I'm embarrassed to show this photo but I have a question. Why are the lines going every which way? The line of the pole is mostly/ kind of straight, but the windows are almost diagonal. I'd like to be able to control this in the future. Maybe someday I'll want the lines all crazy for some reason (?), but in general I'd like to understand how to keep this from happening
Lens distortion. I should elaborate just a little - the wider angle (field of view) the lens provides your more likely to see this. Also the quality of the lens. Some editing programs have the ability to fix this without much effort on your part. You can sometimes minimize the effect by taking care of where you place the horizon of the shot. The effect would be more noticeable the further it is from the center or middle of the lens. I didn't check your shot info to see your camera type, but if your camera/lens has zoom that is also an option to minimize this effect. Zoom in and step back = usually less lens distortion.
I hate that. Not the photo, I mean the lines going every which way.
I'm sure it's partly psychological, with the brain looking for and failing to find "order", but in a lot of cases you're also photographing something at an odd angle )perspective), photographing something (the shopping trollies, or carts, whatever you happen to call them were you're from) which has its own unusual angles.
Having seen this, I have a suggestion (and it really is just a suggestion) - get down low and take a shot of those wheels, and maybe the metal holding them, along a line of them. It might make an interesting shot :)
@rellimdj Thank you. You not only helped me understand it, but also ideas of how to work around it. The camera I take to work is a P&S (Canon Power Shot Elph 115). I've seen it now & then with my DSLR, but never to this extreme.
@kaesebiscuit You're very right about the wheel hardware. Unfortunately I'd only just pulled out my camera and shot this one image before the taxi arrived. I was too tired to pick up the camera again after I got home.
@paulty That was all very interesting. I thought I didn't see it in the viewfinder because I was in such a rush. I'm going to have to experiment with this. Not that I want parallax or lens distortion in my photos, but I find it intriguing.
@herussell - sorry, i felt bad after I left the comment and didn't say more. But it appeared to me that everyone had already left useful information. :-)
So. Case closed. On the other hand you can also switch to a cool retro technical camera to manage the perspective in your images.
Or you can make the magic happen using Photoshop or some other software to straighten out you results. It's the one thing I do pretty often... @jbucovetsky Don't forget to mention it if you do so, after reading the previous discussion.
@mastermek Yes, case closed. I can't afford a cool retro technical camera, so I'll have to make do with learning these things and resorting to Photoshop on occasion. Though, honestly, my PS skills are not something I can often count on.
No, it's not lens distortion, but perspective distortion. Some people confuse the terms, probably because correction for this in Photoshop ACR or Lightroom is on the same panel called "lens correction." It is most often caused by tilting of the camera, either vertically, which would give you diverging or converging vertical lines, or horizontally where you have one side of the camera more forward than the other. Here I suspect you have both things going on. Just hold the camera on a parallel horizontal and vertical plane you don't need any fancy camera to do that. This happens a lot with phone cameras too.
Sometimes the effect is on purpose. You see this with shooting tall buildings especially where the camera is angled upwards. It is, actually, a favorite technique I use often. It can also be caused with a very wide angle lens (10-15mm full frame DSLR) and you get significantly inward leaning verticals. Such images can be kept as shot, or as others have pointed out, you can often correct or adjust in an editor.
After reading @frankhymus comment and having a spare moment I thought it would be nice to get rid of the perspective. So I did. What's left is just the lens distortion because it was clear you had both distortions in your image.
Yep - definitely parallax, or perpective distortion. Easy enough to correct in Photoshop or similar as Mek has so ably demonstrated. I use this feature in PS all the time. Alternatively you could invest in a "tilt and shift" lens...but they ain't cheap!
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I'm sure it's partly psychological, with the brain looking for and failing to find "order", but in a lot of cases you're also photographing something at an odd angle )perspective), photographing something (the shopping trollies, or carts, whatever you happen to call them were you're from) which has its own unusual angles.
Having seen this, I have a suggestion (and it really is just a suggestion) - get down low and take a shot of those wheels, and maybe the metal holding them, along a line of them. It might make an interesting shot :)
I think you will find this interesting..... It's all about parallax....
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=parallax+in+photography&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-gb&client=safari
@kaesebiscuit You're very right about the wheel hardware. Unfortunately I'd only just pulled out my camera and shot this one image before the taxi arrived. I was too tired to pick up the camera again after I got home.
@paulty That was all very interesting. I thought I didn't see it in the viewfinder because I was in such a rush. I'm going to have to experiment with this. Not that I want parallax or lens distortion in my photos, but I find it intriguing.
;-P
Or you can make the magic happen using Photoshop or some other software to straighten out you results. It's the one thing I do pretty often... @jbucovetsky Don't forget to mention it if you do so, after reading the previous discussion.
@mastermek Yes, case closed. I can't afford a cool retro technical camera, so I'll have to make do with learning these things and resorting to Photoshop on occasion. Though, honestly, my PS skills are not something I can often count on.
Sometimes the effect is on purpose. You see this with shooting tall buildings especially where the camera is angled upwards. It is, actually, a favorite technique I use often. It can also be caused with a very wide angle lens (10-15mm full frame DSLR) and you get significantly inward leaning verticals. Such images can be kept as shot, or as others have pointed out, you can often correct or adjust in an editor.