Any piece of software that can correct a bunch of images to a rectangle can also correct a single image to a rectangle, and much more easily.
It’s not just correcting to a rectangle. There’s non linear barrel or pincushion distortion, wave distortion, all kinds of issues that are not quite as simple as just making the corners all 90 degrees.
Barrel and pincushion distortion are separate and independent from that mapping effect though. Some lenses will show little to none of the effect, and others will have a tremendous amount.
Yes, and all of these issues must be addressed in either case. But the stitched-together method has even more issues to resolve than the single-image method.
Yes. Said another way, lenses in this range are “normal” lenses for the image format. The equivalent would be a 50mm lens on a 35mm film camera. From checking the wiki, a D90’s “normal” length is a 28mm lens. So, either set the zoom to around that for the equivalent of a “normal” focal length, or buy a lens that is around 28mm. I prefer the latter, because generally fixed length lenses have better performance (distort less, absorb less light, etc.). But, then you arrive at the first maxim of photography, which is: If you have more than one lens on your camera, you will inevitably not have the “perfect” lens on it for any given shot.
Is the second maxim that the perfect lens is always one you don’t have yet, so you always have to buy more?
It’s either about that, or something about having to buy or rent a large format camera (which is really the ideal tool for copy work, but I digress), or maybe it’s the one about how only Ansel Adams really understood the zone system…nah, that’s like number seven…
Related question: Ansel Adams used an 8"x10" format I believe … what is the megapixel equivalent to such?
Megapixels are a hugely overrated measure of quality, but if we assume that something like the 50 megapixel Canon full-frame camera is about as high-resolution as possible, that translates to 33.33 megapixels/square inch, which would make an 8x10 sensor of the same density 2.6666 Giga Pixels.
Are you shooting raw?
Because the camera applies some of its own lens distortion correction based on its knowledge of the lens.
If you are currently shooting raw, then you might just be seeing the ugly uncorrected source photo. Give JPEG a try and see if you get better results.
On the other hand, if you are shooting JPEG then your own corrections might be fighting insufficient corrections already applied by the camera. Give raw a shot and see if that lets PS/LR do a better job of it.
ETA: If I were photographing fine art, I would use raw so that I could make fine adjustments to white balance as needed in Adobe Camera Raw or Lightroom–those adjustments are not so easily made with JPEG.
Radial distortion, of which barrel and pincushion are the inverse forms, is by design usually at a minimum in the centre of the zoom range, thus minimizing the maximum distortion at extremes of the zoom range. If this commonly coincides with a ‘normal’ lens it is because many popular zooms straddle the ‘normal’ range. It is not an inherent property of these focal lengths.
Nitpick: the true ‘normal’ focal length for 35mm format is 43mm, notwithstanding the common practice of supplying prime 50mm lenses with SLR cameras before kit zooms became ubiquitous.
Thanx … “… the 10×8 just blows everything out of the water.”
But they’re only available for DSLRs, right? I can’t get one for my Canon IS800 or even my Olympus C-8080—much less my iPhone.
I haven’t looked in ages but I would be surprised to find that profiles didn’t exist for all sorts of non-DSLR cameras. If not, the process of making the profile is easy enough. You print out and shoot the special target and feed it into the profile creator. I did that several times when the tools were released and the pool of available profiles was small.
Eta: I see all the iPhone models on the list. Not immediately seeing the Canon or Olympus you mention.