Unlike a couple of decades ago, when people only used to carry around camcorders and cameras on trips and vacations, today, everyone has a camera with them at all times. People have the opportunity of capturing practically every type of situation by simply using the cameras in their phones.
As a result, the rolling shutter effect of most cameras is being used more and more often. The effect can usually be noticed when photographing or filming high speed moving objects such as propellers, trains or even vibrating guitar strings. Many times, the image either seems to be skewed to one side, or various shapes can be seen that seemingly come from nowhere, often appearing to easily flow into each other, or become deformed.
The Causes of the Rolling Shutter Effect
Most modern digital cameras that various phones and devices are fitted with use an imaging sensor that performs a line scan or uses rolling shutters. Now, this isn't usually a problem in case you are taking pictures of static objects or things that move slowly, but when it comes to fast motion images, the result is that the motion seems deformed or altered in some way.
The main reason behind this is that the rolling shutter simply doesn't have the time to take the picture before it moves, and as a result, the object is already gone before the full image is captured.
Some of the Effects of Cameras Fitted with Rolling Shutters
- One of the most interesting effects you can achieve happens when your camera or the object being photographed vibrates very fast. As a result, the image starts to wobble, and straight lines are not straight anymore.
- Smearing and skewing appears when you take a picture of a very fast object moving in a linear direction. Commonly, it will appear to be skewed in one direction, but in some cases, it will seem to be stretched to the extreme, starting to look very blurry.
- When a sudden flash goes off while you're taking a picture, part of the capture can become brighter than the other. This is called partial exposure, and it happens because the darker section of the image was taken before the flash.
What Are the Applications of These Effects?
While, sometimes, these effects can be quite annoying when you want to get a clear image, some people have managed to take truly amazing pictures using them, so despite the variety of trick photography effects that are being used today, new applications regarding the rolling shutter method never really cease to amaze us.
Propellers and fan blades often provide the best way of seeing the effect in action. The fast, circular motion of an airplane's propeller blades will show up stunningly in photographs, as you will be shocked to see them turning into boomerang shaped apparitions.
Even though you might not own your own airplane, you can still recreate the effect using common cooling fans. Also, you can make further observations, for example by sprinkling the fan with water while you're shooting the photograph. The results might be surprising.
If you own a guitar, another interesting application would be to capture the strings while you're playing them. The result will be a photo showing them in mid vibration, seeming to flow in a snake-like fashion.
In case you manage to capture the strings on video, you will be even more surprised, as the wobbling effect will vary depending on each string's frequency. Try having someone you know play a string instrument while you're taking pictures, and you might be amazed to see how the strings "flow" next to each other.
What Can You Do to Achieve Truly Perplexing Results?
To get some truly incredible pictures, you can decide upon moving the camera instead of photographing a moving object. You will find a lot of motion pictures on the internet that exemplify this technique, and you will see how the images show the whole world moving, wobbling or even melting into itself. One of the easiest ways of doing this is to securely tie your camera to a fan or toy propeller.
If the examples and explanations you've found here have at least partially sparked your interest about using the rolling shutter effect, you might want to try them out, and perhaps even find your own original methods of reaching incredible results with trick photography.
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