Huge Distortion with my 17 - 40 Canon lens What am I doing wrong

Just asking if there is any advice to minimize barrel distortion - It seems anything that is straight is barrelling whether it is a horizion, pier, trees, - i have tried different apertures focal lengths shooting straight shooting on a tripod - no matter what I am getting huge distortion, I shoot landscape and recently it is making all the images unable to post. I posted an example

There are many softwares available to correct. Personally I do not like this lense much but prefer it for convenience.

Hi Kevin,
with PS it is quite easy to correct distortion:

Correcting CA, Distortion and Vignetting

This is the very reason that I bought the Tokina AT-X Pro 17mm, almost no barrel distortion. Maybe one of these days Canon will get it's act together and give us some really great super-wides. Until then I'd use Juza's advice and work out the problems in PS.

Kevin, give PTLens a try:

http://epaperpress.com/ptlens/index.html

It's a fantastic plug-in and well worth the minor registration fee.

Guy

Personally I would consider another copy if you are having problems. I had to go through 2 others before I found one that didnt bow horizons. I would say that if you are shooting at 17mm then you are going to get considerable barrel distortion no matter what lens you use. I personally couldnt do without this lens on my 5D, I even shoot architecture with it. I would suggest a combination of perspective correction using the corp tool in PS and PT lens. Both will radically correct these problems with most shots. perspective cropping takes a little getting used to but can totally sort out converging verticals etc.