What's wrong with this picture? (Macon County Courthouse, Oglethorpe, Georgia.)
Dave, a friend and fellow photographer and photo-blogger visited me recently. As we were looking through one of my books, he asked "How do you keep the vertical lines in your photos straight?"
Many photographers seem to have trouble keeping vertical lines vertical in their pictures. The problem is caused by pointing the camera up, even slightly, at a building or other vertical subject, and will cause the subject to appear to be leaning backward, like the courthouse above. I've seen quite a few of Dave's photographs and haven't noticed that he has as much of a problem with this as he thinks, but it is a common problem.
The Macon County Courthouse with correction applied with PTLens.
There are a number of ways to keep verticals vertical, so let's take a few posts to explore them. This, by the way, is part of what photographers call perspective control.
Solution # One: Do it with software. (Also called the "easy way out.") I don't have a current version of Photoshop, so I'm not sure, but I believe Photoshop now has a way you can do perspective control. You can also do it in various RAW converters, such as Capture One and DXO. I use a free, standalone program called PTLens to do perspective correction, and it works well for me, although maybe not as convenient as some other programs.
In any case, using software to correct perspective is kinda a last resort for me. I always try to get it right in the camera if I can. Sometimes I can't. We'll be talking about ways to get it right in the camera in future posts.
Meanwhile, here's another example of perspective correction with PTLens:
The Simmons-Bond Bread & Breakfast Inn, Toccoa, Georgia.
The Simmons-Bond B&B has a couple of problems: It's falling over backward, and it's too dark.
What did I do? I lightened the exposure with the Curves tool in Photoshop and corrected the perspective in PTLens. In fact, I think I may have over-corrected slightly, which is easy to do.
About the photos: Both were made with a Fuji X-H1 camera and the Fujicron XC 16-50mm lens.
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Photography and text copyright 2024 David B.Jenkins.
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