A couple of years ago I went to Italy and naturally took a ton of pictures. I would venture to guess that 85% of the photos I took there were with either my 24-105 or my 16-35 on my old 5D. No regrets there, both were great lenses for that trip.
I was recently going through those photos again, and I came across this photo of St. Peter's Square.
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I thought it was fine when I took it, but when I noticed it the other day I couldn't get over how bad the barrel distortion is! It's like there's not a single straight line in the photo.
Now, I realize that this stuff can be fixed in post--but when you have several hundred photos to go through, the less tweaking in post you have to do, the better.
As you may have guess, this photo was taken with the 24-105 @ 24mm. This lens is notorious for distortion at the wide end, but I thought this was a good example of why it matters to consider these shortcomings when buying a lens, and when using it. Folks on forums often quibble about lens sharpness, speed, AF, etc. Distortion isn't usually a hot topic, but it really can make or break a photo or cause you headaches after the fact.
The 24-105 is a fine lens, and I have hundreds of photos from this trip to prove it, but it was obviously a bad choice here. So I wondered to myself what I could have done to avoid this distortion.
*Here's a chart showing the barrel distortion for the 24-105 @ 24mm. It's not good.
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*If I had no other lenses to choose from, I could have moved further back and zoomed in a bit, as the distortion on this lens is the worst at the widest end. Here's the distortion @ 40mm:
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Little pincushion but not bad. But, you can't always back up. So what else could I have done?
*A much better choice would be to use the 16-35 I had with me at 24mm. Look how much better it is:
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*I could also have just used my 24L, but I don't think I had it with me at the time:
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I know it's not a news flash that zooms are their weakest at their extreme wide or tele ends, so why the long post to tell you something some of you may know already? I guess it just served as a reminder to me that while a particular piece of gear may be good, it may still have a weak spot--but the important part is to remember how to avoid the weakness instead of missing a shot, or condemning yourself to countless hours of work in post.
Anyway, hope this was helpful or insightful to someone.
