GoPros use an extremely wide field of view, and “fisheye correction” is not a free fix. Converting that curving, ultra-wide view into a rectilinear image requires stretching some parts of the frame and compressing others. That means interpolation and invented pixels, which reduces image quality.

There’s also a perspective tradeoff: with very wide lenses, making straight lines look straight causes objects near the edges to become heavily stretched. The result can look unnatural or jarring, because you’re forcing a front-facing perspective onto subjects that were actually seen from the side.

So cameras often leave the native wide-angle rendering intact rather than baking in a correction that may lower quality and create unwanted edge stretching. If you want the corrected look, it’s usually better offered as an optional post-processing step. GoPro’s software has provided this kind of correction.