Up front let me say “field curvature” is not that pesky problem where images with straight lines in the frame seem to bow in or out as you move towards of the corners, that would be distortion, which comes in two core flavours, barrel and pincushion, with moustache as a somewhat recalcitrant but rare third option. There is a relationship between distortion and field curvature, but we won’t be getting into that in this article.

Field curvature can be a right little bastard, causing time dilation, warping gravitational fields, interfering mercilessly with photons and fooling with quantum calculations…..well actually it won’t do any of those things but it can indeed be tricky if you don’t know what it is and how it might impact on your photos.

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