Does the camera really add ten pounds?
One of my favourite lines in the sitcom Friends came when Monica defended her fuller figure in her old prom video by claiming ‘The camera adds ten pounds!’ Chandler’s retort was ‘Oh… so how many cameras are actually on you?’
It’s a commonly held belief - a Google search finds almost 16 million pages for the words ‘camera adds ten pounds’, but is it true? Well, yes and no…
It is true that objects (or people) close to the camera can look wider than they do in ‘real life’, and the reason is that cameras see the world differently to how humans see it because a camera has only one eye (the lens) whereas we have two.
You can see the difference for yourself by placing a round object - a bottle, mug, grapefruit, whatever - about two feet from you, somewhere where the background isn’t just a blank wall. Now look at it with just your left eye, then just your right eye. With your right eye closed, you’ll see a bit more of the background on the left of the object and vice versa. When you look with both eyes, your brain blends these images together and the object looks a bit thinner simply because you can see more of what’s behind it on both sides at once. The camera’s single lens doesn’t have this luxury.
So does this mean you’ll look fat in your wedding photos and video? Absolutely not. Try that experiment again, but this time look at the object from across the room. You’ll see that the effect is significantly reduced, and the further away you get, the smaller the effect. This is one of the reasons videographers prefer to stay further back rather than taking shots from a couple of feet away from you.
The illusion of depth can also be created by paying attention to light and shadow and, on video at least, by using subtle camera movement when appropriate. Speak to your videographer if you’re worried how you’ll look on film and they should be about to put your mind at rest. A good wedding videographer will know how to create beautiful, flattering images. It shouldn’t be hard – with the perfect makeup, hair and dress you’ll already look fantastic.
