re.photos Forum

Lens differences

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#1

Hi All,

Does anyone have any tips on solving the problem of different curves created by lens differences?

I’m applying some correction in Lightroom but it’s not perfect, it feels like the easiest way would be to figure out the focal lenght of the original photograph and then try to replicate it with the lens, not in post-production.

I’m wondering if anyone has any other ideas or techniques that help with this problem.
Where there any standard focal lengths used in the first cameras?

To explain, see my shot here: http://www.re.photos/compilation/1261/
The tower on the right lines up perfectly while the houses on the left side are dislocated.

Thanks,
Bart

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#2

Many of my rephotographies suffer from the same kind of problem.

I recently started to explore Photoshop as a way to correct the dislocations, but so far my attempts haven’t been too successful. The perspective warp tool seems promising, but it takes some time getting used to.

Shooting with the correct focal length would probably be the best solution, but since I travel with only one small camera this is not an option for me.

#3

From recent attempts for my rephotos around Pollokshields (Glasgow, UK) using photos from the Victorian/Edwardian eras as the “Before” I think early photographers used quite wide angle lens (35mm or less in full-frame equivalent). 50mm (full-frame equivalent) often seems a bit too tight and my very wide angle lens (about 26mm) is a bit wide. I think that they also make have often used a tripod, which means the viewpoint is a bit lower than handheld to the eye (that doesn’t make much difference though in most cases). Sometimes the viewpoint seems much higher though, which is strange. Perhaps they used a platform.
What I did to limit the problem is to make sure the Before and After photos show roughly the same view area by cropping the images in a photo editor. This reduces the stretching of the images when they are aligned. However, I think I need to get a 35mm-equivalent lens to get better results.

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