Many newbies to photo say that wideangles are "distorting" because they represent the world in a different way than we are accustomed to see, in the way that depth is strongly enhanced and parallel lines that aren't orthogonal to the optical axis of the lens seem to converge strongly. However this must be distinguised from true distortion which is noticed when straight lines of the subject are turned into curves. I explain that more in a recent post:

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1616183

A miniature version is to be seen above.

I will check out the link you provided.  Thanks for bringing this up. Yes, there is a difference.  Barrel and pin cushion distortion are not really the same thing as simple wide angle distortion,  from my experience.  TomDart.

Just gotta say, I LOVED it when wedding photos came through the lab looking like that ;-)

Grandma looking like Mr. Fantastic - they were fabulous! And the "I just bought an expensive camera and now I'm a pro shooting weddings" photographer was convinced we had no idea what we were doing back there in the lab and we should all be fired!

Aaaaaahhhh - the good old days were in fact frustrating as Hell... I don't miss them...

Actually, if you want to minimize the bending of the view, try shooting with your 10-20mm zoom pointed forward as level as possible - lines will actually be pretty straight up and down with minimal bowing. And when you bring it into Photoshop you can even correct THAT.

Just did a quickie tinker to see if I could "unbend" it - but I completely lost the kid at the bottom in red, and the bottom right dragon head. Eh - just playing with it.

-Lew ;-)

Good point...

 If I've well understood you suggest that I add some height to the image with the Image Size dialog box, is it true? I also understand that you have corrected vertical convergence with the menu Edit > Transform > Perspective. Is it true? Anyway, you succeeded very well to correct my pict relative to these points. Interesting approach, thanks for sharing.

Actually, I used the Free Transform Tool (Ctrl+T) and chose Distort (right-click to see the options). I grabbed the upper corners and dragged them inward until the lines of the BUILDINGS in the background we vertical. Then I grabbed the bottom corners and dragged them upwards because when you do this, you start off getting a TALL image - vertically stretched - so you need to correct for that as well. I could have gone a bit further, but hey, this was just play, not work.

This tends to work much better than using Perspective - which seems to work well when you have a block and you WANT to make it LOOK like it's in perspective.

Free Transform>Distort is much more flexible for really correcting camera perspectives. Some sides need more or less, top and bottoms need varied correction - the Perspective Tool is an all in one 2-sides-at-a-time depending on which corner you click and drag.

But as with ANY wide angle lens, you'll still have "stretching" as you get further from the center of the image (look at the faces - particularly the guy on the top left).

Hope this help - experiment and have fun!
-Lew ;-)

And yes, I realize pointing the camera directly forward doesn't help when you have information you want to show that is BELOW you - this is more for architectural shooting then events and journalism.
Converging lines aren't bad at all - we ALL expect them when we see a wide angled shot. For landscapes the look really cool, as well as the stretching. It's kind of used to advantage in that case.

I have mentioned this before.  A quick and simple test for barrel distortion of a lens is to find a brick wall, with the brick lines going left and right and up and down.  Level the camera and focus at the closest distance to the wall you lens will allow.  Shoot...if a zoom, going from first shots at widest angle to most zoom are quite revealing.  The brick lines show curves in the image very clearly.

Yep - that's exactly right ;-)

Personally I like the distortion.
It turns masses of clouds in more masses of clouds that look like they stretch out for every.
I think wide angles/ultra wide angles are very romantic...
I don't correct anything...

 To Thundering1: altough today I am professional illustrator and only an amateur photographer, I have been technical editor in a photography paper during very long time (until 2002 so AFTER the replacement of silver photgraphy by digital one), I then wrote more than 350 articles and 8 special issues, 3 of them devoted to lens tests by the MTF method, 2 about tests of electronic flashes and 3 about tests of various photographic devices. I have been in charge from1977 to 1985 of the test of some 500 lenses on MTF bench. Therefore I know very well the situation which you explained by your draft.
Altough I have been Photoshop teacher for nearly 4 years with 99 sessions done, I was interested by your approach of correction of the elongation of surfaces, so I am grateful for your comment.
To PeeWee05: I share your point of view. This was why I did not corrected the picture. Formerly I had a Pentax 3.5/15, which I made modify to fit my Minolta XM SLR (a strange top level SLR with interchangeable viewfinder), because the lens was originnally in K bayonet mount. Richardphotos also likes this photographic approach (he has the same Sigma 4-5.6/10-20 Pro EX lens), and this is the reason why I dedicated him my pict.
Today as an illustrator I like wideangle perspectives too, and you can have some examples of drawings using photos made with my Pentax 3.5/15 lens on Minolta XM:

"Kim 3: 125° without distortion":
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1344980

"Iris 6: of steel and glas":
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1346482

"Schoelcher panorama":
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1365071

"Szanden bathing" uses several Artmatic Voyager renders carefully assembled to create a vertical panorama (contains nudity):
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1480267

and this twin-page comic draft starting of a render done in Cinema 4D R9.0 with a ca. 120° perspective (contains violence!):
http://silviarobin.elcet.net/pages/page_6.html

Have a good end of week

Edouard

Oh don't get me wrong - I LOVE wide angle shots!

There are TONS of amazing city landscapes where buildings are converging upwards (from low angle shots) to outwards (from helicopter, or higher building vantage points) - and we've all seen extroardinary nature landscape shots with wide angle lenses.

Not knocking them - above I was going over versions of correcting the distortion if you wanted to even out "people" shots - from just a little bit of tucking-in to considerable perspective correction issues.

Examples of use:

1 - You shot some architecture images for a client - they see them and get a funny look on their face (which actually isn't funny - it's nerve-wracking) and tell you they were looking for the kind of images where all the vertical lines were, well... Vertical. NOW you know a quick way in Photoshop to "correct" that (NOT using the Perspective Transform). There's nothing actually "wrong" with the first image - it's just not what they were looking for.

2 - You shot a wedding - periodically with an extreme wide angle lens. You took a group shot of the WHOLE family - but from up close and with a very wide angle lens (let's just say it was a tiny room you were in and it was raining outside - nothing you could control - in a perfect situation, you could step much further back and zoom in to a longer focal length). Grandpa and Grandma's faces are stretching out to the corners of the frame - while it won't be perfect, you now know how to correct for this - AND you know to shoot in a way the position everyone to be clearly seen BEFORE you take the picture (as in the above pictures - everything was lost that was in the bottom corners).

I'm not knocking them (wide angle lenses and shots from them) - just looking at them from a technical and "on the job use" POV since this thread started out as a technical observation and clarification of wide angle lenses - and the use of the word "distortion" - whereas your lens and the shot above is NOT in fact distorted, but a natural set of converging lines from a wide angle lens using a down-angled perspective.

Did that make sense?

Hope this helps-
-Lew ;-)