To: Photologging - Re: distortion on 32mm lens.
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Photologging wrote:
Im considering the 32 mm together with the 22 mm, and one of the points favorable to the 32 was the suposed superior distortion performance, apart that i like the focal distance, but after seeing this picture of the boat and the tower i dont really know...
https://3.img-dpreview.com/files/g/TS560x560~3829269.jpg
the one of the tower and the ship has very noticeable distortion.
Is there any review speaking abot the geometric distortion of this lens.
Thank you
The distortion of the building in the distance is more of a perspective distortion. The same will apply to the brickwork in some of the shots below. As long as it's a tilt and not a curvature I think this is to be expected for a focal length like this.
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I think the 32mm f/1.4 lens is considered to have the least amount of distortion for a lens with its focal length. In that shot, the building and associated light poles were constructed in the 1840s. There's physical distortion on the building due to repeat repairs and rendering to the convict-cut sandstone on the facade of the structure. but I chose not to try and alter it for the shot. As for the building in the distance, I wasn't using the Level on the camera display since the sun was behind me. The bottom of the ship has a fence nearby and it's likewise at a skewed angle from where I was shooting. That's a tall ship ... and the building in the distance is even taller. Unless you use a tilt-shift lens or a lens with closer to 100mm+ on it, you're going to experience some degree of optical distortion when it comes to very close subjects or a mixture of close, medium and distant subjects. It's just a property of optical physics. Canon says of this lens "One aspherical element reduces distortion and spherical aberration". Canon Australia says "subjects captured with this lens are flattering with no discernible distortion." .
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Some more images from this lens (below) show how little distortion is produced...
No optical correction has been applied to these images during processing after downloading. I do have lens-correction enabled on the camera. Remember that this is a 32mm lens that is cropped when used on an APS-C camera sensor, producing a focal length that resembles 50mm. Another lens which produces limited and well controlled distortion is the 28mm Macro lens. However, this is a wide-angle Macro lens so for closeups it does distort the subject. Yet for architecture the distortion is well controlled.
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Below are shots from the 32mm lens. Some of these I haven't posted previously. They should help you decide...
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Different ship.








The pole on the right is actually set at an angle. The black pole is likewise tilted slightly
