andrewducker: (Made of Love)
andrewducker ([personal profile] andrewducker) wrote2010-04-28 10:34 pm

Unintended Technological Effecta


What happens if you take a photo of a spinning propellor with an iphone camera - which scans left to right, meaning that different parts of the shot happen at different times.
From

Anyone know if all digital cameras would do this?

[identity profile] call-waiting.livejournal.com 2010-04-29 10:12 am (UTC)(link)
Interesting. This effect is only possible if the exposure of one column more or less entirely precedes the exposure of the next. I had assumed that they'd begin the exposure of all the columns before reading out, but on thinking about it for a few minutes, there's really no reason why this should be the case as there should be no reason not to have independent control on the drain/fill/whatever-they-call-it.

So, presumably the frame begins with each column being drained, in turn at the same rate as the readout process, which 'follows' behind by a number of columns / period of time for the exposure time. Neat. In which case this sort of effect should be far less visible in low-light conditions where the exposure time is closer to the full-frame time.

Huh. Neat!