Barrel distortion

[JakeWest]

What are your thoughts on barrel distortion vs rectilinear distortion?
Wider lenses with barrel distortion show warped edges, but rectilinear lenses make the sides stretched making people look wider with strange features. When using wider lenses, which look do you prefer?

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[Stip]

I love barrel distortion. I think it is also widely considered a “cinematic” trait as often found in anamorphic lenses.

[dmullenasc]

I think you answered your own question — are there people on the edge of frame or architecture? If architecture, then barrel distortion will be more distracting than rectilinear correction. If people, the opposite may be true.

I made a post on Instagram about this yesterday because I couldn’t put images here, about the two types of extreme wide-angle lenses used on “2001”, a 28mm Cooke (14mm equivalent in Super-35) which was rectilinear and a 14mm-ish Fairchild-Curtis 160º (7mm equivalent in Super-35) which was very barrel distorted.

[dmullenasc]

https://www.instagram.com/p/DLqfsNmyojG/

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