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What Distortion is this ?

BradS

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Sep 28, 2004
Messages
8,129
Location
Soulsbyville, California
Format
35mm
The double-yellow line on the street in the foreground is straight.
What is the name of this type of distortion?
EDIT: It is distortion of memory. The lines are NOT straight...see below.

 
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Camera? Lens? Cropped?
 
I would venture it being some sort of curvilinear distortion, but it is strange that the upper part of the image is not distorted as well.

Maybe the scanner moved during the scan?
 
Kino said:
I would venture it being some sort of curvilinear distortion, but it is strange that the upper part of the image is not distorted as well.

Maybe the scanner moved during the scan?
Click to expand...

I don't know if it matters but the scans are from the Fuji Frontier at the lab.
 
Is the image on the film distorted as well? I assume it is a negative...
 
  • henpe
  • Deleted
  • Reason: Errornous statement
It's been a while since April 1st...
 
I guess since there is no element in the immediate upper foreground (other than air), the distortion in the upper part of the frame is not registered on the negative.
 
BradS said:
The double-yellow line on the street in the foreground is straight.
Click to expand...
Are you 100% sure? Or relying on memory?
Leaving aside "perspective distortion" (see above, perspective) , the Nikkor 24.2.8 is a (quite) good approximation to a rectilinear lens, i.e. straight lines of 3-D space are mapped to straight lines on the 2-D film surface.
 
It's called distortion of memory

The double line is not actually straight.
 
Was the camera close to the ground when you took the picture?
 

cramej said:
It's called distortion of memory

The double line is not actually straight.
View attachment 246301
Click to expand...

Yup. Distorted memory (and it wasn't even that long ago).
Geez, I feel dumb.
I had to look myself.
the approximate location from which this photo was taken is:
37.663786, -121.874411
I'm standing almost in the middle of the street and yes, the camera is pretty low to the ground.
Thanks everybody.
 
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bernard_L said:
Was that a mistake in good faith? Or did you enjoy seeing people trying to answer your question in naive mode?
View attachment 246302
Click to expand...


good grief, I'm not that much of and ass hole. It was just an embarrasing brain fart. I lived in this city for 22 years, walked up and down this street thousands of times...I watched this building get built knew the owner and his wife.
 
This is a classic example of mind warp. Man your battle stations and cruise on.
 
Hilarious! When I first saw this I wanted to post “are you sure?” But didn’t want to seem like an a-hole.
 
It seems a perfectly understandable brain fart to me. The bulk of the line is straight and the memory does the rest. We had a realisation of the brain fart in about two hours. That is a quantum leap better than the eventual admission sometimes days later which I have seen on several occasions on Photrio that a blank film with no edge marking could have been the result of fix first

When England beat Scotland at football(soccer) in 1961 by 9 goals to 3, it took me about 50 years before I would even countenance that it wasn't an English media conspiracy. In fact as most involved are now conveniently dead I am not yet 100% sure when in my blacker moods

Do not get me started on the Leica Glow. I know that Leica do something to its lenses that no-one else has discovered or if they have discovered the secret they are now mysteriously no longer with us.

I remain unsure about the significance of the "grassy knoll"

pentaxuser
 
BrianShaw said:
Hilarious! When I first saw this I wanted to post “are you sure?” But didn’t want to seem like an a-hole.
Click to expand...

Yeah, In retrospect, I have to laugh. I just could not figure it out. I kept thinking..."How could that line be bent like that? I've never noticed this lens behaving in this manner before".
I probably should have waited until my morning coffee had some time to have effect before posting.
Eventually, it dawned on me that although Main Street is indeed quite straight here, this is the place where St. John Street and Ray Street are treated like a through street with a discontinuity along Main.
Pretty funny.
 
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If straight lines near the edge are bowed inward in the middle, it is pincushion (positive) distortion. If they are bowed outward in the middle, it is barrel (negative) distortion. And you can have both types of distortion in different parts of the same image, which produces wavy lines.
 
If in doubt always blame the lab.
And if it's a Fuji Frontier then all the better.
( I know I am too late).
 
Hey, we all do these things now and then. Take comfort in the revelation that there is a simple explanation that makes sense! It's not unusual for some significant distortion toward the edges with "fish eye" wide angles -- and pinhole shots where the film is stuck into a cylindrical container -- but looking at the OP I thought all the rest just seemed "too good" for that image to have been "that bad!"
 
It is obviously the car's fault -- it looks like its speeding even though it's parked...it distorts the space around itself...
 
Vaughn said:
It is obviously the car's fault -- it looks like its speeding even though it's parked...it distorts the space around itself...
Click to expand...
Now you’ve done it... blaming Einstein...
 
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