I have a large bulk of photographs taken with a fisheye lens. As I want to do some image-processing (e.g. edge detection) on the photos I want to remove the barrel distortio
Your values are very extreme, so you see extreme results.
Try a=0, b=0, c=1. That describes no correction at all, if your program is correct you should see the original image. Then gradually change c and b. Changing in increments of 0.1 is a good start.