rileydmcdonald
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Hey there! New to the forum, not to photography. I came here because I don't know where else to turn, and I really hope you can help me.
My pictures seem distorted, I'm not sure what to do, and I'm trying not to panic after spending a couple thousand dollars upgrading to a new camera and lens when my old ones were perfectly fine. Here's the deal:
I used to have an X-T10 and a Rokinon 12mm f2 NCS, both of which I loved dearly. I recently upgraded my camera to a new X-T4, sold the Rokinon, and bought a used Fujifilm 16mm f1.4 for a very reasonable price (in very good condition). Maybe I'm just getting used to the X-T4 and the 16mm, but I find myself frustrated by leveling issues with the camera and distortion with the lens.
Last month, part of me wondered if it was the Rokinon 12mm — it's a wide lens! Maybe my tolerance for distortion suddenly went down getting the X-T4 (I used the 12mm on the X-T4 for a few weeks before I sold it to get the 16mm). Still, this has been bugging me. Especially today: I tried to shoot a panorama and got horribly distorted edges on several of the photos.
I've searched everywhere for "16mm f1.4 distortion" and everyone and their dog says this lens is perfect — no distortion, one of Fuji's best, incredible glass, etc. Am I just using it wrong?
Here are the pictures that brought me to the forum. I know they have other issues, and they're unedited save for Lightroom's auto-stitching for panos, but here's what I mean:
Panorama merge - cylindrical projection (X-T4, Fuji 16mm f1.4)
panorama merge - perspective projection (X-T4, Fuji 16mm f1.4)
I know projection choices make a difference, and I've seen this before, but the difference on those is aggressive, and neither is true to life. The actual size of that right-side building is somewhere in between those two photos.
Anyway, a pano is only as good as its source images, so here's what I shot:
Second in the panorama series (X-T4, Fuji 16mm f1.4)
Third in the panorama series (X-T4, Fuji 16mm f1.4)
After thoroughly wracking my nerves with the building distortion, I took some test shots of a bowl in my living room:
Bowl, centered in room (X-T4, Fuji 16mm f1.4)
Bowl, left of the frame (X-T4, Fuji 16mm f1.4)
In those pics above, all I did was turn my camera — no movement otherwise — and to my eyes, the bowl looks a LOT bigger in the edge of the frame than in the centre. Same with the building in the source photos — at the edge of the frame, it's extremely stretched out. Is that not distortion? I thought the 16mm didn't do that! Is there something wrong with this particular lens, or was I misinformed?
I picked panoramic projections carefully when I shot with the Rokinon 12mm — and I was definitely aware of some distortion — but I don't ever recall having to deal with anything this bad unless I was really close to my subject. Distortion on my X-T10 with the 12mm seemed to be fairly well corrected, even as I imported RAW files into my computer.
I know all wide angles will have some distortion, but when everyone says "the 16mm is optically perfect" and I'm getting extreme distortions like these, it makes me nervous. Especially since I can't remember having issues like this with the wider, cheaper lens I had before.
Here's a photo I took with the 12mm, and to my eye, I don't think any of the edges were distorted:
Single image (not pano) shot with X-T10 and Rokinon 12mm f2
And for a slightly more apples-to-apples comparison, here are two panoramas, comprised of two pictures stitched together— one with previous hardware and one with new hardware:
View attachment 4130ce0b3e8649e282adeca9203e7b82.jpg
Two-photo panorama, shot with X-T10 and Rokinon 12mm f2
Two-photo panorama, shot with X-T4 and Fuji 16mm
I know the angle is a bit different, and the crop, and the season. But the 12mm still seemed less distorted, somehow. Or maybe I was just used to it.
Another example (without pics because I'm dumb and deleted it): A couple weeks ago I took a photo of a building with the word "smile" painted across the whole side of it — letters over 7 feet tall — with the X-T4 and the 16mm lens. It looked fine in camera, and decent when I was editing up close, but I found a couple feet away from the screen that the "I" in "SMILE" was clearly larger than the other letters, and it was in the centre. Does that not sound like distortion? I was across the street from the building on the sidewalk, so it's not like I was close enough to cause wide-angle close-up distortion.
I'm freaking out a bit. Any tips, tricks, insights? Are my expectations unreasonable? Is the lens/camera an anomalous dud? Is there something I missed about the lens/the camera? Is distortion just inevitable and I'm way off? Are people wrong about it being a "perfect" lens? Can I change a setting somewhere in the camera to fix it?
To be clear, I know I can mess with pics in Lightroom, but I'd like to do as little editing to correct for distortion as possible.
To be clear, I bought the X-T10 brand new in 2016 and used it until late last year, when I bought the X-T4 as an upgrade. Same with the lens — I used the Rokinon until last month, and then I sold it to fund the 16mm. I recognize I had a LOT of time to get to know that combo, so it's possible I'm still just getting used to the new stuff. But I'm frustrated by some of the photos I've gotten with the new gear (like I said, distortion issues and I'm finding it's not level when it says it is), and I'm worried I spent so much money on a new camera and new lens only to be disappointed. I know the gear doesn't make the photographer, but I sometimes feel like this camera took me a step back instead of a step forward.
Please, please tell me I'm wrong somehow. I'm stressing every time I take and edit a photo, and that's the exact opposite of why I love photography. I've found a lot of insightful answers here before, so I thought if anyone could help me, it would be you.
Thank you for reading this. Any insight at all is appreciated.
P.S. is it possible the image sensor itself could be askew? I turned on the X-T4 without a lens earlier (IBIS on), and I could be imagining, but it seemed like the edges of the sensor weren't quite lined up right. Should I talk to Fuji?
My pictures seem distorted, I'm not sure what to do, and I'm trying not to panic after spending a couple thousand dollars upgrading to a new camera and lens when my old ones were perfectly fine. Here's the deal:
I used to have an X-T10 and a Rokinon 12mm f2 NCS, both of which I loved dearly. I recently upgraded my camera to a new X-T4, sold the Rokinon, and bought a used Fujifilm 16mm f1.4 for a very reasonable price (in very good condition). Maybe I'm just getting used to the X-T4 and the 16mm, but I find myself frustrated by leveling issues with the camera and distortion with the lens.
Last month, part of me wondered if it was the Rokinon 12mm — it's a wide lens! Maybe my tolerance for distortion suddenly went down getting the X-T4 (I used the 12mm on the X-T4 for a few weeks before I sold it to get the 16mm). Still, this has been bugging me. Especially today: I tried to shoot a panorama and got horribly distorted edges on several of the photos.
I've searched everywhere for "16mm f1.4 distortion" and everyone and their dog says this lens is perfect — no distortion, one of Fuji's best, incredible glass, etc. Am I just using it wrong?
Here are the pictures that brought me to the forum. I know they have other issues, and they're unedited save for Lightroom's auto-stitching for panos, but here's what I mean:
Panorama merge - cylindrical projection (X-T4, Fuji 16mm f1.4)
panorama merge - perspective projection (X-T4, Fuji 16mm f1.4)
I know projection choices make a difference, and I've seen this before, but the difference on those is aggressive, and neither is true to life. The actual size of that right-side building is somewhere in between those two photos.
Anyway, a pano is only as good as its source images, so here's what I shot:
Second in the panorama series (X-T4, Fuji 16mm f1.4)
Third in the panorama series (X-T4, Fuji 16mm f1.4)
After thoroughly wracking my nerves with the building distortion, I took some test shots of a bowl in my living room:
Bowl, centered in room (X-T4, Fuji 16mm f1.4)
Bowl, left of the frame (X-T4, Fuji 16mm f1.4)
In those pics above, all I did was turn my camera — no movement otherwise — and to my eyes, the bowl looks a LOT bigger in the edge of the frame than in the centre. Same with the building in the source photos — at the edge of the frame, it's extremely stretched out. Is that not distortion? I thought the 16mm didn't do that! Is there something wrong with this particular lens, or was I misinformed?
I picked panoramic projections carefully when I shot with the Rokinon 12mm — and I was definitely aware of some distortion — but I don't ever recall having to deal with anything this bad unless I was really close to my subject. Distortion on my X-T10 with the 12mm seemed to be fairly well corrected, even as I imported RAW files into my computer.
I know all wide angles will have some distortion, but when everyone says "the 16mm is optically perfect" and I'm getting extreme distortions like these, it makes me nervous. Especially since I can't remember having issues like this with the wider, cheaper lens I had before.
Here's a photo I took with the 12mm, and to my eye, I don't think any of the edges were distorted:
Single image (not pano) shot with X-T10 and Rokinon 12mm f2
And for a slightly more apples-to-apples comparison, here are two panoramas, comprised of two pictures stitched together— one with previous hardware and one with new hardware:
View attachment 4130ce0b3e8649e282adeca9203e7b82.jpg
Two-photo panorama, shot with X-T10 and Rokinon 12mm f2
Two-photo panorama, shot with X-T4 and Fuji 16mm
I know the angle is a bit different, and the crop, and the season. But the 12mm still seemed less distorted, somehow. Or maybe I was just used to it.
Another example (without pics because I'm dumb and deleted it): A couple weeks ago I took a photo of a building with the word "smile" painted across the whole side of it — letters over 7 feet tall — with the X-T4 and the 16mm lens. It looked fine in camera, and decent when I was editing up close, but I found a couple feet away from the screen that the "I" in "SMILE" was clearly larger than the other letters, and it was in the centre. Does that not sound like distortion? I was across the street from the building on the sidewalk, so it's not like I was close enough to cause wide-angle close-up distortion.
I'm freaking out a bit. Any tips, tricks, insights? Are my expectations unreasonable? Is the lens/camera an anomalous dud? Is there something I missed about the lens/the camera? Is distortion just inevitable and I'm way off? Are people wrong about it being a "perfect" lens? Can I change a setting somewhere in the camera to fix it?
To be clear, I know I can mess with pics in Lightroom, but I'd like to do as little editing to correct for distortion as possible.
To be clear, I bought the X-T10 brand new in 2016 and used it until late last year, when I bought the X-T4 as an upgrade. Same with the lens — I used the Rokinon until last month, and then I sold it to fund the 16mm. I recognize I had a LOT of time to get to know that combo, so it's possible I'm still just getting used to the new stuff. But I'm frustrated by some of the photos I've gotten with the new gear (like I said, distortion issues and I'm finding it's not level when it says it is), and I'm worried I spent so much money on a new camera and new lens only to be disappointed. I know the gear doesn't make the photographer, but I sometimes feel like this camera took me a step back instead of a step forward.
Please, please tell me I'm wrong somehow. I'm stressing every time I take and edit a photo, and that's the exact opposite of why I love photography. I've found a lot of insightful answers here before, so I thought if anyone could help me, it would be you.
Thank you for reading this. Any insight at all is appreciated.
P.S. is it possible the image sensor itself could be askew? I turned on the X-T4 without a lens earlier (IBIS on), and I could be imagining, but it seemed like the edges of the sensor weren't quite lined up right. Should I talk to Fuji?
