and recently i bought a new camera because my old one broke and all the pictures came out stunning. How come on one camera the pictures of me looked terrible and this one looks good? Without knowing much of the details, I would guess one of three things:
1) Lighting. Lighting contributes a lot to how flattering a portrait looks. It's possible that one camera produced a photo with natural light (which tends to look better), or one had a better flash management system if you used the flash. Typically, you should not fire a flash and expect a flattering photo because direct light from the camera will flatten the face and make it look fatter. It is better to use natural light from the sides, or to have a flash setup on either side of the subject's face...preferably with diffused light. Side lighting restores depth, making the subject look more realistic or even slimmer. Direct light from a camera tends to be too harsh, accenting all the face's imperfections.
2) Focal Length of lens. When people are asked to take a mug shot, what do most (unskilled) users do? They walk up to the subject and fill the frame with the subject's face. This is a big no-no because the short distance will introduce a lot of facial deformities...it will 'fishbowl' their face, making the subject look very unflattering again. The proper way to take a portrait is to use a 'portrait' setting on the lens, which means use the telephoto range. This involves backing up and zooming in to take the subject's face. Shooting from a farther distance will eliminate the distortion. You will probably need something like a tripod to keep the camera steady since telephoto range is more susceptible to shaking. The 'portrait' setting on a camera (not lens) is to isolate the subject from the background (blur the background). If you were not shooting telephoto on either camera, it's possible that one camera had a wider angle lens than the other when doing the portrait...the one with the wider angle lens would have distorted the face more.
3) Timing. It's possible that one camera could not capture the moment at the same time as your expectations (delay in the trigger)...so maybe when you thought you were holding the right expression, the camera actually took the shot at a slightly different time. Some automated cameras take too long to think about a shot before actually taking the exposure.
Other obvious things to check for is for proper exposure. If you have a histogram review feature, check if the curve is not hugged to much to the left with the right side of the curve not being used at all (this could indicate an underexposed shot). If the shot is underexposed and the camera does a post-correction on it (or if it is corrected in Photoshop), you might see a lot of noise (grain) with very bad color saturation. It is always better to get the best exposure upfront when you are taking the photo...don't rely on the touchups to fix it. It may have to do with the resolution of the camera. The pixel count alone is commonly presumed to indicate the resolution of a camera, but this is a misconception. There are several other factors that impact a sensor's resolution. Some of these factors include sensor size, lens quality, and the organization of the pixels (for example, a monochrome camera without a Bayer filter mosaic has a higher resolution than a typical color camera). Many digital compact cameras are criticized for having too many pixels, in that the sensors can be so small that the resolution of the sensor is greater than the lens could possibly deliver.
Excessive pixels can even lead to a decrease in image quality. As each pixel sensor gets smaller it is catching fewer photons, and so the signal-to-noise ratio will decrease. This decrease leads to noisy pictures, poor shadow region quality and generally poorer-quality pictures Some cameras have built in person recognition which allows them to frame the picture to get better shots of people in them.
My new camera has this - haven't tried breaking the lens yet though! sadly you can't always blame the camera. more mega pixels on new camara depends on the camera, some cameras have better colour and resolution then other cameras.
cameras are not exactly the same per model
try changing the contrast in photo shop or something of the photos, that can help quite a bit Maybe you got a bad camera.take it back and ask for another one. OK, you all can hate me, mark me thumbs down, do whatever.
99% of the time, a bad picture has to do with the photographer and the model not working together and the photographer not knowing their equipmenet and not knowing how to take a good picture.
Wide angle close up shots of people are not flattering. Without a sample image, it's hard to say exactly why you think they are unflattering.
For all I know, you could have bad self image, and regardless of the image taken, you could thing it's bad. you need to play around with the settings or read the manual if that doesnt work dont take any more pictures of yourself must get myself one of those cameras, this could just be the flash or the exposure, either making you look pail, or showing up ALL imperfections...
i edit photo's for free... if you would like to send any photo's too me, for editing, or say spot removal, revoming bags under eyes etc etc then send them to me at
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with a description of what you would like changed... or even just leave it to me, and see what i send you back, then tell me what you think, i can garentee that you'll be happy, and you have nothing to loose.... its free, no scam I agree with hasicit, can you tell us what cameras they are? The usual problem is the focal length of the lens. A short focal length distorts the image. On a 35mm camera a 100mm lens is about right.
OR
The lighting is bad. Flash is very unflattering and if there is no pre flash red eye results and also the lighting is flat you get a pasty image.
RoyS are the megapixels different. the more megapixels a camera has the better the quality of the pictures. | 