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.
Boy do I have news for you about what smartphone cameras do.
Least mirrors don’t filter [much(?) yet(?)]
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.
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.
standing in front of a mirror
Would you fuck me? I’d fuck me. I’d fuck me so hard.
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.
Flip your selfies along the Y-axis
Now both are lying.
Yeah, it’s better to switch the setting in the mirror instead.
Take a photo of yourself in the mirror. Where is your god now?
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…
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The picture isn’t a detailed because the shot is simply further away. Wrinkles, acne, and other imperfections are not as clear or pronounced.
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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.
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At least one*
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.
The lens doesn’t matter.
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.
The mirror serves up organic photons.
Seven days….
There are no lies. All perception involves interpretation.
The mirror is how you see yourself. The camera is how you’re seen by others.
Or they both show you you’re own inverted reflection and are lying to you
Please tell me it’s the camera. Or lie to me.
They are both editable
