Perspective Correction Lenses

As interior photographers you should know there is more to the subject of perspective correction than the image editing I’ve been talking about. Many professional photographers would shudder at our previous discussions about fixing perspective problems in photo editors. There are lenses designed for shooting interiors and architecture. They are called tilt and shift or perspective correction lenses. Canon makes the TS-E 24mm f/3.5L and Nikon makes the wide angle shift 28mm f/3.5 PC-Nikkor. Both of these lenses list at over $1000. With these lenses perspective correction is done while you are shooting. These lenses also allow more control over depth of field but that’s another subject. If you are interested in more detail about these lenses just Google their names and you’ll find more than you want to know.

The benefit of doing perspective correction while shooting is that you don’t loose a lot of the image like we did in the photo editing examples. Of course you can deal with most perspective correction situations while shooting by just keeping the camera level in the front to back plane. But there are shooting situations where you must tilt the camera upward to include what you want in the frame. There’s a nice description of this whole phenomena by Brad Finch over at www.f-stop.com/p-c.htm.

Whether you choose to do it with photo editing or with tilt and shift lenses having walls straight is an essential part of this craft.