Re: Dpreview straightens out distortion correction

As someone who works with architecture I'm glad its been noticed that barrel distortion has become both acceptable and the norm with wide angle lenses. I'm sure there are people who have never used a nearly distortion free wide angle. Granted, a lot of this has to do with the public's desire for wide-angle zooms which are impossible to make rectilinear but even fixed focal length wide angles cannot render a straight line these days. Even PC lenses.

Whether you believe these are clever trade-offs or just a way to make cheaper lenses one thing I do not see is that accepting distortion makes for more compact lenses. Perhaps its a requirement for digital sensors, but many lenses for digital cameras are just enormous relative to the size of the sensor. I recently saw a new Sony "compact" that appears to be a large lens with a tiny body attached.