• HelixDab2@lemm.ee
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    5 hours ago

    Focal length makes a real difference. Cell phone cameras have a really hard time with that; that’s why photos from a selfie stick look better than just holding the camera, even at arms length.

    • dingus@lemmy.world
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      19 hours ago

      Imo mirror selfies do on average tend to look a lot better. I think a lot of it must be that the photo is taken from further away. This causes two things…

      1. The picture isn’t a detailed because the shot is simply further away. Wrinkles, acne, and other imperfections are not as clear or pronounced.

      2. Features like your nose, chin, eyes, etc. appear smaller in far shots than close shots. In close shots, there is a bit of a “fisheye” effect due to the perspective, even if you aren’t using a fisheye lens. It exaggerates a lot of facial features and isn’t how you normally see yourself when you’re looking into the mirror because you just aren’t that close.

      No, it’s just just “because the image is flipped” which is what is repeated ad nauseum online. The biggest thing is the second point I mentioned.

      There was a gif out there somewhere that very simply and easily demonstrates this phenomenon of how wildly different your facial features can look from this.

  • DesertDwellingWeirdo@lemmy.world
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    22 hours ago

    It’s the camera. A wider lens will help immensely, but you’ll need a dedicated camera for it. I never use my cellular camera for selfies.

      • SuspiciousUser@lemmy.ml
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        14 hours ago

        To help stem the downvotes from people who don’t understand, if you take a picture of a vase with various mm lenses from the same distance and then crop to the size of the vase, every picture will be the same. It’s only distance that matters. Taking 20 pictures in a grid really close to your face with a telephoto lens and stitching them together into a single picture will result in a wide angle shot.

        • friendlymessage@feddit.org
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          13 hours ago

          True but the point of using a different lens is that you move closer / father away from the objective. You get the best head shots from a distance with a telephoto lens. Not really practical for selfies of course.

          • BorgDrone@lemmy.one
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            11 hours ago

            You get the same shot from that distance with a wide angle lens. All a telephoto lens does is optically crop the picture.

              • Visstix@lemmy.world
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                7 hours ago

                It’s actually true though. Only difference is you need to crop the image on a wider lens, making the quality lower.

                • friendlymessage@feddit.org
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                  7 hours ago

                  Yes, I realized they are right but their original statement that the lens doesn’t matter is still wrong. I can’t crop without losing quality and uncropping only works in shitty movies

              • BorgDrone@lemmy.one
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                8 hours ago

                A dolly zoom moves the camera, that’s the entire point of a dolly zoom. The zoom while moving the camera is only there to keep the framing the same, the actual visual change is caused by the movement of the camera, not by the changing of the focal length. You’d get the exact same effect if you used a fixed-focus lens and just cropped the resulting video to keep the framing constant.

                • friendlymessage@feddit.org
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                  7 hours ago

                  Okay, now I get what you’re saying and you’re absolutely correct. But from the perspective of the photographer, it doesn’t really matter. The motif you’re aiming for is fixed. What you then influence is distance and lens and lens I can directly read from my camera. If I shoot with a wide angle, I have to get closer to get the motif that I want, if I zoom in, I need to step back. So, yes, technically distance is what matters but the distance correlates with the lens I’m using. That’s why tips like “shoot portraits with 85 mm to get the most natural look” still make sense although you’re right

  • 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 ℹ️@yiffit.net
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    23 hours ago

    I didn’t notice for a while that by default the camera on my Pixel 8 was using a filter that makes your eyes and lips bigger. Every time I open the camera, I have to turn off the filter because there’s no way to change what the default filter is.

  • aeronmelon@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    Ironically, the mirror is the one most likely to be misrepresenting your image. In addition to being a flipped image of what you look like, anything but the most perfectly flat piece of glass is slightly distorting your proportions. And some mirrors are built to intentionally distort your appearance to make you appear more flattering to yourself.

    • ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca
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      23 hours ago

      In addition to being a flipped image

      Common misconception. Mirrors reflect images, but do not flip them. If you put two items next to each other, their order is preserved in the reflection, not inverted.

      The reason people think mirrors are flipped is because writing on shirts appear backwards, but that’s because your shirt is facing the wrong direction. Write a word on something clear and hold it up to a mirror. It’s not flipped. Put the word up against your chest like it was written on your shirt. Notice how you flipped the word in order to do that.

      • Dragon Rider (drag)@lemmy.nz
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        19 hours ago

        It is flipped. The mirror is showing you the reverse side of the card, so the image in the mirror is flipped twice. Two flips make a normal. A person looking at that card from the mirror side would see it as reversed, but the mirror flips it again so it looks normal to you.

        • ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca
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          19 hours ago

          The mirror is showing you the reverse side of the card

          Yup! See the guy’s finger is on the reverse side of the card? It’s touching the N on the right side of your view. If you looked at it from where the mirror is, you’d see the guy’s finger touching the N, but now it’s on the left side of your view. Because you flipped, not the writing.

    • accideath@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      Most phone cameras also have a much wider focal length than our eyes though, which makes faces look a bit skinnier. I definitely look better in wide angle than in reality or telephoto.

      • Droggelbecher@lemmy.world
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        20 hours ago

        Took me until my 20s to figure out that this is why I look like shit in close up photos. Phone cameras make my nose look suuuper disproportionately large. It’s a relief that I look better irl.

  • FrederikNJS@lemm.ee
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    23 hours ago

    The depth perception also makes quite a difference. The side of your face can clearly be seen in a mirror to be the side of your face, but depending on lighting, the side of your face can look as if it’s part of the front of your face in a picture as you don’t have the depth perception. The result is that photos make you look fatter than your mirror image would.

  • mommykink@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    Flip your selfies along the Y-axis. Most phones have a setting to do this automatically. That’s the “you” that you’re most used to seeing in a mirror. It won’t fix everything, like the limitations of focal length, lighting, or camera quality, but if you’re the type to really obsess over how much “worse” you look in selfies, that trick can do a lot.