Perspective Distortion

Yesterday Hobbs told you he would have a go at using a phone camera for wide angle distortion and that he'd probably come a cropper while doing so. Guess what. For once he was right. You know Hobbs ... he's the idiot, second from the left. He did have egg on his face but some kind person must have wiped it off.

I checked out the native full frame focal length of the lens on my relatively new phone and it turned out to be 38mm which is really far too long to come up with wideangle distortions as such. While an old phone camera of mine seemed quite good at distortions the current one isn't suitable it seems and so I led you astray there. Chances are YOUR current phone is no better.

Okay then. In an effort to demonstrate that wideangle distortions are possible with garden variety lenses, I dug out the run-o'-the-mill kit lens which came with my OMD. It's wide end pans out at 24mm ff equiv which IS quite suitable and so I rattled off four images above showing respectable perspective distortion (say that three times quickly when you've had a couple). While I have seen barrel distortion on old 24mm lenses the manufacturers today seem to be getting far too clever and  have designed lenses which show it a lot less. Some new cameras even have firmware routines which automatically remove barrel effects during JPEG processing. Makes life tough for us distortioners.

The long and the short of all this is that during yesterday's challenge, had you been after obvious barrel distortion you probably needed 15mm ff equiv lenses like mine. But if you'd been after equally interesting "perspective distortion" (as above) an everyday 24mm (ff equiv) would have done fine - provided you got close enough. In any event just about everyone who entered yesterday's wideangle distortion challenge came up with something interesting and I thank you all for participating. Results tomorrow.

Incidentally you might take a quick peek at the image above in LARGE - if you don't mind having to look at the git second from left. :o))