[Garth Herrick]

Bobbi,

That's some serious distortion! A reason your lens may be doing this is to avoid stretching and elongating the image to the corners. My lenses have never produced anything like that (usually they have an extremely mild reverse of this problem, - pin-cushioning, where the corners are slightly extended). I bet you were standing close to your work with the lens focal length toward the 18mm end. I would suggest trying the same pictures from a much greater distance. If that does not work, then you should shop for a better suited lens; there are so many other candidates.

My three current lenses are zooms also, so they are not entirely perfect. Maybe someone can pipe in whether their prime lens (non-zoom) is distortion free. I have a Sigma 15 - 30 mm that compensates to avoid your problem by stretching and elongating the images (another distortion) to the corners, keeping the image rectangular at a cost. My Nikon ED 24 - 85 mm lens is silent, but imperfect too, although not like yours. My Nikon ED 70 - 300 mm does the best job at copying paintings without distortion, but I need to stand quite a distance away with a required tripod.

Garth