Distortion on 24-105

M

mid_gen

Messages
2,006
Name
Chris
Edit My Images
No
Been using my new camera a few weeks now.....and one thing that's struck me is the amount of distortion at the wide end on my 24-105.....seems to be far worse than I ever got with my sigma 10-20 on the 30D.

Or am I just imagining it? Finding it quite annoying taking any wide shots of buildings....Does the 24-70 suffer the same?
 
mid_gen said:
Or am I just imagining it? Finding it quite annoying taking any wide shots of buildings....Does the 24-70 suffer the same?
Click to expand...

Nope, it's not a figment of your imagination, its barrel distortion is quite pronounced...the 24-70 has some too but not to the same degree.
The long end of the 24-105 doesn't fare much better either with pincushion certainly evident from 70mm onwards.

Bob
 
Glad it's not just me :)

Second question then....if I want wide without the distortion....does the 17-40 do the business?
 
mid_gen said:
Second question then....if I want wide without the distortion....does the 17-40 do the business?
Click to expand...

No, it's worse....unless you go longer

The 24/1.4L or TS-E24 (I or II) are the way forwards.

Bob
 
Have a look here

From that list my pick would be 16-35 (corner sharpness is another issue), and even 17-40 looks better than 24-105@24mm. You can always get sigma 12-24mm or Tamron 17-35mm (no idea about these 2, but must be better)
 
You didn't get this distortion before because you were shooting on a crop format camera. If you crop the equivalent area out of your 24-105 image from the 5D2, you won't see much distortion either. It's very hard to correct on the larger format with wide angles.

For this reason, and the fact that it's so easy to fix in software, lens designers prefer to invest in other things. DPP Raw software has a custom correction facility that sorts it out perfectly with a mouse click ;)

Edit: vignetting is another problem that is harder to solve with larger format, and that too is very easily solved in software (built in to the 5D2 and other cameras of course). CA is yet another aberration, though not particular to format, that can be pretty much sorted in software. Many compacts do this without anybody knowing, including the Panasonics with Leica lenses :eek:
 
Ah ok, I figured it would be a product of the full-frame format rather than a limitation of the glass (or both).

Are there any good lightroom plugins that'll correct the distortion? Would like to keep it in my current workflow if possible :)
 
mid_gen said:
Ah ok, I figured it would be a product of the full-frame format rather than a limitation of the glass (or both).

Are there any good lightroom plugins that'll correct the distortion? Would like to keep it in my current workflow if possible :)
Click to expand...

The 17-40 is pretty poor in the same way at the wide end, but good from 24 (ish) upwards. Do you have both lenses? In which case use the 17-40 up to 40mm.

You can use PTLens to correct for barrel/pincushion distortion but you need to crop the image. Not sure if it is a plug-in or not, but you go "photo -> edit in" once it is installed.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top