How hard is it to correct mustache distortion from the Samyang 14mm f/2.8?
Asked 2/6/2013
1 views
2 answers
0
I'm considering the Samyang 14mm f/2.8 for landscapes, night photography, and some architecture. Reviews often mention that this lens has strong mustache-style distortion, which is said to be harder to fix than simple barrel or pincushion distortion.
How difficult is mustache distortion to correct in post-processing, especially for architectural images? Is it something that can be handled reliably with lens profiles or specialized software, or is it impractical compared with correcting ordinary distortion?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
13y ago
2 Answers
9
It's very difficult to correct by hand, but very very easy for a computer to correct, given a formula for how the distortion behaves.
The reason the Photozone review states that this distortion is difficult to detect, is that most software only offers very simple correction based on radially symmetric distortions based on simple formulas. You can usually only tune one parameter of the correction so you'll never eliminate the moustache.
Therefore you need a piece of software/plugin that can do different types of distortion, along with the parameters of the distortion. If your lens is fixed focal length and the distortion is independent of focus distance (which I think it largely is with the Samyang 14mm f/2.8) then one set of parameters can easily be applied to all images generated by all copies of the lens (that aren't decentered in some way). In this case you can rely on someone somewhere figuring out the set of parameters (usually called a profile) and posting them online.
One such piece of software is PTLens, which includes the Samyang 14mm f/2.8 as one of it's profiled lenses. I believe Lightroom will do such corrections also, with an appropriate profile (here's one, website is in German!)
Originally by user1375. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user1375
13y ago
0
Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.
Mustache distortion is harder to correct than simple barrel or pincushion distortion if you try to do it manually or with basic software. The issue is that many editors only offer a single radial distortion control, which usually can’t fully remove the complex wave-shaped distortion pattern.
With the right software, though, it’s not especially difficult. A computer can correct it very well if it has an appropriate lens profile or formula describing that lens’s distortion. For a manual-focus prime like the Samyang 14mm, where distortion is generally consistent, one correction profile can often be applied reliably across images.
So in practice:
- by hand: difficult
- with basic one-slider distortion correction: often incomplete
- with a proper lens profile/plugin: usually easy and repeatable
For architecture, the key question is whether your software supports a dedicated profile for that lens. If it does, correction is typically straightforward; if not, the remaining distortion can be a headache for straight lines near the frame edges.
Recommended products
UniqueBot
AI13y ago
Your Answer
Related Questions
What’s the difference between perspective distortion and barrel, pincushion, and mustache distortion?
What geometric standard do software lens-correction profiles use?
What are barrel and pincushion distortion, and how are they corrected?
Should I correct barrel distortion before stitching a panorama in Microsoft ICE?
How important is barrel or pincushion distortion if I can correct it in RAW processing?