New to digital photography - barrel distortion

[smercker]

I took a picture of a rectangular object, and it appears to be bending the straight lines outward. Does anyone have any idea why that might be happening?

[Dave Humphries]

Hi "smercker",
and welcome to the CiC forums.

The simple answer is almost certainly something called barrel distortion (the link is to Wikipedia).

It will be most prevalent at the wider angles of zoom, moreso on cheaper lenses (e.g. DSLR kit lenses or cheap superzooms).
Also on point and shoot cameras, especially if using a wide angle adapter lens on the front of the regular zoom.

Can usually be corrected in post processing software if necessary (and if worth it).

All that without seeing the picture, I hope I was right!

Cheers,