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Lens distortion at 18mm?

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LarryInNYC

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[Note: Brand new P&S upgrader here, you can reasonably assume I know nothing about anything having to do with photography]

Here are three photos of a brick wall (the ugliest I could find) from my new NEX 3. They were taken with the 18-55 at 18 and 55, and with the 16.

The only one that appears to me to show significant distortion is the 18-55 at 18mm, and that distortion looks really pretty bad.

Do these photos look more or less "right" for these lenses and focal lengths?











 
you will have some barrel distortion with any zoom lens; some are much better than others. the 18-200 does have some distortion as well, but it's much less than the 18-55, at least my copies are
 
It would be nice if this were fixed in-camera for jpgs, as the m4/3 cameras do.

It can be corrected very well using software such as Lightroom, but this is pretty expensive (and it has to be said very rewarding). I am not aware of any very cheap/free solutions, but I may be wrong.

--
A rose by any other name is still a chicken.
 
First pic below was shot with SEL18200 at 18mm - straight OOC (JPG).

2nd pic is same pic after (JPG) barrel distortion and CA correction.

Third pic shows crop detail (part of lantern at extreme upper left) before and after correction.
  • (yes, it would be nice if an in-camera JPG engine could do this automatically)
Here is an animated view of the two pics (it would also be nice if dpreview would allow gif files)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JH-OtrBnRtQ











 
PTLens corrects this distortion with a special module for the NEX 18-55 (batching and fast).

RAW converter DxO has a special module for the 18-55 that corrects distortion, CA, vignetting, lens softness too.
 
Jan Hoogwegt said:
RAW converter DxO has a special module for the 18-55 that corrects distortion, CA, vignetting, lens softness too.
Click to expand...
Thanks, I'm planning on trying DxO first as my all-around "developer" for the camera, but I'm waiting until I'm more comfortable actually taking pictures (so much to learn!). I'm taking the camera to Ireland in a week or two, when I come back I'll probably give the trial version of DxO a spin to see what my work flow would look like.
 
For comparison sake - DxO corrected image below







 
LarryInNYC said:
Do these photos look more or less "right" for these lenses and focal lengths?
Click to expand...
Yes, the distortion you show matches my experience of these lenses at those focal lengths

The 16mm lens has significantly less distortion than the 18-55 lens @18mm, but on the other hand it also has softer corners - swings and roundabouts! It depends what you are photographing as to how much of a problem the distortion at widest angle presents - sometimes the 'bulging' at this angle gives rather an impressive effect!
 
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