Distortion on car photography 50mm F1.0

[Alex909]

Hello, 

I'm very new to photography and Fuji X ecosystem, i had Sony a7iv with 35mm F1.2 for some months and then changed to XT-4 with 50mm F1.0
I shoot cars only 
Sometimes (most of times) i have strange distortions which i can't understand if comes from lens or something else. 

Cars looks like squeezed in width somehow and sometimes wheels looks like not round, almost ovalized.. 

It's my 50mm defected or there are prospective factors which I don't know?

thanks a lot
 

[Alex909]

here for example the car looks like very tight or squeezed somehow

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[Olaf W.]

Did you check that you’re not in miniature mode? 

[Alex909]

21 minutes ago, Olaf W. said:

Did you check that you’re not in miniature mode? 

yes ahah, I'm not in filter mode

Edited June 24, 2023 by Alex909

[OzGordo]

You have changed from a 35mm lens to a 50mm which forces you to change your perspective. Try a 35mm on the XT-4 and your shits should look like they used to. 

[Alex909]

10 hours ago, OzGordo said:

You have changed from a 35mm lens to a 50mm which forces you to change your perspective. Try a 35mm on the XT-4 and your shits should look like they used to. 

thanks, so this is regular 50mm behavior?  

[OzGordo]

It’s not the lens itself, it’s the perspective that changes. A 50mm forces you to move back to get the same field of view so your perspective changes. 

[Alex909]

18 hours ago, OzGordo said:

It’s not the lens itself, it’s the perspective that changes. A 50mm forces you to move back to get the same field of view so your perspective changes. 

thanks, so to take this shot without distortions I must move back?

[Astigmatism]

You don't have distortions. Look at the ends of the exhaust pipes, and the wheels on the blue contraptions. They look perfectly circular to me.

If you want the perspective to seem right, you have to view your image from different distances depending on the lens focal length. You want the angle your eye sees between edges of the photo to match the real life angle between edges of the scene. If you do that, even the famous giant nose effect from close up wide angle portraits goes away.

[Alex909]

1 hour ago, Astigmatism said:

You don't have distortions. Look at the ends of the exhaust pipes, and the wheels on the blue contraptions. They look perfectly circular to me.

If you want the perspective to seem right, you have to view your image from different distances depending on the lens focal length. You want the angle your eye sees between edges of the photo to match the real life angle between edges of the scene. If you do that, even the famous giant nose effect from close up wide angle portraits goes away.

thanks, so this is wrong focal length for this shot?

to make it look correct i must be more far from subject or use 35mm?

[jerryy]

The types of distortions that would appear are barrel or pin-cushion distortions, but this shot does not seem to have any. The 35mm is in the “wide-angle” lens group and the 50mm is in the “normal” lens group. Going from the wider to the narrower will give you some lens compression effect, where things look a little more smushed together. That effect is more pronounced going from wide angle to telephoto, i.e. lenses 70mm or longer.

Looking correct is subjective, if you were used to the 50mm - 70mm range, you would probably not have noticed this effect when you changed from the Sony world.

[Alex909]

1 hour ago, jerryy said:

The types of distortions that would appear are barrel or pin-cushion distortions, but this shot does not seem to have any. The 35mm is in the “wide-angle” lens group and the 50mm is in the “normal” lens group. Going from the wider to the narrower will give you some lens compression effect, where things look a little more smushed together. That effect is more pronounced going from wide angle to telephoto, i.e. lenses 70mm or longer.

Looking correct is subjective, if you were used to the 50mm - 70mm range, you would probably not have noticed this effect when you changed from the Sony world.

thanks a lot! 

3 days ago I found the 23mm F1.4 R which must be the equivalent of 35mm on Sony, I'm going to try it tomorrow 

Looks like 50mm F1.0 must be used for half car or details to ensure "correct" looking imagines 

Maybe I must buy Fuji 35mm F1.4 to have the most flexible lens for car photography?

[jerryy]

1 hour ago, Alex909 said:

…

Maybe I must buy Fuji 35mm F1.4 to have the most flexible lens for car photography?

You would be limiting yourself compared to what you should be able to enjoy with a changeable lens body. 

@Edp uses a 75mm as well as many other lenses for his images:

https://www.fuji-x-forum.com/topic/31761-i’ve-found-the-x-t5-to-be-a-capable-camera-for-motor-sports/#comment-99515

As @OzGordo and @Astigmatism mention, try shooting from different distances and find where the lens gives you the pleasing shot for the perspective you want. There are quite a few car - sports shooters using lenses with considerably longer focal lengths to get great shots, as well as wider angles lenses for certain shots.

This link has some more information about perspective distortion:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perspective_distortion

Edited June 26, 2023 by jerryy

[SGinNorcal]

On 6/24/2023 at 6:05 PM, OzGordo said:

You have changed from a 35mm lens to a 50mm which forces you to change your perspective. Try a 35mm on the XT-4 and your shits should look like they used to. 

Ok, I freely admit my sense of humor stop developing at 12 y/o so I found this funny as hell, even if it was just and accidental mis-spell.

[Astigmatism]

On 6/26/2023 at 2:04 PM, Alex909 said:

thanks, so this is wrong focal length for this shot?

to make it look correct i must be more far from subject or use 35mm?

I wasn't proposing a different distance between camera and subject. I was proposing a different distance between your eye and the photograph you took. As is often the case, jerryy covered it well and included an excellent link to the Wikipedia article on Perspective Distortion. Quoting from that article:

Photograph viewing distance

Photographs are ordinarily viewed at a distance approximately equal to their diagonal. When viewed at this distance, the distortion effects created by the angle of view of the capture are apparent. However, theoretically, if one views pictures exhibiting extension (wide angle) distortion at a closer distance, thus widening the angle of view of the presentation, then the phenomenon abates. Similarly, viewing pictures exhibiting compression (telephoto) distortion from a greater distance, thus narrowing the angle of view of the presentation, reduces the effect. In both cases, at some critical distance, the apparent distortion disappears completely.

I think optical engineers might disagree with the use of the word "distortion" here, on the basis that this is all true when the lens is behaving perfectly, but if an optical engineer comes along to correct me I will give in happily. I'd say there's a big perspective effect due to distance, given the way people typically use lenses.

Better to say, I believe, is that your distance from your subject influences what you see. The inside walls of a box are quite visible if you're at the opening of the box, but may be hardly visible if you're very far away from the box. (Notice for example we can see side walls, floor, and even a bit of ceiling in the picture you posted.) This statement has nothing to do with whether you are looking with your eye or taking a photograph. That's a pretty full statement right there.

But to carry things further, if you are taking a picture of a specific object, you're likely to position yourself further from the object if you use a long, narrow angle lens. And you're likely to position yourself closer with a short, wide lens. The effect on what you see is because of your position, not the lens.

Sometimes the right lens for a shot is a very wide angle lens for the simple reason that you can't get far enough from a subject otherwise, if it's in a confined space.

[Astigmatism]

A bit more on that:

Speaking of viewpoint, we have to also take into consideration the distance we view the photograph from. For example an enlargement from a 35mm negative should be viewed at a distance equal to the focal length of the taking lens times the degree of enlargement for proper perspective.

For a photo made with a 50mm (2 inch) lens  on a 35mm (1x1.5") negative enlarged 10 times (10x15" print) the print should be viewed from 20 inches away. If made with a 300mm (12 inch) lens and enlarged 10 times the viewing distance should be 1200 inches (10 feet) away. In our example here with the 600mm lens the viewing distance should be 20 feet to see the proper perspective. As we usually hold an 8x10 print about a foot away from our eyes the print is too close and the perspective looks very compressed.

Going the other way, for a photo made with a wide angle lens, correct perspective happens when you view the print from much closer in. At the normal 12 inch viewing distance all the objects in the photo appear to be more spaced out from each other. A 10x15 print of a photo made with a 24mm (1 inch) lens should be viewed from 10 inches away to see the correct perspective.

https://cornicello.com/itfigures/tag/perspective

[man-overboard]

On 6/26/2023 at 11:44 PM, Alex909 said:

thanks a lot! 

3 days ago I found the 23mm F1.4 R which must be the equivalent of 35mm on Sony, I'm going to try it tomorrow 

Looks like 50mm F1.0 must be used for half car or details to ensure "correct" looking imagines 

Maybe I must buy Fuji 35mm F1.4 to have the most flexible lens for car photography?

I use a Fujifilm 16mm i.e. a 24mm equivalent lens. I can do a whole car meeting with just that lens and the Fujifilm 33mm lens. In the past I have used 35mm/28mm on Leica cameras.

At the next car meeting I will go to it will be the Fuji XF16mm and the GF 30 on a GFX.

Have a look here: US Cars with XF16mm all shots with the 16mm and for a fun test, all videos with the GFX and GF 50.

[Astigmatism]

The new Fuji XF 8mm F3.5 arrived!

And, with it, and with the 100-400 zoom plus the 2x tele extender, I took a couple pictures illustrating the perspective we are discussing in this thread. The long lens is 100 times the focal length of the short one.

I set a workshop stool out in the driveway in full sun. On top I put a cardboard box with the flaps cut off, with two water bottles taped together inside it. I hoped this simple geometry would share some characteristics with the car in a shop pictured above.

With the 8 mm lens I was able to take a picture from about 3 inches from the bottle caps. With the 800 mm lens I could take a picture from 72 feet. In both pictures the seat of the stool occupied roughly the same fraction of the viewfinder width. Then I cropped both pictures to slightly more than cover the stool seat.

There's a huge difference in how the shapes look. Note how in one photo the inside side walls of the box are plainly visible (I was exposing for them) and in the other only the rear wall is visible. Also notice how the bottle caps flare wide relative to the bottoms of the bottles (which aren't visible but you can judge where they must be). All the round things are circular in the photos, and the box (though it's a bit bendy) has substantially straight outlines.

Just to help with understanding the setup, I also included a very small file size iPhone photo.

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