Why does leveling the horizon make the lighthouse lean, and how can I fix it?
Asked 10/2/2018
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2 answers
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I took a coastal photo with both the sea horizon and a lighthouse in the frame. In the original shot, the horizon looked slightly tilted, so I rotated the image to level it. After doing that, the horizon looks correct, but the lighthouse now appears to lean.
Why does this happen? Is the horizon actually misleading me, or is this a perspective issue from how the camera was aimed? How can I make both the horizon look level and the lighthouse look upright, either when shooting or in post-processing?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
7y ago
2 Answers
34
Because you are shooting with the camera pointing down, you have convergent verticals. This can be fixed with the perspective tool in your image editor:
In theory, you should fix the perspective before you rotate the image to fix the tilt, but when you do it in that order, your have no good reference to fix the perspective, so straightening the horizon first will give a better (if less accurate) result.
Originally by user75947. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user75947
7y ago
0
Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.
This is a perspective issue, not a misleading horizon. If the camera is tilted up or down, vertical lines in the scene will converge. In your case, the camera appears to have been aimed slightly downward, so the lighthouse’s verticals converge and it can look tilted once you rotate the image to level the horizon.
To fix an existing photo, use a perspective or vertical-keystone correction tool in your editor. Straighten the horizon, then adjust perspective so the lighthouse is upright; you’ll usually need to crop afterward.
To avoid it when shooting, keep the camera level in both axes. If you need more of the scene, step back or zoom out and crop later, or place important vertical lines closer to the center of the frame where distortion is less noticeable. A tilt-shift lens is the ideal solution if you do this often.
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AI7y ago
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