In portraits, different cameras can produce photos that make you look fatter than you actually are. When you use your camera to capture an image of yourself or someone else, various factors affect how your subject appears in the photo. These include the lens used, focal length, b

　When taking portraits, the photos taken by different cameras make you look fatter than you actually are. When you use your camera to capture an image of yourself or someone else, various factors affect how your subject appears in the photo. These include the lens used, focal length, barrel distortion, lighting, angles and certain camera settings as well as the pose of the portrait. Let’s briefly introduce the reasons why people look fatter than they actually are?

1. Focal length

We all know that camera lenses can be divided into wide-angle and telephoto. Telephoto is a lens that greatly magnifies the subject, while wide-angle It’s a shot that “zooms out” to fit more of the scene into the photo. Most beginners will not use the telephoto lens to shoot people, while professional portrait photographers may use an 85mm or longer lens. Instead, beginners use the phone equivalent of wide-angle lens for selfies and the like. These shots actually stretch the parts of the subject/people that are closer to the camera, making them appear larger.

An 85mm or 100mm lens in portraits has good balance and doesn't exaggerate anything, unlike a 24mm or 1000mm lens. Some pros do use a 300mm lens to shoot people because it's better than a wide angle.

　 2. Lenses

Lenses come in various shapes and sizes, as well as build quality and distortion, aberrations, etc. If you have different lenses, you can try shooting the same person with different lenses to see the difference in the effect they have on the subject. Lenses with a smaller focal length actually exaggerate the middle part of the image.

　 三、Distortion

　One thing we need to remember is that we live in a 3D world, and what the camera does is project the 3D world (including us) onto a 2D surface, which itself creates an image. Distort reality. Barrel distortion occurs in lenses where the line of sight appears to be curved and is an extreme form of distortion , which makes a person appear larger than they actually are.

Barrel distortion is common in zoom lenses and wide-angle prime lenses with short focal lengths. It occurs because the image is compressed into the image sensor that is smaller than the field of view of the lens, in this case a wide-angle lens.

　 4. Distance

Another thing you need to know is the distance from the camera to the person. Whether you realize it or not, taking selfies with your hands creates distortion because your arms are only so long. In this case, the portrait's face will appear wider because the distance is very limited.

This is why professional photographers never get too close to your face, they always step back when taking portraits and use a corresponding telephoto lens to zoom in on the subject.

　 5. Camera settings

　One camera setting that affects the appearance of portraits is zoom. For example, when taking a selfie with your phone and you decide to include as much content as possible in the photo, arbitrarily sliding the zoom to 0.5x will create the wide-angle distortion I mentioned. Even the camera screen you use to playback your photos can distort your image depending on how you set the settings (such as filling the screen).

　 6. Lighting

　When you look in the mirror, you usually see conventional home lighting, which can affect the way you see yourself. However, in photos, lighting will vary depending on your location (outdoors, indoors), time of day, atmospheric conditions, etc. The lighting in photographs is often dramatic and often controlled to modify the way people appear. Professional photographers can make you look thinner or fatter depending on the position and type of lighting.

　 7. Angle

Even the angle of your subjects can affect their appearance. They will appear slimmer if photographed from above, and fatter if photographed from below. But it's much more complicated, as positioning to emphasize features like the jawline may outweigh the effects of higher/lower angles.

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