Avoiding rich models is a great thing to do if you don't model uncertainty: a beginner that didn't get enough useful calibration data will see poor uncertaintie

Avoiding rich models is a great thing to do if you don't model uncertainty: a beginner that didn't get enough useful calibration data will see poor uncertainties in the results. So I now use the splined models in pretty much all applications, and there are very few downsides. In my experience, every lens fits noticeably better with the richer model (the mrcal validation shows you this explicitly). I think you should look at the tour of mrcal; it's friendly.