tbh when i take selfies (half of me i dont like but wahtever) there's more definition vs when other ppl take photos of me I feel like my face gets really flat and i look like a pear.
Nah, the camera isn't picking up the same details that an eye would, really neither of those are the true self, both the selfie and a normal photo. Both are so dependent on camera angles for a reason.
Mirror is much more like what you actually look like, even though it is flipped.
Get a pair of mirrors at right angles and look into the join. That is the truth.
Out of the 3 (regular camera, selfie camera, mirror) the mirror is the closest because it's what it looks like to a human eye.
Lol not quite. The mirror image is a nonexistent flipped version of you that you're more used to seeing than any photo.
We're more comfortable looking at that flipped image cause it's quite literally _how you see yourself_
But I've taken photos of myself that are flipped and I still look worse than in a mirror, I've also seen one of those non-reversing mirrors once and I still did not look as bad as I do in photos
Listen man, cameras are anything but the best tool to see how you really look.
Flipping an image while it might be a bit weird for you, it doesn't change how you look, it doesn't change your appearance.
On the other side, I can change your appearance using a camera, using different angles, using lighting because the camera can't pick up lights like our eyes can.
The mirror does show a more true representation of yourself, even with it flipped. Cameras have a loooot more flaws then just flipping it. The depth on a camera is so easily manipulated in a way that the human eye doesn't. It doesn't pick up lighting in real life, and a lot of phone cameras also have AI that literally change how the image comes out.
I get what you're saying but focal length is really the only one that hits home. The human eye is about 35mm in focal length and anything outside of that may seem distorted.
The point of the mirror effect is that nobody is completely symmetrical. It's the primary source of that general feeling of "what is wrong with this photo of me".
Distortion by focal length is easy to detect as long as you know about it, and most photographers would know not to make such an obvious and fundamental error.
The rest of the factors you mention are specific to phone cameras, which would get us into nitpicking and away from discussing photos in general
It's less about focal length and more about the camera's distance to your face.
So the way it works is when you're looking at yourself in the mirror, the closer you are to the mirror, you'll notice your ears aren't as visible, and your eyes seem closer to the sides of your face, and your nose looks larger. When you move away from the mirror, the opposite is true. It's harder to notice though since you're farther away, and this is where focal length comes into play because you'd have to zoom in to your face.
[This gif](https://www.diyphotography.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/mJqIwLT-Imgur.gif) demonstrates how your face looks based on the proximity of the camera (or person looking at you) to your face. The focal length merely serves to compensate for the distance between the face and the camera in order to maintain the same head size in each image.
We are also used to seeing a mirror-image of ourselves. Therefore seeing a photo always looks subtly wrong. All the moles etc. are on the "wrong" side of the face. It's the old uncanny valley effect.
It's not the focal length that causes the the distortions, but the distance between you and the camera. You can take natural looking face proportions with a short focal length but keeping 2 meters+ distance from the camera.
The wide angle and focal length really do weird things to a face. There are applications that have been written to correct this problem but I’ve never seen it integrated into a phone’s camera software. It should be. Until then hold the phone as far away as possible and stay away from the edges of the picture.
>According to University of Barcelona researchers, people have an inaccurate view of their own appearance and rate themselves as more attractive than they actually are. This effect is stronger when they view themselves in the first person (i.e in a mirror) as opposed to the third person (in photos, on videos...etc)
So,..
- if camera you is ugly, you ugly.
- if mirror you is ugly, get thee to a nunnery or something...
I think it's more to do with the camera resolution + everything else that goes into processing the image can make you look worse than you actually do. Try take a selfie straight on, your face will appear way narrower than if you were looking at it normally.
False. Camera you is distorted. You can’t map a 3D object onto a 2D surface without distortion. Same reason every map projection is distorted.
I know plenty of people who look far better in person than in photos. I also know a few who look far better in photos than in person.
This gives me much needed confidence lol. I think I look really handsome in mirrors but I am probably the ugliest on photos. So whenever someone takes a photo of me and I look at it my confidence goes down for a few days cause Im thinking "Damn so this is how everybody actually sees me"
This argument is complete bullshit even though a lot of people are saying it. There's no reason being flipped would make you prettier. There's clearly some other reason we look so much prettier in the mirror.
It's the lenses that distort your features, parricularly those riny ones in your phone. The way other people see you is how you look in the mirror, not in a selfie
Edit: yes guys, obviously it's flipped in the mirror, but the distortion of facial proportion comes from lenses. The mirroring doesn't make you uglier, just different to what you're used to.
Um this changes my perspective on life so much wtf. Like, I was always worried that who I saw in pictures was who others saw, so I was always questioning who I saw in the mirror. It literally drives so many unhealthy thoughts.
I’m guessing it’s because we’re not as in tune with the slight differences in other peoples faces as we are with our own. Also we’re more used to seeing all sides of them at once than we are with ourselves. I’m the same way though (hate my photographed appearance but I’m ok with my mirrored one) so this is what I tell myself so I don’t hate myself 🥲.
I once heard a quote where someone said it’s uncanny for a human to see themselves as often as present day people do. Not that long ago (a couple hundred years but honestly even past generations) people rarely saw their own un-mirrored faces and now we see them just about everyday.
Ok I have to get off this ride now. Entire perspective of history is being impacted. Does not compute this late at night for me.
Goodnight friends, and I hope anyone sharing this moment of “what the fuck is life?” with me knows you’re not alone! The camera DOES add 10 pounds and weird shading and an awkward dimple and hey damn that nipple was pretty prevalent and god why did I do my hair like that.
(Twenty years later: ughhh JNCOS?!)
People with big, square or rectangular faces are more photogenic/telegenic because the distortion caused by different focal lengths is less obvious.
People with very convex profiles look particularly bad on the front facing camera because of the wide-angle. It makes the mid face appear to protrude and the chin and forehead to recede.
This is also why selfie sticks actually aren't as useless as might appear to someone who doesn't understand basics of photography. Holding the camera further away from you and zooming in a bit will give a far less distorted image that will look better.
I turn into a genuine goblin in photos but I look pretty decent in a mirror. I’m forever unable to move past that one picture I took that looked good when I was like 17. I’m 22.
I just grew up with nothing but bad pictures of me. I don't take any of myself and my mom takes the worst ones of me to the point I don't even let her anymore lmao. Mirror me is alright, sometimes I think I'm kinda hot even but all it takes is camera me to shut that all away 😂
Looking good is just vanity. Having pictures of your life is to help your memory, not your ego :)
When you're 50 looking back, you have a very different opinion of beautiful and ugly. Don't be a photo prude. For your own sake.
Well I'm not exactly making a whole lot of memories to look back on anyways. Anything worth remembering my parents are there for anyways so it's not like pictures of me during those times don't exist. I just don't take them because it's stupid for me to take pictures of myself, and I wouldn't like looking at them regardless
Exactly what I thought. Parent comment makes no sense. The real answer is that when you're looking in the mirror, you're seeing yourself live and can move around and fix your look. On camera however, it's prerecorded and you can do nothing about it. Plus, the quality most of the time isn't as good as mirrors since mirrors don't show any pixels or low frame rates in the case of videos.
There's some truth to what you said. Movement prevents overscrutinizing tiny details of your face, looking for wrinkles and awkwardness. As an animated, lively person we gain so much charm compared to a still picture.
But at the same time, look up focal lenghts for portraits and you will change your mind about my comment.
I guess the criticism I was making was mainly about the "reversed image" that comes from the mirror cuz that is not how you're seen by people, so when a phone that doesn't reverse images takes a real photo, one tends to feel so weird about how their facial features and asymmetry has been flipped. We're generally in agreement however about the other perception.
Well, i'm ugly on both.
Wondering if camera me is even uglier than the ugly me. Haven't taken a photo of me since i was a teen. (more than 10 years ago)
Lmao, i doubt i'm that ugly. Just not attractive.
I did go to the gym to look a bit better but the face is the same. You couldn't put muscle on your face so...
You ever see someone irl or even in a photo you think it's super attractive and find older photos of them and suddenly you're like "oh god it's like a different person" and you're slightly turned off before realizing how it doesn't matter?
If you hold your thumb out at arms length, it looks quite flat. If you bring it right up to your face, it looks rounder and you can see more of the skin on either side of the nail.
People look better at a distance because of this effect. If you take a photo from arms length you're viewing yourself from about 30cm. If you look in the mirror you're viewing yourself from at least 60cm because the mirror doubles the distance.
It's not the lenses *per se* that distort your features, it's that they are designed to have a wide field of view so that in order to fill the frame with your face, the camera has to be pretty close. It's the small lens-to-subject distance that is doing most of the heavy lifting in making you look weird (it's called "perspective distortion"); the actual optical non-idealities in the lens (like geometric distortion, which makes straight likes curved) play a comparatively minor role.
You look like you look like in the mirror but from other peoples pov doesn't your face still change side? So your right cheek in the mirror is seen as your left cheek for others
Mostly, you’re right about the distortion but what you see in the mirror is obviously mirrored so people see you flipped to how you see yourself in a mirror
Everyone says this but it isn't the case. Mirror flip a photo of yourself where you feel it looks worse than the mirror, and it'll pretty much still look the same to you.
Yeah the mirror flip is not what's adding an extra pound of fat directly to my neck. Idk what it is but when I stand and look at myself in the bathroom I look kinda fit and then I smile and I like my smile.
Then I'm tagged in a picture at a party and I'm hunched over, I have a double chin and my face is straight up ugly and I'm like "ah gotcha, this is how the world sees me"
I try to tell myself that I won't look good in photos unless the right lens is used, and I like mirror me better anyways so I'll go off of that in order to save what self-confidence I have left
Ya I feel like I tend to straighten up in the mirror because I am actively looking at myself. I had to fix my posture a few years ago because of back pain issues, now I always stand with my shoulders pulled back instead of slack and it makes a big difference in terms of the vibe you put out to the world and in pictures. At least as a guy anyways, standing straight with your head and shoulders in good alignment is huge for looks
Totally agreed. Ive been told when I walk around I stand up straight and it's because I'm literally thinking to myself "Posture posture posture" as I walk but then I sit down at my desk and I look like Coralines dad
If there’s not text in the image, I do flip photos of myself when editing. It just feels “familiar” and I can’t really describe it better than that. I hate both versions of any photo of myself, but that’s beside the point
It's also the the specific perspective angle and parallax that we get used to seeing with a mirror. The image geometry processed through a camera lens is also typically distorted from what our eyes naturally capture.
There's definitely something to being used to it. Pictures that are flipped to match the mirror look good to me, if they aren't I think I look so unsymmetrical.
I tried with my friend once look at each other in the mirror. We looked good to ourselves, but really weird to each other. It was bizarre, like looking at him directly it was fine, but in the mirror I could see everything that wasn't symmetrical.
flipped in the 4th dimension: the obvious solution is to ascend to a higher plane of existence so that you can rotate yourself around the 4th dimension and become your mirror self.
Which one is less ugly then?
I think a but of fresh clothes and good hairstyle could make you look good. It's just we don't do that, but i believe you will look fine.
I'm the same so I couldn't say but saw my friend dressed up, looked fresh and nice.
Usually I think I’m good looking, or even hot. But then every time I see myself in a photo I wonder if I’m just as delusional as the standard grandmother.
Even if you mirrored the pictures you take, people still forget that the view of your 3D, 765 megapixels & over 8K viewing machines will have a different image than the one that your phone camera can get.
It doesn't even have anything to do with the flipped view, cameras simply suck, so chill out.
We dislike pictures of ourself more than mirror images bc of the mere exposure effect. What that also means is that other people will find us better-looking than ourselves do
I just got an ID in the mail and it's the all time absolute worst photo of me ever, which is funny because I'm healthy and happier than I've ever been, it looks alot like Uncle Fester from the Addams Family.
Opposite opinion: sometimes I look better on selfies. I discovered in childehood before smartphones era that mirror can be nice or mean to you. There is no mirror with absolutely flat sutface, all of them distort picture in some - flattering or unflattering - way. That's why some mirrors hate me lightning matters too. On the other hand smartphones with "best" cameras - Iphone and Samsung - are the best not because only because of lenses, mostly because of their best AI photoshop tech. Camera makes pictures nonstop without your permission and then merge them, use HDR, remove wrinkles and so on. Especially in portrait mode.
It's the selfie camera lenses as some wise redditor already said,
HOWEVER it baffles me that phones do not yet have an automatic selfie distortion fix ("AI based" maybe, for buzzword-compliance) , that would be a huge selling point .
Simple, your brain is used to seeing you in reverse in the mirror, and in a camera you are not in reverse, therefore you look different (ugly) because your brain sees you in an "unusual" way
When you look at yourself in the mirror, you’re only seeing yourself from the perspective and position of your eyes, as if the “camera lens” you’re viewing yourself through were stuck where your eyes are. Because of this you always see yourself from certain angles through a reflection.
A camera can remove itself from the position of your eyes, so you can view yourself from different angles through its lens when taking your own picture. The camera view is more accurate to what other people see when they look at you, your mirror reflection will occasionally line up, like if you’re standing eye to eye with someone, but mostly you’re the only one who’s ever going to see those angles of yourself in the mirror.
our '1x' cameras on our phones are actually super wide cameras with really small focal lengths. This make your face, a little bit 'stretched' and 'distorted' which is not an ideal thing for most people. If your phone has a 2x , 3x or even 5x-10x camera (and not just digital crop, actual zoom lens) try to shoot with that (you have to stand much farther for it to give the same zoom level tho), that would give better results.
But a mirror gives the most lifelike result. So if you looking good in the mirror, you are looking good.
Twitter jokeman or screenshot
Selfie camera focal length is a hater.
tbh when i take selfies (half of me i dont like but wahtever) there's more definition vs when other ppl take photos of me I feel like my face gets really flat and i look like a pear.
I have some bad news for you.
Nah, the camera isn't picking up the same details that an eye would, really neither of those are the true self, both the selfie and a normal photo. Both are so dependent on camera angles for a reason. Mirror is much more like what you actually look like, even though it is flipped.
and other lies we tell ourselves
No, please. I need to know now what is more the truth!! aaah
You can’t handle the truth!
The truth is that I'm actually the only beautiful person in the world sry u had to find out this way bby.
Get a pair of mirrors at right angles and look into the join. That is the truth. Out of the 3 (regular camera, selfie camera, mirror) the mirror is the closest because it's what it looks like to a human eye.
THERE IS NOT TRUTH, REALITY IS BUT A CONCEPT
Lol not quite. The mirror image is a nonexistent flipped version of you that you're more used to seeing than any photo. We're more comfortable looking at that flipped image cause it's quite literally _how you see yourself_
But I've taken photos of myself that are flipped and I still look worse than in a mirror, I've also seen one of those non-reversing mirrors once and I still did not look as bad as I do in photos
Listen man, cameras are anything but the best tool to see how you really look. Flipping an image while it might be a bit weird for you, it doesn't change how you look, it doesn't change your appearance. On the other side, I can change your appearance using a camera, using different angles, using lighting because the camera can't pick up lights like our eyes can. The mirror does show a more true representation of yourself, even with it flipped. Cameras have a loooot more flaws then just flipping it. The depth on a camera is so easily manipulated in a way that the human eye doesn't. It doesn't pick up lighting in real life, and a lot of phone cameras also have AI that literally change how the image comes out.
I get what you're saying but focal length is really the only one that hits home. The human eye is about 35mm in focal length and anything outside of that may seem distorted. The point of the mirror effect is that nobody is completely symmetrical. It's the primary source of that general feeling of "what is wrong with this photo of me". Distortion by focal length is easy to detect as long as you know about it, and most photographers would know not to make such an obvious and fundamental error. The rest of the factors you mention are specific to phone cameras, which would get us into nitpicking and away from discussing photos in general
*le cri*
Le désespoir
When i take selfie with sun i look like ugly but girls look like so cute
I would just like to say this is possibly the cutest thing on the internet right now?
Bcz girls are cute
Apparently you can’t just stand anywhere in the sun. You are supposed to check the angle. Beats me how though.
It's less about focal length and more about the camera's distance to your face. So the way it works is when you're looking at yourself in the mirror, the closer you are to the mirror, you'll notice your ears aren't as visible, and your eyes seem closer to the sides of your face, and your nose looks larger. When you move away from the mirror, the opposite is true. It's harder to notice though since you're farther away, and this is where focal length comes into play because you'd have to zoom in to your face. [This gif](https://www.diyphotography.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/mJqIwLT-Imgur.gif) demonstrates how your face looks based on the proximity of the camera (or person looking at you) to your face. The focal length merely serves to compensate for the distance between the face and the camera in order to maintain the same head size in each image.
We are also used to seeing a mirror-image of ourselves. Therefore seeing a photo always looks subtly wrong. All the moles etc. are on the "wrong" side of the face. It's the old uncanny valley effect.
Also the fact that a mirror flips you while a camera shows you unflipped. That's also why some people flip their selfies and they feel off to others.
It's not the focal length that causes the the distortions, but the distance between you and the camera. You can take natural looking face proportions with a short focal length but keeping 2 meters+ distance from the camera.
The wide angle and focal length really do weird things to a face. There are applications that have been written to correct this problem but I’ve never seen it integrated into a phone’s camera software. It should be. Until then hold the phone as far away as possible and stay away from the edges of the picture.
If camera you is ugly and mirror you is not? you not ugly. If mirror you is ugly and camera you is not? You ugly
Not sure if caveman or wise Chinese elder
Elder Chinese caveman
I read in it both voices
Thank yu, grandma 🥺
I don't think I'm ugly in the mirror Probably still ugly to other people though
You're beautiful goddamnit
>According to University of Barcelona researchers, people have an inaccurate view of their own appearance and rate themselves as more attractive than they actually are. This effect is stronger when they view themselves in the first person (i.e in a mirror) as opposed to the third person (in photos, on videos...etc) So,.. - if camera you is ugly, you ugly. - if mirror you is ugly, get thee to a nunnery or something...
amen
Is this a real rule? This might give me some needed confidence
False, camera you is what you look like to others, mirror you is flipped of what you really look like which you’re more accustomed to
I think it's more to do with the camera resolution + everything else that goes into processing the image can make you look worse than you actually do. Try take a selfie straight on, your face will appear way narrower than if you were looking at it normally.
False. Camera you is distorted. You can’t map a 3D object onto a 2D surface without distortion. Same reason every map projection is distorted. I know plenty of people who look far better in person than in photos. I also know a few who look far better in photos than in person.
This gives me much needed confidence lol. I think I look really handsome in mirrors but I am probably the ugliest on photos. So whenever someone takes a photo of me and I look at it my confidence goes down for a few days cause Im thinking "Damn so this is how everybody actually sees me"
brah.."flipping" an image does not matter it's way more accurate than a shitty phone camera
This argument is complete bullshit even though a lot of people are saying it. There's no reason being flipped would make you prettier. There's clearly some other reason we look so much prettier in the mirror.
I’m screenshotting this as a future pep talk
Lol nice. Even if you ugly, love yo ugly thyself. And you'd have a bootiful personality
Opposite. Mirror you is only what you see, not everyone else. So camera you is the real version.
It's the lenses that distort your features, parricularly those riny ones in your phone. The way other people see you is how you look in the mirror, not in a selfie Edit: yes guys, obviously it's flipped in the mirror, but the distortion of facial proportion comes from lenses. The mirroring doesn't make you uglier, just different to what you're used to.
oh thank god
Ditto. I'm at least ok looking in the mirror; in photos I look like Ben Franklin. (I'm a millenial woman.)
Um this changes my perspective on life so much wtf. Like, I was always worried that who I saw in pictures was who others saw, so I was always questioning who I saw in the mirror. It literally drives so many unhealthy thoughts.
And people ask why you don't take pictures all the time.
YES
Exactly
But why do other people look like themselves in photos? Why is it just our own faces that we think looks weird?
Wait… yea?!
I’m guessing it’s because we’re not as in tune with the slight differences in other peoples faces as we are with our own. Also we’re more used to seeing all sides of them at once than we are with ourselves. I’m the same way though (hate my photographed appearance but I’m ok with my mirrored one) so this is what I tell myself so I don’t hate myself 🥲. I once heard a quote where someone said it’s uncanny for a human to see themselves as often as present day people do. Not that long ago (a couple hundred years but honestly even past generations) people rarely saw their own un-mirrored faces and now we see them just about everyday.
Ok I have to get off this ride now. Entire perspective of history is being impacted. Does not compute this late at night for me. Goodnight friends, and I hope anyone sharing this moment of “what the fuck is life?” with me knows you’re not alone! The camera DOES add 10 pounds and weird shading and an awkward dimple and hey damn that nipple was pretty prevalent and god why did I do my hair like that. (Twenty years later: ughhh JNCOS?!)
I mean, puddles and reflective surfaces have existed longer than we've had eyes.
Yeah, but you don’t carry puddles around. Also it’s hard to get a water reflection clear and steady enough for sustained bouts of self-criticism
lol, the real question is right here. Other people all look exactly like I see them.
You've never had friends or family whom you think look fine IRL but take terrible pictures? Maybe I just run with a non-photogenic crowd.
Because you usually wont be standing next to them in a mirror
People with big, square or rectangular faces are more photogenic/telegenic because the distortion caused by different focal lengths is less obvious. People with very convex profiles look particularly bad on the front facing camera because of the wide-angle. It makes the mid face appear to protrude and the chin and forehead to recede.
sounds like something a bean posing as a human would say...
Well at least Mrs Franklin thinks you're hot then.
Ben Franklin turns me on. Fuck yeah.
Truly. I am terribly unphotogenic.
I look HORRID in pictures, but I consider myself above average in the mirror! This is good for me to read
This is also why selfie sticks actually aren't as useless as might appear to someone who doesn't understand basics of photography. Holding the camera further away from you and zooming in a bit will give a far less distorted image that will look better.
God I really hope so
[удалено]
the distortion is caused by distance to the subject
I turn into a genuine goblin in photos but I look pretty decent in a mirror. I’m forever unable to move past that one picture I took that looked good when I was like 17. I’m 22.
I just grew up with nothing but bad pictures of me. I don't take any of myself and my mom takes the worst ones of me to the point I don't even let her anymore lmao. Mirror me is alright, sometimes I think I'm kinda hot even but all it takes is camera me to shut that all away 😂
Looking good is just vanity. Having pictures of your life is to help your memory, not your ego :) When you're 50 looking back, you have a very different opinion of beautiful and ugly. Don't be a photo prude. For your own sake.
Damn, poetic
Well I'm not exactly making a whole lot of memories to look back on anyways. Anything worth remembering my parents are there for anyways so it's not like pictures of me during those times don't exist. I just don't take them because it's stupid for me to take pictures of myself, and I wouldn't like looking at them regardless
Same :'(
You are me lol
We should start a band
The will is there, the talent and freedom is not
Thank god. I've tried taking selfies before and i look so weird and different compared to how i look in the mirror.
They see me reversed?
Exactly what I thought. Parent comment makes no sense. The real answer is that when you're looking in the mirror, you're seeing yourself live and can move around and fix your look. On camera however, it's prerecorded and you can do nothing about it. Plus, the quality most of the time isn't as good as mirrors since mirrors don't show any pixels or low frame rates in the case of videos.
There's some truth to what you said. Movement prevents overscrutinizing tiny details of your face, looking for wrinkles and awkwardness. As an animated, lively person we gain so much charm compared to a still picture. But at the same time, look up focal lenghts for portraits and you will change your mind about my comment.
I guess the criticism I was making was mainly about the "reversed image" that comes from the mirror cuz that is not how you're seen by people, so when a phone that doesn't reverse images takes a real photo, one tends to feel so weird about how their facial features and asymmetry has been flipped. We're generally in agreement however about the other perception.
Well, i'm ugly on both. Wondering if camera me is even uglier than the ugly me. Haven't taken a photo of me since i was a teen. (more than 10 years ago)
No you're not!
I mean... for all you know, it might be Quasimodo on the other end of the Reddit account
Lmao, i doubt i'm that ugly. Just not attractive. I did go to the gym to look a bit better but the face is the same. You couldn't put muscle on your face so...
But the whole point of that story is that even Quasimodo is actually very beautiful, you silly taint!
.
But why do people in photos look like how they look to me in real life then???
Because you’re far less critical of their looks than your own and don’t really notice those little differences you make a big deal about in yourself
So it's a vanity complex? It does explain why it went away at age 35. I really don't see much difference today. I just look like me.
You ever see someone irl or even in a photo you think it's super attractive and find older photos of them and suddenly you're like "oh god it's like a different person" and you're slightly turned off before realizing how it doesn't matter?
I feel like you're trying to make a point, but You just stopped typing
I have no idea if this is true but I'm choosing to believe it.
Thank God my $800 nightmare brick is lying to me and I don't l actually look like J.K Rowling's interpretation of a "goblin"
Thank God, I am handsome in the mirror, but I look like shit in pictures
How do you know this?
If you hold your thumb out at arms length, it looks quite flat. If you bring it right up to your face, it looks rounder and you can see more of the skin on either side of the nail. People look better at a distance because of this effect. If you take a photo from arms length you're viewing yourself from about 30cm. If you look in the mirror you're viewing yourself from at least 60cm because the mirror doubles the distance.
>People look better at a distance because of this effect So that's why my dad always said "theyre good looking...from a low flying plane."
https://www.diyphotography.net/gif-explains-changing-focal-length-impacts-portrait/
Bingo
It's not the lenses *per se* that distort your features, it's that they are designed to have a wide field of view so that in order to fill the frame with your face, the camera has to be pretty close. It's the small lens-to-subject distance that is doing most of the heavy lifting in making you look weird (it's called "perspective distortion"); the actual optical non-idealities in the lens (like geometric distortion, which makes straight likes curved) play a comparatively minor role.
Selfie cameras make your nose appear like 25% larger.
You look like you look like in the mirror but from other peoples pov doesn't your face still change side? So your right cheek in the mirror is seen as your left cheek for others
Mostly, you’re right about the distortion but what you see in the mirror is obviously mirrored so people see you flipped to how you see yourself in a mirror
I think our brains are used to seeing the mirrored version of us. So when we aren't mirrored we look monstrous to ourselves.
It’s the flipped view too. Seeing my hair parted the other side in pictures fucks with my head
Time to start parting it right down the middle.
I have a middle part, it doesn't help.
Middle part? They’re called genitals, don’t be such a baby
I do that. Same feeling.
There’s a setting to turn off flipping the picture with the front facing camera on iPhones. It makes taking decent selfies a lot easier.
[a bit something like this](https://imgur.com/a/DyoGEQI)
Everyone says this but it isn't the case. Mirror flip a photo of yourself where you feel it looks worse than the mirror, and it'll pretty much still look the same to you.
Yeah the mirror flip is not what's adding an extra pound of fat directly to my neck. Idk what it is but when I stand and look at myself in the bathroom I look kinda fit and then I smile and I like my smile. Then I'm tagged in a picture at a party and I'm hunched over, I have a double chin and my face is straight up ugly and I'm like "ah gotcha, this is how the world sees me"
I try to tell myself that I won't look good in photos unless the right lens is used, and I like mirror me better anyways so I'll go off of that in order to save what self-confidence I have left
Ya I feel like I tend to straighten up in the mirror because I am actively looking at myself. I had to fix my posture a few years ago because of back pain issues, now I always stand with my shoulders pulled back instead of slack and it makes a big difference in terms of the vibe you put out to the world and in pictures. At least as a guy anyways, standing straight with your head and shoulders in good alignment is huge for looks
Totally agreed. Ive been told when I walk around I stand up straight and it's because I'm literally thinking to myself "Posture posture posture" as I walk but then I sit down at my desk and I look like Coralines dad
Oh boy, thanks for that description 😂 totally unexpected laugh you got out of me
Lighting and movement in front of mirror vs lighting and still image of camera pic. Also camera lens focal point/size.
Dude, same. I feel this so hard. I think I look decent in the mirror, but chubby-ish in photos. Always the double-chin.
If there’s not text in the image, I do flip photos of myself when editing. It just feels “familiar” and I can’t really describe it better than that. I hate both versions of any photo of myself, but that’s beside the point
Also the 12mm lenses on our phone makes our faces look rounder. A 135mm plus lens makes our faces look more pleasing
I saw something the other day that 50mm is close to what the human eye would see but the bigger the lense the better the subject looked.
I saw that too. We are on Reddit too much
135mm plus makes me look like I am a teeny tiny face drawn on a cantaloupe
That you, Charlie Kirk? Your tiny face defies all logic and human physiology.
It's also the the specific perspective angle and parallax that we get used to seeing with a mirror. The image geometry processed through a camera lens is also typically distorted from what our eyes naturally capture.
Mirror reflections are 3d while photos, which are just really fast scans, are 2d, so you would look different in mirrors than in photos
So if I flipped the picture so it looks normal to me then posted it would it look weird to other people?
Same reason most of us hate hearing our voices on recordings etc
You’re backwards in the mirror. I prefer backwards me 🤷🏼♂️😅
Backwards me looks better
There's definitely something to being used to it. Pictures that are flipped to match the mirror look good to me, if they aren't I think I look so unsymmetrical. I tried with my friend once look at each other in the mirror. We looked good to ourselves, but really weird to each other. It was bizarre, like looking at him directly it was fine, but in the mirror I could see everything that wasn't symmetrical.
Unbackwards me haunts my nightmares.
I'm the backwards man, the backwards man, the backwards man, I can walk backwards as fast as you can, I can walk backwards as fast as you can.
Daddy would you like some sausage?
Is that Shel Silverstein?
Finally.. ive found my people. Unbackwards me haunts me as well
I hate pics of me, until like 3 weeks later and then I’m like huh wait why do I look good now?
Same, but usually 5 years later when I think I look worse than younger me. Repeat every 5 years.
flipped in the 4th dimension: the obvious solution is to ascend to a higher plane of existence so that you can rotate yourself around the 4th dimension and become your mirror self.
Schrödinger’s ugliness
Lmao this made my day, ty
Schrödinger was pretty handsome though (except that hairline)
I'm ugly in both.
Real
Which one is less ugly then? I think a but of fresh clothes and good hairstyle could make you look good. It's just we don't do that, but i believe you will look fine. I'm the same so I couldn't say but saw my friend dressed up, looked fresh and nice.
Well, I appreciate the fact that you're trying to help out a stranger. Also, I totally agree that we don't do that, but we should!
I'm ugly af in both too if that makes you feel a bit less lonely lol.
Ever seen a beautiful full moon and thought you would take a picture but it looks like shit on your phone?
I always look better in the mirror.
[All photos are lies](https://www.reddit.com/r/amiugly/s/JPQcPAYr2e)
“That’s cool and all but unless this gets pinned, the new comers won’t see it” lmao
I hope the mirror is real because the selfie camera has me looking like Shrek had a baby with Mr. Peanut.
Usually I think I’m good looking, or even hot. But then every time I see myself in a photo I wonder if I’m just as delusional as the standard grandmother.
Is that really you, babushka!?
Nah the morning mirror me and the evening mirror me are also so different
meanwhile mirror me always changing looks
Maybe because the photo is 2D and the mirror reflects 3D. Though I am not a professional, only in explosives
r/suddenlytf2
Even if you mirrored the pictures you take, people still forget that the view of your 3D, 765 megapixels & over 8K viewing machines will have a different image than the one that your phone camera can get. It doesn't even have anything to do with the flipped view, cameras simply suck, so chill out.
Larry David joke
I scrolled for three years to finally see someone mention the latest curb. “Mirrors are how you see yourself. Cameras are how others see you”
This loser is really self congratulating over his height with his twitter name lmao Congratulations on all your hard work bro
Me who is ugly in both *giga chud theme plays*
Get a picture taken with a 55mm lens - that will be the closest to how others perceive you
This is why people take mirror selfies
Thats why models are models. They dont look weird af in 2D.
It’s why I still love film-camera-selfie-me any day over cellphone-selfie-me. The digital sensors and focal length are NOT flattering for most.
That's why I take selfies from the rear camera that too in the telephoto lens. Or mostly mirror selfies
Try taking a photo of yourself in the mirror
You're forgetting laptop screen reflection you, the ugliest of all.
My theory is that we lean over a bit in the bathroom. Hides the chin.
We dislike pictures of ourself more than mirror images bc of the mere exposure effect. What that also means is that other people will find us better-looking than ourselves do
I look fugly either way
I just got an ID in the mail and it's the all time absolute worst photo of me ever, which is funny because I'm healthy and happier than I've ever been, it looks alot like Uncle Fester from the Addams Family.
Why am i ugly in both ?
Perspective and perception are two completely different things
Opposite opinion: sometimes I look better on selfies. I discovered in childehood before smartphones era that mirror can be nice or mean to you. There is no mirror with absolutely flat sutface, all of them distort picture in some - flattering or unflattering - way. That's why some mirrors hate me lightning matters too. On the other hand smartphones with "best" cameras - Iphone and Samsung - are the best not because only because of lenses, mostly because of their best AI photoshop tech. Camera makes pictures nonstop without your permission and then merge them, use HDR, remove wrinkles and so on. Especially in portrait mode.
Oh thank God everyone has this problem I thought it was just me
It's the selfie camera lenses as some wise redditor already said, HOWEVER it baffles me that phones do not yet have an automatic selfie distortion fix ("AI based" maybe, for buzzword-compliance) , that would be a huge selling point .
A camera is like an eye, but 20x worse. Rest assured, you still look ugly either way
A while ago [I made a post](https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/3zp2d2/whats_your_best_mind_fuck_question/cyo0dwb/) explaining this paradox.
350 comments and nobody has mentioned LIGHTING!!
Simple, your brain is used to seeing you in reverse in the mirror, and in a camera you are not in reverse, therefore you look different (ugly) because your brain sees you in an "unusual" way
When you look at yourself in the mirror, you’re only seeing yourself from the perspective and position of your eyes, as if the “camera lens” you’re viewing yourself through were stuck where your eyes are. Because of this you always see yourself from certain angles through a reflection. A camera can remove itself from the position of your eyes, so you can view yourself from different angles through its lens when taking your own picture. The camera view is more accurate to what other people see when they look at you, your mirror reflection will occasionally line up, like if you’re standing eye to eye with someone, but mostly you’re the only one who’s ever going to see those angles of yourself in the mirror.
our '1x' cameras on our phones are actually super wide cameras with really small focal lengths. This make your face, a little bit 'stretched' and 'distorted' which is not an ideal thing for most people. If your phone has a 2x , 3x or even 5x-10x camera (and not just digital crop, actual zoom lens) try to shoot with that (you have to stand much farther for it to give the same zoom level tho), that would give better results. But a mirror gives the most lifelike result. So if you looking good in the mirror, you are looking good.
Leon covered it in Curb, because the mirror is how you see yourself, a picture is how others see you.
Mirrors how we see ourselves and pictures are how other people see us
Am I ugly or very ugly?*
I just cannot admit how weird and ugly I look in the selfie mode. I'm ugly but that much!
I just accepted the ugly.
Why the hell is this guy's username his height? Is this some trend I'm missing out on?
Dudes user name is his height lol.