Photography, explained
Mirror vs camera: which one is the real you?
The camera is closer to what other people see, because it does not reverse you. The mirror is closer to your true proportions, because it does not…
Photography, explained
The camera is closer to what other people see, because it does not reverse you. The mirror is closer to your true proportions, because it does not…
In short: The camera is closer to what other people see, because it does not reverse you. The mirror is closer to your true proportions, because it does not compress them through a lens. Neither is the real you: the real you is a moving three-dimensional face, and both devices give you a limited copy of it.
Geometry, mostly. A flat mirror reflects at true proportion — nothing is enlarged by being nearer, nothing is compressed. It also shows you in motion, in the light of the room, with depth. That is a lot of accuracy.
What it gets wrong is orientation. Every asymmetry in your face is on the wrong side, which matters more than people expect, because the version you have memorised is the reversed one.
Orientation. A photograph shows the arrangement other people actually see, which is why friends recognise photographs of you more readily than you do.
What it gets wrong depends entirely on the lens and the distance. Close and wide distorts; further away with a longer lens does not. A photograph taken at 85mm from two metres is a reasonably faithful record of your proportions. A selfie at arm's length is not, and the difference between the two is larger than the difference between two people's faces.
Because many are not flat. Cheap mirrors bow very slightly, and a subtle convex or concave curve stretches or narrows the reflection. Lighting compounds it: a mirror under a downlight and a mirror by a window will show you two different jawlines. If you have ever felt attractive in one bathroom and not another, this is why.
Take one photograph at arm's length and one from two metres away with the camera zoomed to roughly twice its default. Put them side by side. Every difference you see is optics rather than your face, and once you have seen the pair, most of the anxiety about being ‘unphotogenic’ loses its grip.
Neither exclusively. If you want to know how you look to others, look at a photograph taken from a normal conversational distance. If you want to check whether an outfit sits well, use the mirror. And if a single photograph makes you unhappy, remember it is one 200th of a second chosen at random out of a continuous face.
The mirror is more accurate for proportion; the camera is more accurate for orientation. Which one is 'right' depends on which of the two you care about.
Familiarity, mostly — you have seen the mirrored version far more often, and people prefer faces they have seen before. Lighting and lens distance account for the rest.
Most phones mirror the live preview so it feels like a mirror, then save the unmirrored image. That mismatch is why the saved photograph often feels wrong straight after taking it.
Next step
London-based, and happy to say when a session is not what you need.