Can a concave mirror correct distortion from a convex reflective surface?

Join the discussion
Registration is free. Ask a follow-up in this thread, or start your own.
1 reply · 2K views
Paul Aitken
Messages
6
Reaction score
1
If one took a photograph of a reflection from convex reflective surface. Could one use concave mirror to obtain the original undistorted image?
 
Physics news on Phys.org
Paul Aitken said:
If one took a photograph of a reflection from convex reflective surface. Could one use concave mirror to obtain the original undistorted image?

You can correct part of the distortion, but not necessarily all of it.

Part of the distortion is the mis-proportion. And that could be corrected with the correct optical system. Assuming that the distortion is not too pronounced such that you get rings out of straight lines, for example.

But part of the distortion is likely to be that parts of the image are out of focus. A an out of focus photograph is not going to be corrected by putting it through an optical system.