Tip of the Week: Preventing distortion in wide-angle portraits

In the past month, there've been a lot of camera announcements. I'm happy to see that many new point-and-shoots include wide-angle lenses, with a wide-angle end of the zoom range as low as 28 or 24mm. This type of lens is great if you're capturing group shots of friends and family, or if you're photographing a wedding and want to make sure that some of the cousins, aunts, and uncles don't get cut out of the group portrait.

However, there can be a downside using these lenses to take close-up portraits. Consider the two self-portraits. The Nikon Coolpix L19 shot has a 35mm equivalent focal length of 41mm, which doesn't distort my face all that much (see it here). Then, check out the shot I took with the Samsung HL15W (at right), which has a 35mm equivalent focal length of 24mm. You can see how my face, particularly my chin, looks quite distorted. In fact, I look like Jay Leno!

To avoid such distortion, you can simply zoom in a bit from the wide-angle setting on your point-and-shoot, if it has an ultra-wide setting. This will prevent some of this distortion.

To see which cameras have wide-angle capability, check out the latest models on our Ratings pages (available to subscribers).—Terry Sullivan