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If there’s one simple problem that seems to plague a huge percentage of photos taken by both professionals and amateurs, it’s crooked horizons. Nothing ruins an otherwise perfect shot like a crooked horizon, and your average viewer quickly spots that something about the photo isn’t quite right. When you stare at a photo for what can seem like ages while editing it, it’s easy to become desensitized to small, but seemingly obvious issues like crooked horizons. To the viewer though, a slanted horizon is very distracting and can stick out like a sore thumb. So, how can we keep the horizon straight in photos?
While you can certainly correct even the most crooked shot using Adobe Photoshop or any image editor, rotating and cropping your images in post processing decreases the resolution. Ideally, we want to get the horizon as straight as possible in-camera so there is one less thing to fix later.
Using a tripod to compose your shots makes keeping your horizon level much easier. It’s pretty tough to hold a camera completely still and level, so a tripod will keep it perfectly in place.
Some newer digital cameras like the Canon 5Ds, Sony A7 II, Nikon D810, Pentax K3 II, Canon 7D II, Nikon D7200 and others feature built in electronic horizon levels to help you keep the horizon perfectly straight. Using an in-camera electronic level will help you achieve a horizon that is perfectly horizontal!
If your camera has a small viewfinder, keeping the horizon perfectly level can be tricky — use live view to compose the shot on your camera’s LCD screen — you can zoom in on areas with straight lines and make sure that they line up along the straight edge of the LCD screen.
If your camera doesn’t have a built in electronic level but it does have a hot shoe where a flash would normally be mounted, you can purchase a 3 axis bubble level like this one by Altura Photo.