Thanks Bart. So the trade off would be to shoot from further away which would reduce the problems with perspective but ultimately not give the effect I was aiming to achieve?
Hi,
Yes, it's a trade-off. Basically only printing very large and viewing from the correct distance will produce an undistorted view for such a flat plane projection. By anticipating that the image will be viewed from the wrong viewing distance for an undistorted view, one can exploit the 'wide-angle effect', but it's nothing else than projection distortion at play.
The same thing happens with a 'Tele-lens effect' when we view images from too close a distance, perspective
seems to be compressed when in fact we only view it from the wrong perspective point.
For interior building shots, we often need the angle of view to get an overview of the lay-out and we cannot move back far enough so we need wide angle shots with short focal lengths, but that also introduces the 'Wide-angle effect' apparent distortion.
A good Pano stitching software can mitigate the effect a bit by introducing a progressive compression of the image dimensions, or by using a different output projection method (e.g. Cylindrical), but that will also start to distort (straight line) features in certain directions. When the image only has straight vertical lines, a compression in only the horizontal direction (or a Cylindrical projection) may help a bit.
It's the same thing that the DxO Raw converter uses for its anamorphosis distortion correction, and it was also added to their Viewpoint software. It think that a Pano stitcher uses better resampling algorithms though, and offers a lot of other useful (stitching) features.
Cheers,
Bart
P.S. Another solution for viewing on-line, may be by using a virtual reality 3D viewer which allows to rotate through the view while keeping a more natural looking perspective (like turning one's head and looking straight at surfaces instead of at an angle on a flat plane). One would need to output the image, usually created with a Pano stitcher application, in a suitable projection method other than rectilinear. 'Equirectangular' or 'Panini' methods are popular, and can also be restricted to less than 360 degree panoramic views.
Likewise, one could produce curved surface (printed) output, e.g. with a Cylindrical projection method.