• dingus@lemmy.world
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      21 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.

      • SuspiciousUser@lemmy.ml
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        16 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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          16 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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            14 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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                10 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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                  9 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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                11 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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                  9 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

  • 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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      1 day 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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        22 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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          21 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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        23 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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    1 day 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.

  • bleistift2@sopuli.xyz
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    1 day ago

    According to YouTube wisdom, people don’t like seeing themselves in images because they’re not mirrored like people are used to. Camera apps nowadays “correct” for that and do mirror the image for preview.

    VSauce: INSIDE a Spherical Mirror

    • lunarul@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      Camera apps nowadays “correct” for that and do mirror the image for preview

      Huh, I always thought people who post flipped photos are just technically challenged (and/or have really poor eye for detail to not notice it). Never considered someone doing that on purpose just to further their own delusion of what they look like.

      • SkyeStarfall
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        22 hours ago

        Or maybe it’s just what the camera defaults to and they don’t bother changing it because why would you? Which is a more reasonable assumption than calling them delusional

        • lunarul@lemmy.world
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          21 hours ago

          Um… that’s what I said was my assumption. But according to the comment I was replying to, people prefer the flipped version because it looks like what they see in the mirror, i.e. what they think they look like.

      • can@sh.itjust.works
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        1 day ago

        It’s more about the image being saved looking like the one I saw in the preview when taking it.

  • dufkm@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    The mirror is how you see yourself. The camera is how you’re seen by others.