Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2016/10/13/how-to-make-selfies-look-like.html
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Or you can hand the camera to someone else. Oh, right…
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Does it work for dick picks? No reason.
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None of those pictures look different to me. Did I just stop caring? 
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You could use this sophisticated algorithm or a stick.
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I think it’s supposed to be
bad - good warped to look bad - good - bad warped to look good.
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Nobody else has a tripod? Boy, now I really feel like a weirdo.
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The problem is if you are too close (and so have to use a wide lens) you can’t see the temples and no amount of simple warping is going to reveal them the way being distant with a portrait lens does.
http://www.digitalartform.com/archives/2009/03/portrait_lenses.html
^ these are labeled with focal lengths but the measurement that matters is distance from camera to subject
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If it makes your nose look smaller, why would you want it to work for dick pics?
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Well, I don’t mean to brag, but…
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That’s when you bring in the artificial Bokeh algorithm to make it look as though you had temples, but they’re “selectively defocused.”
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The first time you figure out that your camera focuses when you set the timer, and not after the timer has expired, you’re going to feel like an idiot.
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If my shutter button was set to focus, possibly so. Back buttoner since '05, yo.
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For most of my photography, I use back button focus. But when I’m trying self portrait work, I find that I have to turn that off so that my remote control can focus with a half press.
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Well then enjoy this handy tip!
1 - Take your camera to where you’ll be standing.
2 - Back button focus on your tripod.
3 - Put the camera back on the tripod, stand at the location during step 1.
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Genius!
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I used the Canon 5Dii for years and years for night photography, great camera, terrible low light focusing. I ended up just putting my flashlight on the tripod and walking to the subject. Total pain but it worked well until the 6D came along.
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Used to read in photography books that 80-120 mm lenses (talking 35 mm film here ofc) is commonly used for portraits, and maybe there’s something to it. At least for this woman, as far as I think, she looks best at 100 mm - 350 mm and 35 mm both look considerably worse. I guess it would depend on the face.
I don’t honestly know what lens would best emulate the perspective you get from eyeballs at around 1.5 meters, but perhaps the 350 mm lens is as far from that as 35 mm is? Conventional wisdom would say 50 mm looks similar to what the eyeball sees, but would it pan out here, too?
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It comes down to taste but if you like the front of an object to look about as far away as the back of the object then some people advise getting about 5 x away from the object as the object is big. So for a head and shoulders you want to be 5 head and shoulder lengths away. After that you need to select the lens that give you the framing you like. From that distance you start to need an 80 or above.
A 50 is “normal,” according to many, but to see a person only as a head and shoulders you would need to stand closer than most people stand to each other. That’s why the 50 is not a common choice for portraits. But again, it comes down to choice.
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Shouldn’t they most correctly be landscape orientation portrait photographs?
After all, our eyes were evolved to see that way!
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