Different ways to measure/calculate frontal area (A)

[Christ]

Now, note the curve of the road relative to flat... roads are always tapered down from the center, so it should be slanted down on the left of the pic, but it should also be either nearly flat, or curved upward toward the car, not concave.

[TestDrive]

You're right, Christ.
My guess-timated lens correction is obviously incorrect.

[Christ]

I wouldn't say it's incorrect, I'd just say that it brought focus to another problem... if you correct one thing, does it make the perceived fish-eye effect worse to other parts of the photograph? Should you then correct more for everything at once? Man... setting CRT monitors up is sooo hard sometimes.

[tech 87]

I haven't tried it, just read this page and thought about it, but wouldn't it be possible to do a pixle count of an image of a car's silhouette, like say by putting a stretched white sheet in front of the car between it and the camera. If you do it at night and use bright enough flood lights far enough behind the car to get an outline underneath and all the way around, and you keep the camera and the lights both at the centerlines of the car's height and width, it should be the same as the cutout, zero distortion, right?