Canon SD800is wide angle & landscape image questions

[supe]

Hi,

I recently purchased an SD800is mainly because I liked the idea of a wide angle lens. I like taking pictures of street scenes, landscapes, etc.

I've taken pictures in both Wide Angle and Normal modes, but it seems that all Wide Angle does is crop a few hundred pixels from the top and bottom of the image. I don't think I'm getting more picture laterally. Does the SD800 have a lousy lens? Or is this all Wide Angle is supposed to do?

Second question: when I take distant landscape pictures, particularly of the ocean, the resultant picture is skewed as though the curvature of the earth has been exaggerated. The ocean is visibly concaved. Again, is this a result of a lousy lens?

Any tips would be appreciated, thanks.

[Jon]

I think you're confusing "Widescreen" with "Wide angle". Widescreeen merely changes the "aspect ratio", the ratio between the height and length of the picture, to match that of a widescreen movie or TV. To do that, it does crop some off the top and bottom of the picture. Wide angle is what you get when you zoom the lens all the way "in", so it sees the most.

As for the curvature you're seeing, could you post an example?

[supe]

Thanks for the clarification between "wide angle" and "wide screen". For some reason I thought there was a mode that had wider angles, but now that I think about it, another lens would have to appear out of thin air. Silly...

The following link shows an example with some curvature on the water's edge in the distance, but there are pictures where it's even more pronounced:
http://img185.imagevenue.com/loc44/th_94247_STA_0651_122_44lo.jpg (http://img185.imagevenue.com/img.php?image=94247_STA_0651_122_44lo.jpg).

I stumbled on some information about this effect... I think it's barrel/pincushion distortion. Supposedly it can be corrected with Photoshop (and automatically corrected with Photoshop CS2). I'll play around with my image editors and see what I can do.

Thanks again.

[Jon]

Looks like a little barrel distortion, augmented by the earth's curvature. Unless it shows up in close-in shots, I wouldn't fret too much about it. As you say, many photo editors can correct this if desired.

[Tumak]

You aren't thinking of the Panorama mode are you? There is a Panorama mode, not to be confused with the 35mm film panorama mode. It allows you to take multi pictures moving the camera and then stitching them together later, using same focus and exposure for all pictures.