Believe it or not, the photo below hasn’t been Photoshopped:
The guy who took the photo says:
The cheap CMOS sensor of an iPhone does not expose the whole thing at once, it scans from left to right. If you take a picture of something that moves very fast (like an airplane prop) you can get some crazy pictures out of it since each column represents a slightly different time.
This oddball-but-cool effect is reminiscent of some of the distortions you see with scanner photography (for some examples, see this page).
Maybe it’s time to pull out those camera phones and start snapping pics of oscillating or rotating objects!
81 replies on “Cheap Camera, Interesting Shot”
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Here is a simulation video demonstrating how it happens:
http://scalarmotion.wordpress.com/2009/03/15/propeller-image-aliasing/
“cheap camera” ..?
but you know prices of ‘real’ cameras? cheap? the iphone?
what a mentality…
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It can’t make videos too
@ meh
“cheap camera” ..? cheap? the iphone?
The iPhone is not cheap but the iPhone is not a camera. The iPhone has a cheap camera attached to it. So you can say that the iPhone is a cheap camera. This is perfectly good mentality!
[…] De laatste dagen staat de foto-functie van het apparaat ter discussie. Een weblogger maakte deze foto met zijn iPhone en was verrast met het resultaat. Een vliegtuigpropellor, maar dan totaal anders. […]
Yes indeed, it is a slice through 4-dimensional space-time on an oblique angle. Another interesting way to think of it is that the propeller sweeps out a corkscrew along the time dimension, and the photograph is taking a slice through that on an angle.
It makes me think: if only the CMOS censor didn’t sweep across the field of view, and captured a single strip streaked across the width of the photo, then you’d have a ‘photo finish’ type camera. Imagine the cool photos you could take! I’d love it if an iPhone app could do that, but I’m guessing the sweep is hard-coded into the camera hardware.
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The prop hub, or “spinner” as it was so eloquently called, is indeed exhibiting signs of motion. This is why the blade ports (those are the “holes,” CypherFC) aren’t symmetrical (that means “lined up right,” CypherFC) as they should be on a two-blade propeller.
Quite a cool picture. I miss the days when cameras used film. Then people of limited understanding of physics couldn’t claim “shooped I kan tel by da pix0rz…”
Piskor, you’re a fucking retard.
Great picture! I love that effect. Here’s my very own zany propellor shot: http://www.flickr.com/photos/27466406@N00/112744223
(taken with an old Sony Ericson phone)
found their nest:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/iphonejelloshots/
Brilliant idea.
I took a few on a plane flight to Minnesota a while back.
http://bestc.am/bwrg
http://bestc.am/f5sZ
Very nice effect. Thanks for bringing to my attention
Hello,
I need to shoot from the cockpit thru propeller.
Iphone distorts prop. Any suggestion which camera is good to shoot thru prop?
thanks
[…] right and take pictures of fast moving or rotating objects, you can create all sorts of weird and funky distortion effects. You can see more like this in the rolling shutter Flickr […]
It’s because you hold the phone the wrong way.
[…] right and take pictures of fast moving or rotating objects, you can create all sorts of weird and funky distortion effects. You can see more like this in the rolling shutter Flickr […]
[…] right and take pictures of fast moving or rotating objects, you can create all sorts of weird and funky distortion effects. You can see more like this in the rolling shutter Flickr […]
It’s not a bug, it’s a feature ;)
wow thats really cool! i guess i don’t need to learn photoshop now, I can just use my iphone.
[…] right and take pictures of fast moving or rotating objects, you can create all sorts of weird and funky distortion effects. You can see more like this in the rolling shutter Flickr […]
[…] Here’s my Kubrick-inspired short film of a ride on Muni Metro. The route is outbound from Van Ness to Church. It’s somewhat distorted thanks to the iPhone’s wacky image sensor. […]
When asked about this artifact some time ago I set up a simul;ation using a flat bed scanner as the equivalent of a rolling shutter. You can read about this at: http://davidhazy.org/andpph/text-focal-plane-artifacts-in-digital-cameras.html
[…] right and take pictures of fast moving or rotating objects, you can create all sorts of weird and funky distortion effects. You can see more like this in the rolling shutter Flickr […]
[…] can’t do THIS with your fancy-boy DSLR. Check it out. This entry was posted in Pix by Chet. Bookmark the […]
Wow, who knew?! That’s really cool. I wonder how this would look on a fan.
e cigarettes Cheap Camera, Interesting Shot — Global Nerdy