Myrddhn wrote:
Hi,
I am very new to the Canon M50 and advanced photography
Welcome to the Forum, and thanks for posting!
and may ask dumb questions
Every question has an answer. And good answers have been provided thus far, so I'll be brief (plus I have to head to work!).
but I'm a bit disappointed by some of the pictures I've taken with the Canon.
Every camera presents its own challenges. It just takes a while to work through them.
I have all the options for Lens Aberration Correction applied, but am now wondering if applying them may not even be the cause of the problem.
I apply them to all images.
Any comments and suggestions would be appreciated!
This Image was taken two weeks ago:

Nicely photographed actually.
What irritates me is that the two buildings on the sides seem to be leaning in on each other. Other images I've taken don't show this effect as profoundly.
This is a physical effect called Keystoning, caused primarily by tilting the camera up or down, and also by your shooting location. You might not be initially aware that you're doing it, but it will profoundly affect your images (as you've seen here).
Keystoning is a type of perspective distortion, and has been around since the beginning of time. You would have to place the blame on Aristotle rather than Canon methinks.
Fortunately there are things you can do to mitigate these effects while you are shooting (do a search), or to "correct" the distortion in post processing (I too like DxO's Viewpoint software). DxO has (IMHO) the world's best noise reduction technology in their Photolab 6 software, and the two programs go hand in hand.
The questions I have around this:
1) Does aperture have anything to do with aberration? (this is the dumb question)
No. And aberration has nothing to do with perspective distortion.
2) This was shot with the general purpose standard lens that came with the M50, i.e. no wide angle and no telephoto. Is this a perhaps a wide angle artifact because of the all-purpose nature of the lens?
The wider the angle, the more pronounced the distortion can be (perspective distortion is really determined by your viewpoint actually).
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/explora/photography/tips-and-solutions/perspective-distortion-photographic-composition
BTW 15mm (on a crop-sensor camera) is considered to be very wide angle. Anything wider would be considered to be Ultra-wide angle.
3) It seems like the in camera settings for aberration correction had no effect, or would it have been worse without them enabled?
No effect. Aberration correction basically straightens bent lines, not converging lines.
4) I haven't tried any software, not even the Canon Utilities. Would they be able to correct this, since the effect goes quite far into the center of the picture?
If you use Photoshop, you can correct with certain techniques. Here's one tutorial...
https://www.photoshopessentials.com/photo-editing/keystoning/
Anyway, it's not the worst shot I've taken, so I'm not having sleepless nights over it, but I would like to understand the lens artifacts a bit better.
Fortunately there are things that YOU can do to minimize this effect (if so desired). Or you can use this effect to your advantage creatively even. Knowledge will open new doors for you!
Thank you!
Andi
Enjoy your new camera!
R2