365 Day 49 - Gloucester Cathedral

[quote][i]trying to correct them post processing always leaves me dissatisfied[/i][/quote] That's because attempting to correct them in post processing never really works. In fact, it doesn't [i]really[/i] work at all. You'll always end up with a compromise that, rather than remove the distortion, simply moves it somewhere else in the image. Hence you might get vertical pillars at each side, for example, but you'll pay for it by gaining a front wall that looks as if it's falling outwards. To attain verticals that [i]can[/i] be corrected, you need to have your camera set up in such a way that the vertical plan of the front element in your lens is [i]exactly[/i] parallel to the vertical plane of the front of the building that you're shooting. If your camera's facing, even slightly, at an angle, in any direction, to the building, correcting the verticals will cause distortion, however slight, somewhere else. And even if you achieve this almost impossible task, you'll then be faced with pin cushion and barrel distortion to deal with as well! Best, I'd say, to shoot across the building at an angle and any distortion you encounter can be put down to 'perspective!' There used to be a member; fortunately, he's been kicked off of the site now but incorrect verticals was one of his pet hates. He'd upload mods. to practically every shot in the critique gallery each day with the corners pulled sideways and the subjects in between, stretched ridiculously out of shape. He thought that he was doing a wonderful job of educating people, when, in reality, he was scaring many of them away! On a serious note, I almost never correct verticals for the reasons above. In reality, we see incorrect verticals but our brain fools us into not noticing them. They're there if you look hard enough though, so why should we pretend, in our images, that they aren't?

Quote:trying to correct them post processing always leaves me dissatisfied

That's because attempting to correct them in post processing never really works. In fact, it doesn't really work at all.
You'll always end up with a compromise that, rather than remove the distortion, simply moves it somewhere else in the image. Hence you might get vertical pillars at each side, for example, but you'll pay for it by gaining a front wall that looks as if it's falling outwards.
To attain verticals that can be corrected, you need to have your camera set up in such a way that the vertical plan of the front element in your lens is exactly parallel to the vertical plane of the front of the building that you're shooting. If your camera's facing, even slightly, at an angle, in any direction, to the building, correcting the verticals will cause distortion, however slight, somewhere else.
And even if you achieve this almost impossible task, you'll then be faced with pin cushion and barrel distortion to deal with as well!
Best, I'd say, to shoot across the building at an angle and any distortion you encounter can be put down to 'perspective!'
There used to be a member; fortunately, he's been kicked off of the site now but incorrect verticals was one of his pet hates. He'd upload mods. to practically every shot in the critique gallery each day with the corners pulled sideways and the subjects in between, stretched ridiculously out of shape.
He thought that he was doing a wonderful job of educating people, when, in reality, he was scaring many of them away!
On a serious note, I almost never correct verticals for the reasons above. In reality, we see incorrect verticals but our brain fools us into not noticing them.
They're there if you look hard enough though, so why should we pretend, in our images, that they aren't?