How to take before/after pics?

Is there a faq on the web on how to take valid pictures, use the right lighting, statives etc.? Maybe I buy a new cam and track my progress...

Oh, man, totally, and this is actually one of the BIGGEST ISSUES of us amateurs in the forums vs. professional clinics!

Here is the main thing right off the bat... us forum amateurs will almost ALWAYS take pictures close-up, directly under bright lights, and with a point-and-shoot digital cameras. Professional clinics always take pictures of the full head, under ambient light, and with expensive SLR cameras. The difference is astounding.

I'm not exactly well versed in camera lingo so I can't tell you the technical differences, but it has to do with the lens, the aperture, and the sensor size (I think), and the contrast. What happens with the cheap cameras (and by "cheap", I really mean anything that will easily fit into your pocket) is that not only are they much worse quality to the point that details will be missed, but more importantly the white areas can "bleed" over the dark areas -and this will cover up almost everything but a full hair loss reversal! [This happened in the moon landing photos, by the way, where it looks like the astronauts are standing IN FRONT of the crosshairs etched on the lens. They weren't... it's just the white astronaut suits "bled" and the white covered up the crosshairs.]

Also, man, let me reiterate about the angle. You'll see most professional pictures taken with the head looking down so you can get a feel of how the overall fullness has changed. We forum people like to pull back our hair and get a direct, close up shot of our thinning hairs -and that's fine, but you have the issues I just talked about. You could have GREAT results, and they might not come across well in pictures.

Anyway, I felt that this was such a big issue, I actually made a quick video about this several years ago in which I at least tried to show this (and I looked at this for the first time in a while, and obviously I must have been trying to make a point to someone that didn't believe me by my "LISTEN TO ME THE NEXT TIME!" or whatever text! Ha ha ha!):

Sweet! I figured out how to fix the aspect ration of 16:9 videos for posting in here!

I'm comparing a point-and-shoot camera to an HD video camcorder. The HD camcorder isn't as good as an SLR camera, but it still takes pretty good pictures and is probably closer to the SLR. I know me holding up the cameras in the very beginning is distracting, but you're supposed to look at my HAIR during the first part, not the cameras.

My wife actually has a nice SLR now. That's what I used to take this picture in my other thread right now:



I know, I know... "Hey, that's not a great picture". Well, actually IT IS! lol... The quality is actually quite amazing!

I use crappy myspace to host it, and they've overly compressed it so it's "dulled" and blurred the picture somewhat and you can see the compression, but that still, believe it or not, is a really fantastically detailed picture. Myspace is awful at overly compressing pictures, though, and I'd host an uncompressed one myself and put it here, but I haven't synced my laptop and desktop yet since I made those pictures and I don't have it on this computer. I think I'm switching to facebook to host from now on.

Anyway, so You can make out a ton of details on that bottle that simply wouldn't come across with a point-and-shoot camera. If I took that picture with my old Sony Cybershot 13.1 megapixel camera (oh, and the megapixels have nothing to do with it!), then I doubt you'd see anything but a smudge where it says "www.cardiorenew.com" on the bottle (and you'd be able to read that more clearly if I had hosted that myself instead of at myspace). Remember -HAIR is small, dark (mine is, at least), and way smaller than that website address.

So, in summary, you're pictures won't look like professional hair loss clinic photos -which people do unfortunately find MUCH more compelling- unless you have an SLR camera. You can still use a normal point-and-shoot camera, but be really careful about the LIGHTING. All of us want to be fully honest and SHOW PEOPLE as much detail as we can, but we often don't realize that while your human eye can still see everything fine under bright/direct light, the CAMERA EYE CAN'T! So, just ambient room lighting would be best -and definitely not super bright light shining right down on you. Every single damn before-after picture I've ever taken was a close up, shot under super-bright fluorescent bathroom mirror lights, and with a crappy camera! lol.... If I had realized this sooner, I would have had much better pictures!

Anyway, I hope that helps!

-O.M.G.

Thanks OMG, I thought about making a before/after video!? This way you could see it from different angles etc.

Another option, maybe you know if this is possibe, is to go to a hairloss clinic just for a photoshoot lol :)
"I don't want to grow my hair back I just want nice pictures of my bald head...." Would they do this? Any suggestion for a good hd-camcorder(prize effective)?

Hey, Pancacke!

I'm sorry it took so long to get back to you! You'll see hopefully tomorrow night what kept me away -we've been working on something pretty cool.

Man, I think and HD video cam for before/after comparisons would be GREAT! If you could get someone else to sort of rotate around your head and do all sorts of angles, you'd be able to get a great impression of the state of your hair. Many people don't realize that "success" isn't just going to grow back some little hairs in the bald spots, it should change the entire look of your whole head of hair when you are on the right track. So, that'd be good.

Most every HD cam can take pictures as well, and they are ok -much better than a point and click. In my thread on topical EDTA, I have a picture of one of those crazy "violet ray" devices, and that was taken with my HD camera. You can see that's it not QUITE as good as the ones takes with the SLR camera, but it's close! It's way better than a point-and-click would do, too -much more depth.

I bet a hairloss clinic would do photographs for you , though. We always lampoon those people, but actually I've only rarely run into someone that's a jerk. I think most people in the WORLD are nice. I think you figure out a polite way to ask them.

One more thing, though... you should get an HD camcorder anyway whenever you can afford it. It's so great capturing memories like that. Take a stupid little video like this:


I'm so happy I have things like that recorded. I know it doesn't mean much to other people, but it's invaluable to me -frankly it's BAD ASS! I wish I had one of those in high school! Can you imagine what it'd be like to see your friends twenty years ago involved in all the shenanigans -in freaking HIGH DEF?! That would have been so great! I literally try to at least take a picture every single day -or just a short video clip.

I've also stated before that I really think it helps depression. All human beings get it to an extent -frankly, the brain was designed to have to work for survival and fight off sabretooth tigers, and when it doesn't have to do that anymore, we feel sort of useless or that our life doesn't have any meaning or something. When you have all sorts of pictures and videos that make it look like your life is exciting, you sort of "become" the person on the videos and you become much happier. I can't explain it better than that, but I think it's definitely a real phenomenon (or "trick", I guess!).

-O.M.G.

OverMachoGrande wrote:

Haha, that's funny!

One more thing, though... you should get an HD camcorder anyway whenever you can afford it. It's so great capturing memories like that.

You're so right, it's essential that I get one of those before I start traveling again...
Epic video by the way(as always)!