The first two pictures show the effects of the distortion caused by pointing a wide angle lens at the object so that the plane of the lens is not perpendicular to the object being photographed. Here are two pictures showing the unretouched photos (except for shrinking the size) from two cameras.

The picture on the left is from the S60, the right is from the Minolta 7i. Notice that the S60 picture shows slight curvature of the vertical elements, while this is better controlled in the 7i picture on the right.

The pictures below show barrel distortion. Notice "the bulging out" of the vertical and horizontal supports on my porch. The closer you get to a subject with vertical or horizontal lines, the more pronounced this effect becomes. The Canon S60 picture is at the top, and the 7i at the bottom. Notice that the larger Minolta 7i doesn't fare much better than the compact S60 in this informal test.