Body Image Compensation
I here describe a solution to a problem in the area of optics. Worldwide, there is concern over the effects of the use of smartphones, tablets, computers, and webcams on body image. The use of cameras in these devices reinforces a thin ideal, which is damaging in its effects. I identify the major cause of the problem as camera hardware. A single lens may increase facial thinness in an image by 10%, compared with a face seen with two human eyes. This is due to angular size, or how wide an object appears to be. See the Attachment Figure 1, a smartphone photo of US politician Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Such thinness is overcome by mounting two lenses about 6 cm apart, where the average human pupillary distance is 63 mm. An (inter alia) smartphone would then include software to integrate the two images. The Attachment Figures 2 and 3 show my own face at about 25 cm distance from a Lenovo laptop camera (314 pixels ear to ear). Attachment Figure 4 shows these images integrated (338 pixels ear to ear), as if viewed with human eyes. This broadens my face about 7.6% Currently, popular smartphone and computer cameras do not have such a feature. Companies which adopt this technology could boast of Body Image Compensation.
Attachment: Facial_Thinness.jpg (207 KB)
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