Straight lines become curved

[DoctorBombay]

Hi gang, I have been having a big problem with taking close up of ceramic tiles. I maintain a website for my company and when I take close up pictures of a tile that has straight lines running across it, the lines always apperar to be curved, like the picture was taken with a fish-eye lens.
I am using a standard Kodak digital camera worth about 300 dollars Canadian so I suppose it is a fairly good one. I try to upload a photo here but it doesn't work for some reason.
So here is the link.

http://www.midgleywest.com/images/my...tellofloor.jpg

Any help is apreciated.

DB

[Michael Fanelli]

Hi gang, I have been having a big problem with taking close up of ceramic tiles. I maintain a website for my company and when I take close up pictures of a tile that has straight lines running across it, the lines always apperar to be curved, like the picture was taken with a fish-eye lens.
I am using a standard Kodak digital camera worth about 300 dollars Canadian so I suppose it is a fairly good one. I try to upload a photo here but it doesn't work for some reason.

Standard lenses are curved field. Even though these lens can get up close as with macro, they don't have the flat field that a true macro lens has. Small lenses on consumer cameras are even worse.

What you really need is a DSLR and a true macro lens to avoid this problem. That, of course, means money!

[another view]

Two other ways you can do it:

1) Make sure the camera is absolutely level all the way around. This means put it on a tripod and check it with a bubble level. You could use something like a copy stand for this too - a tripod's legs might get in the shot. This will greatly reduce any curved lines.

2) You can clean up any distortion that's left in Photoshop. I would bet that you'd cure enough of the problem with #1 above that this wouldn't really be necessary for your use.