I'm not overly concerned abouth the word "distorted" but find myself agreeing with those who don't consider a change of perspective, a "distortion of the object" as Ray put it in hiis last post.
People say "glass hard". Is glass harder than steel? Some would say yes because it's more brittle.
But it's not harder. But we know what lay people mean when they misuse the expression. In a technical forum, one would correct them.
The "Natural view" is a step too far, to me, along with the idea that anything other than it, is a distortion.
The "natural view" is illusory.
Here's a building which you can assume has depth:
This view is from infinity.
What's the natural view? Do you need a ladder or not?
The eye doesn't have a flat back like a sensor, so you can't "see" the circles/squares all the same size and shape, though your brain might be able to determine that they are. With a camera with a wide enough field of view, you can hold the sensor parallel with the front of the building and get what I've drawn. But remember it has depth. So the view of the (unsketched) sides of the building, roof, tower etc, depend where you put the camera.
If you look back at my previous two sketches, I hope they help show the problem too. The spaceman has a big problem. He doesn't know if the wiindow thing is rectangular or not.
So, what's
the natural view?
There isn't one.
If you put any resulting print on a wall, and arrange that your eye is in the same relative position as the camera was when you took the picture, then you get the same view that the camera saw. You could call that a natural arrangement, if you will. But there's nothing "Natural" versus "Distorted" about what the camera sensor recorded.
(You can test this most easily with a very wide lens. Arrange some childs' blocks in a heap and image them from close up. Some will say the image is distorted because the angles aren't 90º, etc. Others will say it's right, because that was the view the camera had. But if you put your eye where the entrance pupil of the lens was and look around the print,
more might say that makes it look right. Try it. It depends what you let your brain add..)
With a
2D image you can alter it in Photoshop to get the same image you would have done if you'd recorded it from a different place. You're changing the perspective. Neither is right or wrong? Is one distorted? None is right because there's no single "right"? So all perspectives are distorted?
If the words "natural" and "distorted" become arbitrarily applied, then there's little point using them, and I would resist it.
If you show an image of a coin with it circular, but with the edge showing, that IS an image you could have got in a camera, if the coin is off centre.
There's nothing unnatural about it, but you could draw any number of different projections if the camera were tilted.
If you
remove the Frame of Reference so it's not apparent how the thing was photographed, then you could say it's distorted. This elaboration, unmentioned originally, does not justify any assertion that all was right and it's obvious, which I can hear Ray trying to go for.
Ray's use of the words as though they had obvious meanings, without being able to define them, raised the hackles of several members. Others objected or worked some stuff out. Subsequent repeated adoption of selected parts of those workings, and mistakenly declaring that they proved the original undefined assertions, didn't help and is misleading to leave uncorrected.
I apologise if repeated, varied explanations of how things seem to me, appear to be "bludgeoning". I'm trying to do better than just asserting that I'm obviously right.