Serious question here. Why does the camera lens warp the body so much? The reason I'm asking this is because I attended a local road race this weekend and I had seen some of the runners in photos prior the race. When seeing them in person...they looked much smaller and thinner...to the point that I did not recognize some of them.
I'm sure I'll get a lot of smart ass answers (i.e. "the camera adds 10 lbs")...but maybe some photographers can chime in as to why this is....
The camera adds 10 lbs. Twinkies add the other 10.
I just came up with this theory. (Someone in a psych dept somewhere has probably written a thesis on the topic...)
Anyway: when you're seeing people IRL you're seeing, of course, in three dimensions. Assuming that you and the person are facing each other head-on, you understand that some of what you're seeing is the person's "front"; and that the stuff *that you can see* that's to the side of the front is, well, "sides."
But the two-dimensionality of a photo tends to flatten people out--makes the part of the person's sides (*that you can see*) look more like part of the front. Then your brain takes that info and projects a larger person, overall, to accommodate that wide "front."
Anyway, that's my story and I'm sticking to it,
until I'm proven wrong or I find a better story.
One of the reasons is that in a race, we are referencing the good runner off of other good runners, who are ALSO relatively small/skinny compared to "normal" people.
Harry Rowson wrote:
One of the reasons is that in a race, we are referencing the good runner off of other good runners, who are ALSO relatively small/skinny compared to "normal" people.
This is correct.
e7k--
I like it!
Anybody have any support for this?
e7k was close to the right answer.
In life, we see in three dimensions. So, when someone's leg is lifted toward us as part of the running motion, our brain sees that leg in perspective. A photograph is inherently two-dimensional (and it freezes a single moment in time) and therefore we don't get the same effect of perspective. So, if I'm looking more or less straight-on at a runner in a photo, and part of the runner's body that is not perpendicular to a line between the camera and the body part appears shorter than it really is, but just as wide as it really is. Thus, the effect of looking heavier in photographs.
If you can find 3D photographs, this problem mostly clears up, but there isn't much 3D photography done these days.
Sometimes, also, you capture a runner with a completely flexed quadricep. And that muscle doesn't normally appear in that position, so it will look thicker in the photograph than when you see the same person standing in shorts in person.
Hope that helps.
Captain Awesome wrote:
The camera adds 10 lbs. Twinkies add the other 10.
If the runner looks 20 pounds heavier that just means 2 cameras were taking the picture.
Wrong. One camera was just super-sized.
I don't find the original thesis of this thread to be the case at all
because you are gullible and fall for all kinds of camera tricks...
It's obvious you Dip Shit Mormon !
photoshop