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A Very Unusual Camera That Emphasizes Time Over Space

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Re: A Very Unusual Camera That Emphasizes Time Over Space

#11

Post by mdonahoe »

bazzargh wrote: post #3

Slit scan photography has been used artistically before: http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/25/belden-adams.php (the picture of the runner and the cyclist is nicely mindbending) And pretty much everyone here would be familiar with a couple of artistic uses of slit-scan photography - the opening credits of Doctor Who ( http://h2g2.com/approved_entry/A907544 ) and the ending of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Is it possible the author hasn't seen a photo finish before? I was surprised he didn't mention races at all.

Re: A Very Unusual Camera That Emphasizes Time Over Space

#12

Post by chmod775 »

numlocked wrote: post #4

You don't need an $85,000 camera to play around with slit scan photography. As with just about everything these days, there's an app for that: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/slit-scan-camera/id419292360... Note that this is slit-SCAN, which is a bit different in that it moves the "slit" across the face off the sensor, rather than capturing from a static slit over time (the same technique was used in Star Trek:TNG to…

You can just make a video, and select a column of pixels. Then place the different columns (color-wise) you get from each frame next to each other. The resulting image will have the same width as the number of frames you used and it will probably have a lot of artefacts considering the quality of today's (home) video technology. But it is essentially the same.

Just what came to my mind just now.

Re: A Very Unusual Camera That Emphasizes Time Over Space

#13

Post by aw3c2 »

amaxwell wrote: post #2

It seems like it would be simple enough to convert a video into an image like these by isolating a single column of pixels from each frame and putting them together chronologically.

Yeah, that was fun:

  #starting at 467s and outputting the images of the next 3 seconds
  ffmpeg -ss 467 -t 3 -i video.mkv output.%04d.png
  # crop image to 1px slices 280 pixels from the left.
  gm mogrify -crop 1x+280+0 *.png
  # stitch them
  gm montage -border 0 -geometry +0+0 -tile x1 *.png image.jpg
Perfect example how easy and straightforward it is to use command line utilities.

Now someone just has to find movies with static camera scenes that have a lot of horizontal actor/object movement.

Random example showing Bill Bailey as a demon: http://i.imgur.com/AWWG8.jpg

Some static rallye car cameras from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2QMuT04EOw -> http://i.imgur.com/GV3bY.jpg

Needs either higher framerate videos or longer scenes.

Re: A Very Unusual Camera That Emphasizes Time Over Space

#17

Post by Semiapies »

mdonahoe wrote: post #11
bazzargh wrote: post #3

Slit scan photography has been used artistically before: http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/25/belden-adams.php (the picture of the runner and the cyclist is nicely mindbending) And pretty much everyone here would be familiar with a couple of artistic uses of slit-scan photography - the opening credits of Doctor Who ( http://h2g2.com/approved_entry/A907544 ) and the ending of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Is it possible the author hasn't seen a photo finish before? I was surprised he didn't mention races at all.

I hadn't, so it certainly is possible.

Re: A Very Unusual Camera That Emphasizes Time Over Space

#18

Post by latchkey »

recursive wrote: post #9

This is how finish line cameras at races normally work. At least many of the bike races I've been in.

Here's a rather interesting article (from 2004) on how the Tour is managed... http://www.engadget.com/2004/07/19/counting-every-second-a-b...

Re: A Very Unusual Camera That Emphasizes Time Over Space

#19

Post by dbaupp »

aw3c2 wrote: post #13
amaxwell wrote: post #2

It seems like it would be simple enough to convert a video into an image like these by isolating a single column of pixels from each frame and putting them together chronologically.

Yeah, that was fun: #starting at 467s and outputting the images of the next 3 seconds ffmpeg -ss 467 -t 3 -i video.mkv output.%04d.png # crop image to 1px slices 280 pixels from the left. gm mogrify -crop 1x+280+0 *.png # stitch them gm montage -border 0 -geometry +0+0 -tile x1 *.png image.jpg Perfect example how easy and straightforward it is to use command line utilities. Now someone just has to find movies with st…

Nice! That's much neater than I thought it would be.

P.S. you can use "output.%03d.png" to zero pad the output to 011 (and %04d for 0011 etc.)

Re: A Very Unusual Camera That Emphasizes Time Over Space

#20

Post by sbirchall »

bazzargh wrote: post #3

Slit scan photography has been used artistically before: http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/25/belden-adams.php (the picture of the runner and the cyclist is nicely mindbending) And pretty much everyone here would be familiar with a couple of artistic uses of slit-scan photography - the opening credits of Doctor Who ( http://h2g2.com/approved_entry/A907544 ) and the ending of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

I was also reminded of that weird final scene in the Animatrix short about the runner when he has some kind of warp spasm before transcending and waking from the Matrix. That just gave me a renewed appreciation of animation.
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