I'm doomed. I got myself into a new expensive hobby--photography! I got myself a Canon EOS600D, and quickly acquired an 18-55mm, a 50mm/f1.8, and a Nissin flash. Here's a quick and interesting lesson I learnt from our resident photographer, Rinaldo Ackbar, about zoom lenses:
A perfect lens would render straight lines as straight, no matter where
they occur:
Most practical lenses fall short of perfection and instead bend lines outwards (barrel distortion) or inwards (pincushion distortion). This is how barrel distortion will be perceived:
Why is this important? Well, the human brain is remarkably good at recognizing human faces, and can readily detect when someone has gained or lost weight, for example, just by looking at the face. The same is true for geometric distortion. Here's an example of barrel distortion when taking a portrait shot at 18mm:
This is not particularly flattering (except perhaps if the intended creative effect is to have the background bend around the subject), and instead, portrait shots should be free of geometric distortion to appear natural. This can be avoided by stepping back and zooming in, as follows:
(Credits to Rinaldo for teaching me! Don't worry, photography posts aren't going to take over the subject matter of this blog. I'm just too noob at it!)
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