Photographing buidings

[remusrigo]

I was wondering how can I take shots of buildings, so it doesn't look wide on the bottom and narrow on top (i don't know how to explain)...
I will post a photo later (I am at work now)

 

[Fred Berg]

You will need to correct the distortion in post or else use a tilt-shift lens.

 

[bratkinson]

I'm just a rookie, too. But there are only 3 ways to "straighten up" buildings that I can think of:
1. Tilt-n-shift lens - somewhat expensive - allows the front lens element to be tilted as needed to parallel that of the building
2. Be in a high-boy bucket 1/2 the distance up from the ground as to the top of the building being photographed - alternatively, be in a building across the street 1/2 up the side of the subject building (eg, you're on the 10th floor photographing a 20 story building)
3. Correct the diverging lines during post processing using software. Which software? I don't know.

 

[Bram]

Smells like a troll. Crazy how when you look down a lonnnggggggg hallway it gets smaller too huh. How could you ever fit through that tiny little door at the end of the hallway?!?!

 

[fjrabon]

Smells like a troll. Crazy how when you look down a lonnnggggggg hallway it gets smaller too huh. How could you ever fit through that tiny little door at the end of the hallway?!?!

well, it could be troll like, except this is a pretty common query with no discernible reason to believe is trolling. Focal lengths shorter than about 50mm tend to exaggerate perspective distortion to a much greater extent than is 'natural' looking for the human eye. The OP is asking how to lessen this effect.

To the OP, another thing to be aware of is that often times you'll see these lenses called 'perspective correction' or 'PC' instead of 'tilt shift'.

You can do mild perspective correction in photoshop. You can probably google it and find a youtube video explaining how to do it. It's not the easiest thing in the world to do, but it's not terribly complicated either. You can do it in either the full version of photoshop and elements will also do it.

 

[KmH]

When a camera is pointed upwards at a building, the distortion that is caused is called keystone distortion.

So use a lens or camera position that lets you point the camera straight ahead and level.

 

[amolitor]

Get a very very long lens, and stand very very far away from the building. If you understand why this works, you understand most of the problem.

 

[Designer]

I was wondering how can I take shots of buildings, so it doesn't look wide on the bottom and narrow on top (i don't know how to explain)...
I will post a photo later (I am at work now)

Most architectural photographers use equipment that will correct for this, either a tilt-shift lens on your compact camera, or a view camera. Even halfway up the building you will still get some distortion with shorter lenses. AMolitor's solution will yield less distortion, but you will need to have an unobstructed loong view of the building, and have the long lens.

Have a look at some architectural publications to see the photos. They sometimes have to use shorter lenses, but they use them on a view camera.

There is a software that will correct lens distortion, but since I don't get paid to promote it, you can find it yourself.

 

[TCampbell]

You have two choices. The first choice is to use a tilt-shift lens (Canon refers to them as "tilt shift" lenses, Nikon refers to them as "perspective control" lenses.)

Here's an example of an UNCORRECTED photo (e.g. what you'd expect with a normal lens):


Riverhouse (uncorrected) by Tim Campbell1, on Flickr

And here's the same shot again, using a tilt-shift lens and this time I'm using the "shift" control to correct the leaning effect of the building. Note that I did not do this in post-processing... this is how the camera took the shot:


Riverhouse by Tim Campbell1, on Flickr

Tilt-shift lenses are usually expensive. It turns out you can ALSO correct the perspective problem using software such as Photoshop or even Photoshop Elements (and in Photoshop there are a few ways to do this. The "Transform" tool can correct for perspective issues and usually under filters for "lens" distortions there's a tool to to correct for this as well.)

The thing to keep in mind if you plan to use software is that the transform is corrected by stretching part of the image wider OR pinching part of the image to become narrower. In other words you're going to use an area of the photo that really looks like a trapezoid and stretch or pinch it so that the trapezoid turns into a rectangle. Keep this in mind... because it turns out sometimes you realize you need to pinch an area narrow and you run out of image. Leave excess space around your subject when you frame up the photo so that you have room to work on it.

Take a few sample images on tall buildings for the sole purpose of learning to use the transform or lens distortion tools. It's not hard to use and there are numerous video tutorials on the web that demonstrate how to do this.

 

[Maneef]

this might help you
twiching: Tips for Architectural Photography

 

[suryad]

You have two choices. The first choice is to use a tilt-shift lens (Canon refers to them as "tilt shift" lenses, Nikon refers to them as "perspective control" lenses.)

Here's an example of an UNCORRECTED photo (e.g. what you'd expect with a normal lens):


Riverhouse (uncorrected) by Tim Campbell1, on Flickr

And here's the same shot again, using a tilt-shift lens and this time I'm using the "shift" control to correct the leaning effect of the building. Note that I did not do this in post-processing... this is how the camera took the shot:


Riverhouse by Tim Campbell1, on Flickr

Tilt-shift lenses are usually expensive. It turns out you can ALSO correct the perspective problem using software such as Photoshop or even Photoshop Elements (and in Photoshop there are a few ways to do this. The "Transform" tool can correct for perspective issues and usually under filters for "lens" distortions there's a tool to to correct for this as well.)

The thing to keep in mind if you plan to use software is that the transform is corrected by stretching part of the image wider OR pinching part of the image to become narrower. In other words you're going to use an area of the photo that really looks like a trapezoid and stretch or pinch it so that the trapezoid turns into a rectangle. Keep this in mind... because it turns out sometimes you realize you need to pinch an area narrow and you run out of image. Leave excess space around your subject when you frame up the photo so that you have room to work on it.

Take a few sample images on tall buildings for the sole purpose of learning to use the transform or lens distortion tools. It's not hard to use and there are numerous video tutorials on the web that demonstrate how to do this.

Very informative post thank you.

 

[cgipson1]

Just for grins.. this is Tim's uncorrected photo... quickie corrected in Photoshop as an example! (Tim... if you want me to take it down, let me know) Working from a low res photo.. it lacks the detail that Tim's original posts do.. but you get the idea.

 

[TCampbell]

Just for grins.. this is Tim's uncorrected photo... quickie corrected in Photoshop as an example! (Tim... if you want me to take it down, let me know) Working from a low res photo.. it lacks the detail that Tim's original posts do.. but you get the idea.

Totally fine to edit my photos (my profile has the "My Photos are Ok to Edit" flag displayed.) If I was _really_ worried about someone getting my photos, I probably wouldn't post them online at all. That's a photo I created exclusively to test the "shift" feature (no tilting in that shot) of the lens (that was taken with a Canon TS-E 24mm f/3.5L II on a Canon 5D II body).

If you would have had the full-res RAW I'm sure it would have looked much better (I have other examples of images in my Flickr library where I didn't use a tilt-shift lens and used a Photoshop 'transform' instead... and you really can't tell.) Basically if the _only_ thing you need to do is correct perspective, you don't really need a tilt-shift lens. Through a bit of trial & error you pick up on the idea that it helps to leave a bit of space around a subject if you're probably going to have to do some perspective correction in Photoshop. A tilt-shift does have a slick ability to alter the plane of the DoF so that it's angled rather than parallel to the sensor plane of the camera and you can't do that in a post-processing.

One tip I did learn on perspective correction: the human brain _expects_ to see some narrowing of buildings as they go up. So while it's possible to "perfectly" correct (you can even over-correct if you want), if you lay down grid lines and fix the perspective so that it's truly perfect, the brain can end up thinking the building is getting wider as it goes up (an optical illusion). It's usually better to to correct the image so that it's just a tiny bit short of a perfect correction (e.g. think of it as perfectly correcting it... then backing out a degree of so of the correction.) This results in an image which "looks" normal to the eye even though it's technically no perfect.

 

[bratkinson]

TCampbell -

You the MAN on this! Many thanks for your technical expertise!

I'm off to Chicago to do some downtown photography next week and will most certainly use my PS Elements and/or Lightroom to "line 'em up" then back off a tad!

Many thanks!

 

[cgipson1]

Just for grins.. this is Tim's uncorrected photo... quickie corrected in Photoshop as an example! (Tim... if you want me to take it down, let me know) Working from a low res photo.. it lacks the detail that Tim's original posts do.. but you get the idea.

Totally fine to edit my photos (my profile has the "My Photos are Ok to Edit" flag displayed.) If I was _really_ worried about someone getting my photos, I probably wouldn't post them online at all. That's a photo I created exclusively to test the "shift" feature (no tilting in that shot) of the lens (that was taken with a Canon TS-E 24mm f/3.5L II on a Canon 5D II body).

If you would have had the full-res RAW I'm sure it would have looked much better (I have other examples of images in my Flickr library where I didn't use a tilt-shift lens and used a Photoshop 'transform' instead... and you really can't tell.) Basically if the _only_ thing you need to do is correct perspective, you don't really need a tilt-shift lens. Through a bit of trial & error you pick up on the idea that it helps to leave a bit of space around a subject if you're probably going to have to do some perspective correction in Photoshop. A tilt-shift does have a slick ability to alter the plane of the DoF so that it's angled rather than parallel to the sensor plane of the camera and you can't do that in a post-processing.

One tip I did learn on perspective correction: the human brain _expects_ to see some narrowing of buildings as they go up. So while it's possible to "perfectly" correct (you can even over-correct if you want), if you lay down grid lines and fix the perspective so that it's truly perfect, the brain can end up thinking the building is getting wider as it goes up (an optical illusion). It's usually better to to correct the image so that it's just a tiny bit short of a perfect correction (e.g. think of it as perfectly correcting it... then backing out a degree of so of the correction.) This results in an image which "looks" normal to the eye even though it's technically no perfect.

+1 on this! I just used your tilt-shift image as a guide...