A scene from a video at an event circulated, prompting discussion for several days.
Then, a different video emerged a few days later, and it ended with, “He looked like himself after all.”
This kind of thing happens repeatedly. It is not a coincidence; there is a camera-related reason for it.
3-line summary
1. A camera can make the same face look different.
2. More than the lens, shooting distance changes how a face looks.
3. A single photo is weak evidence.
One photo reversed the narrative in just a few days
Actor Jang Dong-gun appeared in a video from a fashion magazine event with an impression different from his usual appearance, prompting various speculations. A few days later, his wife, Ko So-young, uploaded a video of the two of them together to her YouTube channel. As it showed a different atmosphere from the earlier video, the discussion subsided. Reports said the earlier video appeared to have been affected by lighting and angle.
You can view the video and photos from the time directly in the reports listed in the references below. They are not reproduced in this article.
This is not something that happens only to a particular person. It recurs regularly. And there are technical reasons why it does.
That is because a camera can alter the shape of a face, even when photographing the same person.
What changes a face is “distance”
People often say, “My face looked strange because it was shot with a wide-angle lens.” That is half right and half wrong.
What actually changes the shape of a face is not the lens, but the distance between the camera and the face.
The principle is simple. The nose sits farther forward than the ears. The closer the camera is, the more that front-to-back difference matters relative to the total distance.
If the nose is 10 cm closer than the ears at a distance of 50 cm, the distance ratio is about 1.25 times. The nose is photographed that much larger. At a distance of 5 m, the same 10 cm difference is only about 1.02 times. The nose and ears are photographed at nearly the same size.
It is the same face, but the size of the nose changes.
Then why do lenses come up? A lens with a wide field of view (a wide-angle lens) requires the camera to move closer to fill the frame with a face. A lens used to pull in a distant subject (a telephoto lens) requires the camera to move farther back to capture the face at the same size.
In other words, the lens does not create distortion; the lens determines the shooting distance, and that distance creates the distortion.
| Shooting condition | How the face appears |
|---|---|
| Up close (filling the frame with a wide-angle lens) | Nose and forehead emphasized; slimmer and more angular |
| A moderate distance (for portraits) | Closest to real life |
| From far away (pulled in with a telephoto lens) | Flatter and wider, rounder |
The reason around 85 mm is commonly used for portraits is not that the lens itself is special, but that it can frame a face appropriately from a reasonably distant position.
A smartphone’s main camera is generally wide-angle. Selfies are taken only about an arm’s length away. This combination is the most common reason faces can look awkward in photos.
None of this is manipulation. They are all simply photographs.
Lighting comes next
Where light comes from determines the three-dimensional appearance of a face.
Light coming down from above creates shadows beneath the eyelids and cheekbones, deepening facial contours. Ceiling lighting at event venues is generally like this.
Strong light coming directly from the front does the opposite. It erases shadows, causing dimensionality to disappear and making the face look wider and puffier. This is the effect seen when a flash is fired straight from the front.
There is a reason event photos can look especially unfamiliar. Ceiling lights, front-facing flash, and stage lighting from the side can all mix together, and this is not a combination people encounter in everyday life. It produces a face our eyes are not used to seeing.
Video adds another factor
Moving video adds one more thing: which moment is extracted.
If video records 30 frames per second, there are 30 different faces in one second. A face in the middle of speaking, in the moment of taking a breath, or while an expression is changing is all in there.
Selecting only one frame can make it look quite different from how the person appeared in real time. A scene that looked natural as it passed on screen can look awkward when extracted as a still image.
Compression adds another factor. Online video reduces image quality to shrink file size. It reduces it even more in scenes with a lot of movement. In that process, fine information such as skin texture becomes blurred, and a captured frame can leave a different impression from the original.
In other words, a single captured frame is the result of alteration through several stages.
So how should we look at it?
First, look at several images, not just one. If photos of the same person taken on other occasions look different, it is more likely that the shooting conditions changed, not the person.
Second, watch moving video rather than a still frame. Captures are the form most susceptible to distortion.
Third, look at where it was shot. Results can vary greatly depending on whether it was at an event venue, under indoor natural light, or a smartphone selfie.
Fourth, if you are not sure, postpone judgment. A single photo reveals less than one might think.
What that one image shows
The distance to the camera, the direction of the lighting, the moment extracted from the video, and compression. When these four factors overlap, the same face can look considerably different.
That is why it is risky to draw conclusions about a person based on a single photo. That one image is closer to showing the shooting conditions at that moment than the person themselves.
The same applies when we look at our own photos. If a photo looked especially unflattering one day, it is highly possible that what changed that day was not your face, but the distance and lighting.
References
- Sports DongA report published August 4, 2026
- MyDaily report published August 4, 2026
For the background of the matter that prompted this article, please refer to the reports above. The explanations of shooting distance, lighting, and video compression follow general principles of photography and video.
The titles of the two articles have not been reproduced in the links. This is because their titles contain language this article has chosen not to address. Rewriting the titles would mean inventing wording the outlets did not use, so only the outlets and dates are identified instead.
This article explains how shooting conditions affect portrait photographs. It makes no claims about any particular person’s appearance or whether they have undergone procedures, and instead addresses why photographs are insufficient evidence for making such judgments.