I've been shooting with an R5 and a number of different RF lenses with no issues. Everything is great. I recently purchased the RF 15-35mm F2.8 IS USM for landscape shots. The pictures all show distortion where for example trees on the left are slanting to the left and trees on the right are slanting to the right. This is after lens correction in Lightroom. Is this normal for this lens? Seems very odd for a lens made for landscape photography. I'm thinking there might be an issue with this particular lens. Any thoughts? Thanks!
Examples... note that I manually corrected (in addition to applying the lens profile correction) the last image to straighten up the trees but was unable to do it and have it look decent in the other pictures
1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION
Since I have the exact same camera and lens -- R5 and 15-35 f/2.8 -- I thought I'd give this a try. Results attached. These were shot with the lens at 15mm, in RAW, then scaled down and converted to JPEG for posting here; but no distortion correction has been applied, either in camera or in post. No Lightroom was used (I don't even have it).
The first is with the camera dead level, front-to-back, as indicated by the built-in level gauge. Trees look parallel to me. The second has the camera tilted up a little; the third, a lot. You can see that a bit of tilt has a lot of effect on the trees.
Your trees lean the other way, of course, but I do wonder if you weren't on higher ground -- just a little -- with the camera tilted down. The lakeside shot, in particular, has the horizon WAY up the picture.
So how can you shoot trees like this? 1 -- keep the camera dead horizontal, and then crop the ground out in post. 2 -- get a tilt lens. But those are expensive.
This appears to be normal "perspective distortion" as occurs when you tilt the camera upward while using an ultrawide lens. Looking at your examples, the first few are the worst.... especially the 2nd image. I bet you were shooting down low to include the foreground log and had tilted the camera quite a bit for that one.
Your last two examples show very little or no distortion, so the camera was probably kept pretty level.
Perspective distortion can be corrected to some extent in post-processing. But it always involves quite a bit of cropping so you need to plan for that when taking the shot.
There are also lenses created specifically to help with this type of situation, Canon's TS-E or "Tilt Shift". These have movements that reduce the distortion. Canon makes five such lenses right now, ranging from 17mm to 135mm. The shorter focal lengths... 17mm, 24mm and 50mm... would likely be the most useful for landscape photography. None are currently made in the new RF mount, so it would be necessary to adapt EF mount lenses.
The TS-E lenses help, but there is a limit to how much distortion can be corrected with them. Often it's necessary to do some of the correction with the lens and a bit more of it in post-processing. The TS-E lenses are all manual focus only.
Without those lenses to work with, watch for this distortion occurring when you're taking the image. You should be able to see it in the viewfinder or on the rear LCD. It may help to put a grid on the screen (enable it in the menu). You may need to back up a bit and level the camera more carefully, to minimize the distortion.
I hope you don't mind, I experimented with your first two images and perspective correction in Photoshop. The first image cleaned up reasonably well and only needed a little crop. The 2nd image required a whole lot more correction, after which a heavy crop was necessary. Below are your examples, after this correction and crop...
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Alan Myers
San Jose, Calif., USA
"Walk softly and carry a big lens."
GEAR: 5DII, 7DII (x2), 7D(x2) some other cameras, various lenses & accessories
FLICKR & ZENFOLIO
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I agree with you. That is why is specifically asked if the camera was level in one of my first posts, and the OP seemed to suggest it was. but certainly any tilt from horizontal will result in a dramatic degree of distortions.
In the example image below the shots were taken absolutely horizontal in all axes with a 10mm lens (on an aps-c body equivalent to 16mm) their is no distortion of verticals
Since I have the exact same camera and lens -- R5 and 15-35 f/2.8 -- I thought I'd give this a try. Results attached. These were shot with the lens at 15mm, in RAW, then scaled down and converted to JPEG for posting here; but no distortion correction has been applied, either in camera or in post. No Lightroom was used (I don't even have it).
The first is with the camera dead level, front-to-back, as indicated by the built-in level gauge. Trees look parallel to me. The second has the camera tilted up a little; the third, a lot. You can see that a bit of tilt has a lot of effect on the trees.
Your trees lean the other way, of course, but I do wonder if you weren't on higher ground -- just a little -- with the camera tilted down. The lakeside shot, in particular, has the horizon WAY up the picture.
So how can you shoot trees like this? 1 -- keep the camera dead horizontal, and then crop the ground out in post. 2 -- get a tilt lens. But those are expensive.
