StanMac Loc: Tennessee

Convergence of vertical and horizontal lines is a natural visual phenomenon. Your camera sees what your eyes see. Some correction for certain architectural subjects is acceptable and makes the image appear more as our mind’s eye sees it. But trying to correct the convergence on an image of a skyscraper, for example, would result in an image that is unacceptable, IMO. It is odd in a way that horizontal convergence is acceptable but we seem to feel that vertical convergence needs to be corrected as a defect or shortcoming in an image.

Stan

Charlie157 Loc: San Diego, CA

What type of lens are you using. If it's a wide angle lens you will have distortion where the top part of the photo will tilt inwards

Retina Loc: Near Charleston,SC

When photographing buildings from the ground with a shift lens in order to keep the image plane plumb, the effect is like using a longer focal length lens for the top of a building than for the lower floors. Shifts may keep the building face parallel with the sensor/film, but it also expands the image of the upper floors relative to the lower ones. The same effect occurs when applying stretch in post. Stretch applies the same graduated zoom lens effect just like like tilting the easel in the darkroom to make the same correction. (Of course you lose some resolution in the stretched portion of the print.)

A full and drastic correction, as stated earlier, strikes us as artificial. In person, and partly because our retinas are curved, we do not see the effect of different focal lengths when using peripheral vision or just moving our eyes up and down as we do all the time without thinking about it. As stated by cdayton, we are also used to see converging lines with out eyes. We are so used to it in a 3D world that manipulating the image or the lens to keep the lines parallel in the image causes the tops of buildings to seem unnaturally expanded. To mitigate the problem of using flat image planes to cover varying distances in the same photo and while trying to prevent convergence, I try to be as far away from a building as possible and use a longer lens. Not always easy where objects near the building are blocking the view.

kenArchi Loc: Seal Beach, CA

Disney built Main Street buildings out of plumb.
Do you know why.

ecurb Loc: Metro Chicago Area

Just level the camera front to back and right to left.

DennisC. Loc: Antelope, CA

“Real” architectural photographers have always used view cameras, you need both front and rear movements to do it right.

MJPerini

I think the question has been answered so I won't repeat but just emphasize the importance of having the sensor plane Level, plumb and free of Yaw with respect to the plane of the building.
Getting the sensor Plane Parallel to another 'surface' is actually not that easy, because our eyes/brain compensate for it.
It is the same for all cameras. Full Frame cameras have the one advantage that usually, the widest angle lenses with low distortion are widely available for them.
For your problem of standing in the middle of the street and getting buildings on both sides, the rules are the same, but you have to visualize an image plane parallel to your sensor.
The more you get right in the camera, the better post processing software corrections work.
There is nothing wrong with software corrections, but the more extreme they have to be the more of your image you will lose, and sometimes sharpness too.
Always start with the widest lens with least distortion you can afford. Then the rule is usually use he longest wide angle that fits the whole subject. Because some distortion comes purely from your position relative to the subject.( Just try taking a portrait from 1 Foot away with a fine distortion free wide angle lens, the resulting 'Giant Nose & tiny ears are the result of Perspective distortion caused by relative position of camera to subject)
Second, Our eyes 'expect' convergence of tall parallel lines, so expert architectural photographers often find that slightly 'under corrected' images look more natural than technically perfect correction.
Lastly, If you have access to a tilt /shift lens the function you want is Rise. Which is a vertical shift, with the lens remaining parallel to the film plane. T/S lenses like Canon's 17MM & 24MM have image circles large enough to cover some MF cameras (on which they would have a much larger angle of view) so by shifting the lens relative to the film plane you are capturing a different part of that wider angle of view. They are also dead sharp and distortion free. On a tripod you can also do shift stitching of 3 or more exposures.
I hope this helps.

marty wild Loc: England

You need photoshop or another editing software to prospectively pull it back that’s how the professional do it

nervous2 Loc: Provo, Utah

Our eye/brain system is indeed a wonderful thing. Our eyes register the same distortion thru their lenses but the brain does the almost simultaneous processing to fix it and we don't notice as much. It's kind of like when my daughter-in-law takes my picture with her cell phone from a distance of two feet. I tell her my nose is big enough already so back up to about six feet and zoom in. She has no idea what I'm talking about.

JimRPhoto Loc: Raleigh NC

Others have contributed about either a perspective control (tilt & shift) lens, which can be expensive, or else correct in post processing. Elements has a very easy-to-use feature to do this, but your original must have enough space across the bottom of the building to be able to keep all the building features in. What is not mentioned is that the Olympus camera bodies (both the OM-D line, and the PEN-F line) have built in keystone correction. Both horizontal and vertical, but you can only use one at a time. JimR.

LWW Loc: Banana Republic of America

He was plumb crazy?

Hazmatman Loc: Santa Maria California

Perspective is a problem of physics. It wasn't discovered until the Renaissance. Today with small format cameras it's difficult avoid the slanting and tipping buildings and other structures if you want to do it in camera it will mean keeping the camera sensor parallel to the subject, which may mean a wider angle lens or a shifting lens or changing position. Here's a picture of a abandoned refinery. This photograph was taken in 2000 with a Sony seven megapixel camera leveled horizontal on three dimensions.

We didn't have 100 foot ladder so we used a heavy duty model helicopter powered by 3 hp weed Wacker engine. We able to control the camera and the carrier from the ground through a of visual downlink. We didn't know the word drone.

If we are looking up or down our standard camera will record images with the same perspective that we actually see. Sometimes the image gives a better story than one that is completely square.

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Yes to that. And we are also distorting our photos to convey what we experientially know to be true about the structure of the building ... which is nothing at all like what our eyes actually see.

We have no complaint when the road in a photo appears to taper off into the far distance when we KNOW that the road maintains a constant width all the way to the horizon and beyond.

And we object to “barrel distortion” but it is actually more mathematically correct and accurate as a representation of normal perspective as compared to the fabled “distortion free lens”.

Barrel “distortion” is simply a partial failure of the lens to deliver the forced rectilinear result the lens is designed to deliver. But rectilinear projection conflicts with true perspective.

kenArchi Loc: Seal Beach, CA

All of Disney structures are forced perspective to give the illusion of being large.
So taking photos of them will never be perspectively correct?

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Or maybe ALWAYS correct ?