Wide angle lens that doesn't distort people at wider than 16mm

When I am photographing a wedding party near the front, I have a 16-35/2.8 on my 5D2 to capture the entire wedding party. However, it distorts (even after post-treatment) the wedding party members at the far ends of the bridal and groom parties. Can anyone recommend a lens that would enable me to capture the entire wedding party from close up and which minimises this distortion? I have been thinking about either canon's 14mm prime or a third party wide zoom (e.g. 12-24). Thanks!

Heya,

It's not the "lens" really, it's the focal length. Depending on where your subjects fall into the composition in the frame, an ultrawide will distort them. This is why your zoom has 24mm and 35mm as options, back up if you can. If you cannot back up, you're not going to find an ultrawide that is as wide as 14mm, 15mm and 16mm, or even 17mm on full frame that isn't going to distort in the corners at the very least.

When it comes to ultrawides, it's about embracing the distortion.

Very best,

As mentioned above, it's perspective distortion and all UWA lenses will render that effect (and it's especially noticible with people). If it's an option, back up. The further away you can get from the group, the more you'll minimize the perspective distortion.

It's not the lens.

Perspective distortion as described by the OP is caused by being too close to the subject and electing to use a short-enough focal length to capture the whole scene. The ONLY solution is to get further back from the subject (group) and use a longer focal length to maintain the framing.

Please read our "sticky" (found in the General Photography Talk forum) tutorial titled Perspective Control in Images - Focal Length or Distance?.

To fix these you'd have to move up to a larger format like 645,where even a 50mm is wide, 35mm is SUPER wide.

You could also stitch together a lot of pictures with a longer focal length, the problem is that these people are moving, so that gets thrown out.

shadowdancer wrote in post #17263558
When I am photographing a wedding party near the front, I have a 16-35/2.8 on my 5D2 to capture the entire wedding party. However, it distorts (even after post-treatment) the wedding party members at the far ends of the bridal and groom parties. Can anyone recommend a lens that would enable me to capture the entire wedding party from close up and which minimises this distortion? I have been thinking about either canon's 14mm prime or a third party wide zoom (e.g. 12-24). Thanks!

What about a specialty lens like the TSE 17mm or the TSE 24 ?

maverick75 wrote in post #17263773
To fix these you'd have to move up to a larger format like 645,where even a 50mm is wide, 35mm is SUPER wide.

You could also stitch together a lot of pictures with a longer focal length, the problem is that these people are moving, so that gets thrown out.

I could be wrong, but I don't think changing the format will get rid of perspective distortion if you're standing too close to the subject.

maverick75 wrote in post #17263773
To fix these you'd have to move up to a larger format like 645,where even a 50mm is wide, 35mm is SUPER wide.

That makes no difference. Format doesn't fix this.

To put it in terms that most people here would understand, if you shoot a group at 10mm on 1.6X format and then take the same shot from the same place at 16mm on 35mm format, you will get exactly the same angle of view, perspective and distortion (at the edges) due to the effect of such a wide field of view.

Moving to an even larger format but then using a longer focal length (but keeping the same ultra wide angle of view) will once again make the exact same shot. It isn't the focal length that is distorting the subject, it is the angle of view and the perspective.

Thanks everyone. The issue arises with location weddings. Often the guests are seated/standing quite close to the wedding party and bridal couple in the ceremony. To get a clear shot of the entire wedding party, without guests obscuring a significant amount of the groomsmen and bridesmaids, I am low and close. Of course, I hadn't realised it was my proximity rather than the lens which was the problem in terms of distortion. So glad I asked before I started seriously investigating alternative lenses!

You might try reading up about "volume anamorphosis " to get a better idea what is going wrong with your wide compositions.

Bob

The only success I've had at fixing this problem is by using DxO Optics or, more recently, Viewpoint (which is the distortion module from Optics Pro). Here's a shot where I had no choice but to shoot wide and close. The orginal image was unusable (the woman in the example crop would have killed me). Luckily ViewPoint gave a usable result...

You might try a fisheye.

I find that people near the edge of images I have taken with my Rokinon 8mm fisheye look fairly normal. But this lens would probably not be suitable for wedding-guest photograhy because of the other barrel-distortion effects. And, of course, de-fishing the image would get me back to the edge effects of a UWA.

Nevertheless, I find the lens useful for capturing groups of people seated at a table, and having them appear relatively normal.