On Wed, 20 Jan 1999 02:46:35 GMT, "Martin Ouimet" wrote:

[...]
>The reason this whole distortion thing is so important to me is because I do
>mostly architectural photography, where the distortion near the edge of the
>frame is *very* obvious.
>
>Anybody know of a Nikon/Nikon-mount lens without ANY distortion in the
>18mm-24mm range? And what about the PC-Nikkors? Any thoughts?

Ah, distortion....! ;-)
The distortion you show in the image on your web page
is typical of the better Nikkor wides, and it approaches
zero at the edge of the frame (I prefer a "straight"
barrel distortion to this type of correction...;-).
Among wide Nikkors, the only two I have seen with
really low distortion are the 15mm f5.6 and non-retro
21mm f4. The 24 f2.8 has, as I recall, more distortion
than the 20 (away from the edge). The PC Nikkors have
distortion similar to what you show, but since the
image area is only a small part of the image circle,
it can vary with the amount of shift. Even with all
this, I have no problem using the 15mm f5.6, 20mm f2.8,
28mm f4PC, and 35mm f2.8PC for architecture - there is
a noticeable problem only with straight-on photos with
straight lines extending across most of the long
dimension of the frame... (BTW, there are architectural
photo examples taken with these lenses on my web page,
under "Commercial", "architecture". If you sweep
your mouse between the "- -" marks with the left
button held down, the lens used will be displayed.)