I noticed that on some night shots in Sydney: people walking were just blurs but their feet were sometimes very clear. And it sort of makes sense: when you plant a foot, it stays still for a while, but the rest of your body is always moving.

http://www.mahugh.com/images/blog/2007/03/27/photo43.htm

Dunno if you meant to do it, but I just noticed it. It wouldn’t be so cool except for the woman standing stock still taking a picture of her own.

I love to take fisheye shots and then crop the middle out of them, avoiding the extreme distortion that occurs out at the edges. And it’s also sort of cool to get that stuff, like the girl in the lower right corner of this photo:

http://www.mahugh.com/images/blog/2007/03/27/photo33.htm

Technically speaking every lens (or focal length of a zoom) has “distortion” because it does not see the same as the human eyes.

Distortion from wide angle lenses is just the most obvious because of the way they bend straight lines, an effect known as “barrel” or “pin-cushion” distortion - very obvious with the fisheye.

But even the 12-24 has quite a bit of distortion - it only seems “normal” when compared to the fisheye.

Distortion effects are most noticeable at the edges of the frame. You may have noticed this in a group photo where a person at the outside edge of the frame appears to be having their head sucked out of shape by some unseen force just off-camera.

Longer focal length lenses compress (distort) space in a certain, very pleasing way which is why a lot of fashion is shot with longer lenses.

There are two distortion effects I’ll call “big-shoulder” syndrome and “pin-head” syndrome caused by tilting the camera up or down from the horizontal axis when making a photo - the wider the lens the more obvious the effect.

Because objects closer to the camera appear larger you can end up with a very comical “bobble-head” effect in a portrait shot with a wide angle, especially if the photographer is taller than the subject and standing very close.

Lens distortion is correctable in Photoshop CS2 under filter/distort/lens correction. You can also correct for tilted horizon or tilting up/down here.

Xorge

- 18-200mm VR (vibration reduction) zoom
- 12-24mm wide-angle zoom
- 10.5mm fisheye

So that’s an actual fisheye lens on shots like the middle thumbnail above. It’s a fun lens to have. I especially like it for closeups of people, because you get SO much of the background in the frame when you use that lens.

I know there’s software for correcting the parallax effect, but I’ve never played around with it. When I want a wide-angle shot that isn’t distorted, I use the wide-angle zoom open to 12mm.

I notice that some of the architectural pix show a fish-eye effect. Is that from going wide to get it all in the frame? I don’t know what digital cameras have to support parallax correction. It’s an interesting problem (and an useful effect done on purpose).