way, in order to avoid the horizon doing weird things under the arch. You can cheat a little bit with the horizon, but the closer it is to the center of your image, the fewer problems you will have later.

There is nothing wrong with using a 14mm lens for this application. It's pretty much the standard approach. As long as you are looking just into the sky, you will never have a problem. But the ground and horizon are going to be somewhere near the edge of the image, so it will be necessary to have a strategy to minimize any problems that they create. Complications will otherwise just get worse as you start trying to stitch panoramas.

Jim-Pops Loc: Granbury, Texas

Hamltnblue wrote:

Jim
Yes, please send it and post it here so others can see as well.
Thank you.

Here is what I came up with. Not sure height of the light in the lighthouse should be. If needed you could stretch the photo to make it higher.
Jim

(Download)

User ID

rmalarz wrote:

Jim,
This is typical of wide-angle lenses that are pointed upwards. Obviously, the camera had to be pointed upwards to capture that much sky. More than likely you had chosen the widest setting of 14mm. That is what you most likely overlooked. These are optical characteristics which can be very difficult to correct.
--Bob

.

True enough. But even a true ZERO distortion lens (hard to find, built by unicorns y’know!) will still render that leaning inward effect cuz most of that is not optical distortion.

There really is an available zero distortion optic but it’s not a lens. It’s a pinhole! Even with a pinhole optic, if you tilt the filmplane, things will lean like that, and you cannot ever blame distortion on a pinhole cuz there’s no glass involved.

Ultra wide lenses usually have some warping effect near the edge, An effect you’re stuck with even if you don’t tilt the filmplane. Combine that edge warping with the way you tilted the plane, and you see the result.

If you really trust that the camera firmware removes ALL the optical warping, then you see only the effect of tilting the filmplane ... but I’m not one to believe the firmware fully corrects optical distortion. I figger it reduces it, but not 100% gone. So you’re seeing a combination but it’s majorly due to the tilt of the plane.

User ID

While I’m sure the 14-30 Z lens justifies its cost in most general photography, the application in your example can be well managed for a few hundred $$ of gear.

In case you intend to do a good amount of this type of scenes, you might consider what I assembled with no shop tools. I bought an F-mount to Sony adapter with built-in shift motion. (Acoarst yours would be to Z-mount.) To that I directly fitted an old Vivitar 17/3.5 lens. Now I have a ready to use 17mm shift lens !

Your 14mm is actually no wider than a 17mm after you do your perspective correction in post. 17/3.5 was a pretty common spec. Tamron made one thaz not too hard to find. There were some camera brand 17s as well, but those cost more.