Wide angle shots of BIG things (Page 4): :sm24: :sm24: :sm24:...

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

Fotoartist wrote:

Do you want to know how to solve your problem with... (show quote)

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

Peterff wrote:

Thanks for the link to the more detailed explanation, perhaps a better clarification would be that fisheye lense project or map straight lines to curves of various types, as opposed to rectilinear projections.

Yup!!

And you're welcome!

David in Dallas Loc: Dallas, Texas, USA

I would agree that anamorphic distortion is specific to a certain class of lens, but is to some extent present in all of them. The wider the shot, the greater the distortion. It is all due to the problem of making an image of a 3D subject onto a flat surface--the farther off-center, the more distortion. It's not seen much (if at all) in photos shot with normal or telephoto lenses because the angles of items off-axis are small; with wide-angle lenses the distortions become large enough to be obvious, especially for items in the corners (like the barrel in the above photo by gene51).

My original objection was the declaration that anamorphic distortion was specific to "a lens"--I don't think it can be said that a particular example of a lens has worse anamorphic distortion than another of the same genre; I was attempting to indicate that it is the type of lens (normal, wide, super wide, etc.) that the phenomenon is tied to, not a specific example.

SteveR Loc: Michigan

I can use my Tamron 10-24mm on my Nikon D7000 and shoot landscapes with no distortion. It only makes sense, however, without being a physicist or engineer, that if you're going to use a 24mm focal length lens (fov 36mm) on a large item such as a ship that is much closer than infinity (a landscape), shall we say very close, the far right and far left of the subject would have to be distorted owing to their distance from the center of the ship and primary focus, even if they are in focus due to depth of field.

Others may have explained this more technically. Apaflo is right. It's not the lens, it's a matter of the distance of subject to lens.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

David in Dallas wrote:

I would agree that anamorphic distortion is specif... (show quote)

Actually, the Contax-mount Zeiss 25mm F2.8 Distagon, and the Zeiss 38mm Biogon in the Hasselblad SWC were both known for their anamorphic correction. I had both - the Biogon came off a broken SWC, and a clever technician at PhotoCare in NYC mounted it on a Sinar 4x5 lens board, and it covered 6cmx9cm. There was no focusing the lens other than by "feel" and guesswork, but you could use the 21mm accessory viewfinder from the 21mm Super Angulon made for Leica which fit perfectly in the flash shoe receptor on the Sinar standard. With a screw-on handle that had a provision to attach a cable release and a 6x9 120/220 film back you had a nice wide relatively distortion-free ultrawide camera. What I don't recall was how much field curvature there was on either lens. I no longer have these, so I can't check them out.

http://fotobistro.com/the-hasselblad-superwide-a-most-amazing-camera-and-lens/

Fotoartist Loc: Detroit, Michigan

Thanks for the thumbs up.

Gene51 wrote:

aellman Loc: Boston MA

Dragonophile wrote:

I have a nice Canon 24-105 L lens on a Canon 7D body. I take pictures of ships - container and tankers. I notice when I get very close to them and shoot near the wide end of the lens, the pictures are very distorted looking. The proportions are just odd. Are there any lenses, prime or zoom, that might do a better job or is this an inherent fact of photography one must accept? Now, I just get my best pictures by letting the ships get more distant and avoid super closeups.

A wide angle lens, by its nature, creates perspective "distortion." Use a longer lens setting to avoid this.
Experiment with which focal length on your zoom gives you the perspective you are looking for. Should be an easy fix. >Alan

MW

Apaflo wrote:

What you are seeing is perspective distortion that is related to relative distances from the camera to different objects. It is totally independant of the lens.

Back off your camera to subject distance and there will be less distortion. You might also try a full frame sensor using a similar focal length to achieve the same framing at a better distance.

I was about to say the same but add that it is very difficult to recognize the distortion unless one is actually looking for it. Our brains to a lot image processing we are not aware of. If you look a painting or drawing of a building you will often (but not always) see a lot of parallel lines, vertical and horizontal that would NOT be parallel in a photo. That said, times change and I recently visited a show where I was quite sure the artist had drawn at least in part from a photo. Not just non-parallel lines but near objects were drawn out of focus! I sort of thought I had a gotcha but on reading the artists statement the photo-like aspects were acknowledged as deliberate and explained using artist babble that went over my head.

Anyway as to the OPs issue. There are two solutions I can think of: ONE - use a longer focal length and stand further back (may not the feasible/practical). TWO - make a linear panorama.

CatMarley Loc: North Carolina

Dragonophile wrote:

I have a nice Canon 24-105 L lens on a Canon 7D body. I take pictures of ships - container and tankers. I notice when I get very close to them and shoot near the wide end of the lens, the pictures are very distorted looking. The proportions are just odd. Are there any lenses, prime or zoom, that might do a better job or is this an inherent fact of photography one must accept? Now, I just get my best pictures by letting the ships get more distant and avoid super closeups.

You are fighting Physics - an incurable effect of living in this universe. The problem is perspective, and optically has everything to do with distance to the subject, irrespective of the lens.

joegim Loc: Long Island, NY

David in Dallas wrote:

I would agree that anamorphic distortion is specif... (show quote)

Interestingly one way to minimize distortion is to have a cylindrical film "plane". A rotating drum with a vertical slit the progressively exposes the film. See this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ntd868kuTE

David in Dallas Loc: Dallas, Texas, USA

joegim wrote:

Interestingly one way to minimize distortion is to have a cylindrical film "plane". A rotating drum with a vertical slit the progressively exposes the film. See this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ntd868kuTE

In 1955 my high school Senior class went to Washington, DC and a larger version of that camera was used to photograph our group of over 400 students. We stood in a circular arc in front of the camera and it took several seconds to make the exposure. (A few wags ran around the back and got into the photo twice.)

Fotoartist Loc: Detroit, Michigan

See my response about panning a moving ship with a stable camera and tripod.

joegim wrote:

Interestingly one way to minimize distortion is to have a cylindrical film "plane". A rotating drum with a vertical slit the progressively exposes the film. See this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ntd868kuTE

aellman Loc: Boston MA

David in Dallas wrote:

In 1955 my high school Senior class went to Washington, DC and a larger version of that camera was used to photograph our group of over 400 students. We stood in a circular arc in front of the camera and it took several seconds to make the exposure. (A few wags ran around the back and got into the photo twice.)

Circuit camera. The uninitiated cannot imagine how the same person can be in a photo twice in two different places.

Peterff Loc: O'er The Hills and Far Away, in Themyscira.

aellman wrote:

Circuit camera. The uninitiated cannot imagine how the same person can be in a photo twice in two different places.

Now it would called 'Photoshopped' and wouldn't puzzle anybody. With a large group, you didn't even have to run very fast.

aellman Loc: Boston MA

Peterff wrote:

Now it would called 'Photoshopped' and wouldn't puzzle anybody. With a large group, you didn't even have to run very fast.

Spring-wound... the ultimate non-digital solution. I am old enough to have lived during the analog era, and there were some advantages. >Alan