How Wide Without Distortion?

On a FF camera and EF Lens, what is the widest recommended length that does not distort (in an obvious way) the scene?

How about on an APS-C with an EF-S lens?

What lens is recommended to get wide and straight?

My Sigma 10-20 distorts noticeably at it's widest on my XTi & 40D, but goes away around 14-15mm.

It varies between lens for this matter! Some of them has better control on distortion! Bare in mind, almost all the ultra wide angle lens will carry distortion! You can always crop it out too! There are tons of review online to show u sample pics and details spec on specific lens, great way to compare!

A wide fixed focal length lens or software which has the ability to fix distortion.

Cheers,

David

The only FL which doesn't "distort" the photo (or, in other words, when what you see looking at the photo is comparable to what you saw with your eyes) is the so-called "standard" FL: 50mm on FF, or 31mm on a 1.6x crop. For much longer FL, the background looks "compressed"; for much shorter FL, the background is "stretched", and the objects near photo edges look stretched. As long as you are staying close to the standard FL (say, 35-70mm on FF), none of the above should be very obvious.

What are your concerns about distortion? What sorts of distortion? As mentioned above any focal length lens will induce some sort of perspective shift to a scene, is the nature of lenses. If you just mean fisheye and or barrel or pincushion distortion thats different than the sorts of perspective distortion you get in a portrait or still life of an object with known lines.

Higgs Boson wrote in post #12671157
On a FF camera and EF Lens, what is the widest recommended length that does not distort (in an obvious way) the scene?

How about on an APS-C with an EF-S lens?

What lens is recommended to get wide and straight?

The real fact that you must understand if you're going to make well-composed photographs is that the perspective that folks have been referring to has NOTHING to do with focal lengths per se. Perspective is controlled purely by the position of the camera relative to the elements of the scene in front of it.

While it's true that many old-time photographers (including me a couple of decades ago) believe that the chosen focal length controls perspective, that's a very old myth. Several of us here decided to prove the truth and write an article that's been viewed almost 58,000 times so far and received lots of kudos.

For more information on perspective and how to control it, please read our "sticky" (now found in the General Photography Talk forum) tutorial titled Perspective Control in Images - Focal Length or Distance?.

Are you concerned with lens distortion or perspective distortion, because they are two entirely different things... And the first is usually easily fixed in post, and the other is based entirely on your decisions and only indirectly has to do with the lens and its focal length.

Perspective distortion. I have CS5 and LR3. I took a photo of a guy standing in front of his business with a wide lens and his left arm is twice the size of his right arm. I could not correct this in post. I am trying to figure out how wide I can go and avoid this type of problem. Yes, he was standing a lot closer than the rest of the subject matter but that's how I want it.

Higgs Boson wrote in post #12672138
Perspective distortion. I have CS5 and LR3. I took a photo of a guy standing in front of his business with a wide lens and his left arm is twice the size of his right arm. I could not correct this in post. I am trying to figure out how wide I can go and avoid this type of problem. Yes, he was standing a lot closer than the rest of the subject matter but that's how I want it.

Read Skip's link.

pulsar123 wrote in post #12671214
The only FL which doesn't "distort" the photo (or, in other words, when what you see looking at the photo is comparable to what you saw with your eyes) is the so-called "standard" FL: 50mm on FF, or 31mm on a 1.6x crop. For much longer FL, the background looks "compressed"; for much shorter FL, the background is "stretched", and the objects near photo edges look stretched. As long as you are staying close to the standard FL (say, 35-70mm on FF), none of the above should be very obvious.

Ah, this is what I'm after.....

And I will read the link, for sure.

both crop and ff have the same perspective (or perspective distortion) given the same focal length. crop sensor just gives a cropped image of a full frame sensor, it does nothing to change the perspective. 50mm on full frame and 30mm on crop gives the same angle of view (field of view), but different perspective.

to make the perspective distortion not so obvious i wouldn't go wider than 35mm, but you might want to stick with 50mm to be safe. the deal with left arm longer than right arm is because the left arm is closer to the camera. if your subject is standing flat to the camera you won't have this problem, even with a 14mm.

Higgs Boson wrote in post #12672162
Ah, this is what I'm after.....

And I will read the link, for sure.

The link will tell you why that is not necessarily true. It may be functionally accurate, but it might not be as well.

The arms were equidistant from the camera. One was closer to the side of the frame though....

So the question becomes then not what FL, but HOW do most of you successfully acheive a wide environmental portrait? I want the owner to be close enough to the camera to be recognizable but still show his business (which is consumes a fairly wide space).....I'd like to get his whole body, not just a headshot....

I'm going to assume I should move myself (camera) and the subject both farther from the background subject and use a longer lens to contain the background rather than a short lens to try and capture it from a closer distance. Fortunately, we have more room to move....

banpreso wrote in post #12672185
50mm on full frame and 30mm on crop gives the same angle of view (field of view), but different perspective.

??? This doesn't make sense. Take two cameras: one FF with 50mm, the other one crop with 30mm, and make one shot with each from the same location, of the same subject. Once you print both on the same size photo paper, will they look different (in terms of perspective and angle of view)? No.