Portraits should be taken with a lens of 85mm to 105mm focal length. This allows the photographer to stay 5 or 6 feet away from the subject and still fill the frame.
Using a wide angle lens up close will seriously distort the subject's face.Do taking pictures up close make your face look bigger or fatter than it really is?
In most conversation, we rarely get closer to one another than 5-8 feet. In Western cultures, arm's length is uncomfortably close. This is why Myspace photos look a little distorted.
The perspective from a close-up is different from the perspective at 8 feet, so the face must look different in the two situations. Formal portraits are usually taken at the longer distance because that's how we usually see a face.
Take it to the extreme. Put your eye 3 inches from someone's nose, and pay attention to how their face looks. Then back out to 12 inches, 3 feet, etc.
I've got a news bulletin for you and almost everyone else.
Faces photographed from a short distance DO NOT LOOK DISTORTED. They look the same as they look to the naked eye when viewed from that distance.
Try this with a close friend.
Stand with your face 18 inches away. Close one eye. Stare at your friend's nose. DO NOT MOVE YOUR EYE AROUND, as this lets your brain compensate for the distortion by ';building a better view'; of the face. Don't forget that the camera only has one ';eye'; and it doesn't move around. It captures one instant in time and that's it.
Part two of this experiment...
Take a photo of your friend from 18'; away, using a 50 mm focal length if you are shooting 35 mm film or a full format digital SLR OR using a 35 mm focal length if you are using a typical APS or DX (etc) digital SLR. Print that photo as an 8x10 and then hold it 18'; from your nose and look at it with one eye. It should look amazingly the same as your friend looked with your naked eye.
What's weird about these photos is that we might take then from 18'; away, but we view them from a normal distance. We can not move our eye from place-to-place to gather more information when viewing a photo.
If you use a wide angle lens, there actually is distortion because the lens can see more from side-to-side than the human eye can see if you don't dart from side-to-side to ';construct'; that image in your brain. Not to mention... Most wide angle lenses will have some optical distortion anyway.
If you are using a point and shoot camera, odds are that you are pretty deep into the wide angle zone of the lens if you can focus on something from 18'; away, so you have the added effect of actual distortion from the wide angle lens, as discussed by fhotoace.
Software CAN correct for barrel or pincushion distortion. Or, if you want to make your image seem like it was taken from 18'; away, you can use the same tool to introduce some barrel distortion until it looks bad enough to you.
For several great answers, see this question: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;鈥?/a>
Not close up per se--it's the lens.
Like this:
16 - 35 mm Canon (at 16 mm) f 2.8 (an ultra wide lens)
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3152/2294鈥?/a>
100 mm Canon Macro f 2.8 (a short telephoto)
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2406/2294鈥?/a>
It doesn't matter how close the camera is to your face, what matters is the angle. Taking a shot holding the camera above your head is going to slim your face out and taking it below will emphasize your face and make it appear larger than it really is. Chin up, camera high is the best way to thin out someone on film.
yes and really really wierd
Id say it depends on the angle and brightness of flash...if you angle the face so it is looking upwards at the lens, the face will taper inward to a narrow point at the chin. You want a dimmer flash so you can see more shadows and contours in the face instead of a glowing blob of face.
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