I was making a print from a painting and when I,d got the image I put up a grid chart(made from an old calender. Here is the barrel distortion @ wide angle
.Its a bit assymetrical I think the lens was low but it serves to demonstrate that the distortion is much like most lenses of this type.

http://home.freeuk.com/wlt001/barrel.jpg


modified by dl3mcj: to reduce traffic I integrated the photograph into the post

Hi Bill,

here you can compare with so-called "brands":

Casio Exilim EX-V7 DigiCam (7 Megapixel, 7x opt. Zoom): Wideangle only reaches 38mmKB:

http://www.dkamera.de/bilder/testberichte/casio/exilim-ex-v7/testergebnisse/test_verzeichnung_w.jpg

dkamera.de estimates the barrel distortion for the casio at 1,6% in the wideangle area.


Here's the result from my tests (I took an image of a math's paper with the DC-XZ6):
http://1.traveler-forum.de/kacki/DSLR_Vergleich/BILD0806.JPG

Please note that the grid geometrics (size) is not the same!

Here is the test of a Ricoh Caplio R6, also 7x-Zoom: 1,1% barrel distortion.