Correcting Lens Distortion in Underwater Photos

[JackConnick]

New blog article:
Correcting Lens Distortion in Underwater Photos

Ultra-wide fisheye lenses are the preferred wide angle lens underwater due to their close focusing ability, sharp corners and wide field of view. Divers can get very close to their subjects, filling the frame, and eliminating water which makes their photos lack sharpness, color and definition.

But there is a drawback to fisheye lenses; when shooting the straight lines, commonly of a pier or wreck, models or other similar subjects - optical distortion is introduced.

It's easy to correct in Lightroom with most lenses, and micro four-thrids lenses have some correction built in, but usually not enough. For them a quick trip to Photoshop does the trick.

This new Optical Ocean Sales blog article shows you how to correct these problems in Lightroom and or Photoshop.

 

[bmorescuba]

Nice article, thanks for sharing. I shoot micro 4/3 with the Panasonic 8mm Fisheye for WA and I also find that the baked-in profile correction is not sufficient, at least not all the time. Sometimes I like the default correction, sometimes not. I usually only "Edit in PS" as a last resort, so what I do is this - load up a shot with taken with the 8mm, then under the Lens Profile, choose Canon 15mm. I find that this, plus the built-in correction added together give a nice result. And it's super fast. I know this isn't approved, but it works.

Thanks for all your great documentation Jack.

 

[JackConnick]

Thanks, glad you enjoyed the article.

Sometimes other lens profiles will work, but I prefer to adjust it all a bit by hand. If you save a 16-bit Tiff file from PS, you're not really loosing anything.