Hey everyone. I’ve been shooting for a few years now, mostly landscapes, and I’ve always just used the basic lens profiles in Lightroom. Lately I’ve been wondering if I’m missing out by not using dedicated lens correction profiles for my older wide-angle. The corners in some of my recent shots just feel a bit off, like they’re pulling in a way I don’t remember seeing on location. Has anyone else gone down this rabbit hole?
I've chased that same itch with older wide lenses. At first I blamed the camera, then Lightroom defaults, then the real world looked different in the corners. I started turning on lens correction profiles and playing with the distortion slider and sometimes it helped, other times it reminded me the lens has its own character. Have you tried a side by side with and without the profiles to see what changes?
Lens correction profiles target specific optics to flatten geometry and reduce vignetting. When you shoot wide angles on older glass the corner behavior can be a mix of field curvature distortion and chromatic aberration. Enabling the lens profile and tweaking distortion vignetting and chromatic aberration corrections lets you separate what the lens does from what happens in your processing. Try it with the profile on and off and compare.
I wonder if we are chasing a dream of perfect corners that a lot of practical landscapes simply do not deliver. Maybe what feels like distortion is part of the scene energy or a result of atmospheric perspective. If your eye is telling you something feels off it might not be fixed by a profile.
Maybe the frame is telling you something else the correct look could be to lean into the lens quirks rather than erase them. Rather than asking if the lens correction profiles will fix the corners ask how you want the scene to breathe in the frame and what distortion you are willing to tolerate for mood
From a reading and seeing angle I think about how the correction tone changes the landscape mood. A tiny tweak can alter depth cues. If you are chasing a cinematic feel you might want to keep a touch of corner softness or distortion as a signature rather than a clinical fix. The concept of lens correction profiles becomes a tool not a rule
I did a quick test with an old wide and found that a small calibration shot helped align the profile with what I remembered on location. If the lens has field curvature you may still notice it in corners at certain apertures