Good (fairly affordable) lens for architecture

[Tim3167]

I'm currently using a D50 with either the 18-200mm VR or 50mm 1.8 lens. The shot below (Orlando) was with the 50mm. Any suggestions of good lenses maybe a little wider for skyline shots. I'd like to limit the distortion that makes buildings appear to lean.
[IMG][/IMG]

[flar]

I don't know what to tell you other than I wish I had the 18-200 VR.
The leaning buildings are inevitable if you're pointing the camera upwards. You'll still have leaning buildings with a wider lens but with additional lens distortion. I think the only thing you can do about the leaning buildings is move back and find a spot where you can hold the camera parallel with the buildings or possibly get a tilt shift lens.

edit: or correct it with software

[giallo]

^Yup. I have a 18-200 VR and experience the same thing. Although, I happen to like the lean effect.

[Robert Pence]

I think that's quite a good shot; the convergence of verticals really isn't excessive and the image is crisp and beautifully exposed. As flar said, a wider lens will give even more distortion, unless the wider field of view allows you to hold the camera nearer level and then crop out the extraneous areas later.

When you use software to correct perspective distortion, keep in mind that your vision expects and compensates a certain amount of it. If you pull all the verticals truly perpendicular to the horizon, viewers will get the impression that the buildings flare outward as they go up.

Wider lenses tend to introduce barrel distortion, where the horizontals and verticals appear to belly outward. It's more pronounced near the edges of the photo. I think sometimes it's less pronounced with prime lenses than with zoom lenses set at comparable focal lengths.

[Upward]

Vertical lines are going to tilt inward ("keystoning") any time the camera isn't level with the ground. The effect is easier to get with wide lenses.

It's pretty easy to "fix" in Photoshop. I put that in quotes because I don't think it's always desirable to correct the perspective. When the keystoning is severe, it looks really unnatural to correct the perspective (and it also requires heavy cropping of the image). A good rule of thumb is to only correc the pictures you take with the specific intention of correcting, or ones where you try to keep the camera level but end up tilting it a little and producing some keystoning.

Your photo is a good candidate for perspective correction. I took the liberty of doing it:



(I only uploaded your photo to my server for this thread, but please let me know if that makes you uncomfortable, and I'll delete it)

[Tim3167]

Not uncomfortable at all but just can't see the photo. Would be very interested to see your results.

[Upward]

Yeah, there was a server outage this morning. Try again...

[innov8]

Which lens manufacture makes a better product and in what order? Nikon, Tamron or Sigma?

[Tim3167]

Thanks Upward for taking the time to demonstrate the correction possible. I do agree that it can almost be look a bit unatural but it's not too severe in your example. Very interesting.

[one very bored guy]

About perspective correction or keystoning:

Doing so depends entirely on what you want to use your final image for. If you are trying to get into architectural photography, keystoning is unacceptable. Architectural photographers almost always remove this or correct it with tilt lenses. Look through any architecture book and you will see pretty much always see corrected images.

But for artistic and creative needs, keystoning can also work to an advantage.

One rule of thumb, straighten the horizon, a wonky horizon always looks crap. Then, if you choose to correct the keystoning, also note that it often stretches out the width of everything. Buildings, people and cars become shorter and fatter than normal. The easiest way to do this is to shrink the horizontal size whilst keeping the vertical unchanged. (Don't do it the other way by expanding the vertical!)

Images like the one above should be corrected. It has only a slight imperfection in keystoning but is noticeable as a mistake.

Nice photo :O)