Focal plane distortion

cliveh · Mar 14, 2012

On the subject of sports photography, have any of you guys ever tried to emulate a focal plane distortion like this shot by Jacques-Henri Lartigue?

http://arianepoulinphotography.file...5f283598672520c75ca74f607af95256052f01d_m.jpg

John Austin · Mar 14, 2012

I have never wanted to, but for the throng who does, try a Speed Graphic with FP shutter - Why does the answer still come back to SG so often?

I have always adored this image by JHL, and the one of a child playing hoop on a cold beach with a small sailing boat on the horizon

removed account4 · Mar 14, 2012

it really can't be done with a speed graphic because 1/30 is too fast for that sort of distortion
i have done it ( barely ) with a graflex slr, and a shutter at around 1/15S and a moving bus ( /barely )
but never at a sports event

Leigh B · Mar 14, 2012

The image in the OP is typical of a vertical-travel shutter at a speed faster than its flash sync speed, i.e. when you have a moving slit and the full film aperture is never open.

You could accomplish the same thing with any 35mm camera that uses a Copal Square shutter, like most of the second-tier Nikons of the 60's-80's(??).
The top-of-the-line professional Nikons used horizontal-travel shutters.

- Leigh

ic-racer · Mar 14, 2012

Your subject has to be moving quite fast to do it with a small format camera (because the shutter runs across the film plane pretty quick). Of course you'd want a vertical travel shutter to get the background slanted.

jp498 · Mar 14, 2012

cliveh said:
On the subject of sports photography, have any of you guys ever tried to emulate a focal plane distortion like this shot by Jacques-Henri Lartigue?

http://arianepoulinphotography.file...5f283598672520c75ca74f607af95256052f01d_m.jpg

Yeh, I'm crazy about that photo. I've got a speed graphic (pre-anniversary) to try it with, but there are so many combinations of speeds and slit widths I haven't got it yet. I've only wasted a half dozen sheets trying, so no pain no gain yet on this project. It appears Lartigue was panning the camera some and the car was moving faster than the panning motion. I want to figure it out with a box of fuji instant sometime, but the back doesn't open enough to hold the pa45. Older speed graphics go down to 1/10 sec and newer ones (with graflock back) only go down to 1/30. Not sure what difference it makes yet.

polyglot · Mar 15, 2012

You can get this effect with any focal-plane shutter if you have a fast-enough subject. Propellers are a good start, even with very fast shutters.

While it's not analogue, you can get crazy effects from phone-cameras with electronic shutters. They work by scanning/clearing a line of pixels at a time (sometimes quite slowly), which means you effectively have a one-pixel shutter slit, which results in very funky effects on things like propellers.

Dan Daniel · Mar 15, 2012

http://people.rit.edu/andpph/text-slit-scan.html
About a 'page or so down is a small thumbnail of the right side of a couple dancing. Robert Doisneau, an extra twist...

E. von Hoegh · Mar 15, 2012

No data on the photos here, but many old photos demonstrating FP distortion. (And showing the entire auto.)

http://theoldmotor.com/?attachment_id=41732

Ian Grant · Mar 15, 2012

The bigger and wider the shutter the greater the effect, and older focal plane shutters that use both slit width and tension to control speed will give the greatest effect. That'll be with a narrower slit at a lower tension (curtain speed).

Ian

rjbuzzclick · Mar 15, 2012

Dan Daniel said:
http://people.rit.edu/andpph/text-slit-scan.html
About a 'page or so down is a small thumbnail of the right side of a couple dancing. Robert Doisneau, an extra twist...

I tried this myself with a Pacemaker Speed Graphic and this is the best that I got. Check out the position of her feet. I "hand-wound" the shutter slowly using the 1/1000 slit while she was turning on the merry-go-round rather quickly (she was a good sport!). The banding is from the uneven travel speed of the FP shutter slit.:

John Austin · Mar 15, 2012

jnanian said:
it really can't be done with a speed graphic because 1/30 is too fast for that sort of distortion
i have done it ( barely ) with a graflex slr, and a shutter at around 1/15S and a moving bus ( /barely )
but never at a sports event

John,
My SG shutter goes down to 1/10th second - However, I make an assumption that the smallest slit should be set with the slowest tension - (Aperture D with Tension 1 = 1/500th sec) I have found the SG shutter to be fairly accurate

I will take it to town today and try - Results to follow, though I really need a big road, which could we weeks away

Anyway, I feel this is the only one way to find out

removed account4 · Mar 15, 2012

Grumpy Old Man said:
John,
My SG shutter goes down to 1/10th second - However, I make an assumption that the smallest slit should be set with the slowest tension - (Aperture D with Tension 1 = 1/500th sec) I have found the SG shutter to be fairly accurate

I will take it to town today and try - Results to follow, though I really need a big road, which could we weeks away

View attachment 47824

Anyway, I feel this is the only one way to find out

too cool, you must have a "anniversary" .. i'm short-sighted and forgot
that the older models had like 25 speeds ( i wish mine had 24 of'em ! )
my pacemaker only goes to 1/30 ( only has 6 speeds )

have fun "Jacques Henri"

john

Sirius Glass · Mar 18, 2012

I have tried it at the slowest shutter speeds on my Graflex Model D, but I still have not been able to reproduce the effect. [rant]Grumble, grumble, grumble [/rant]

Leigh B · Mar 18, 2012

Hi Sirius,

Your shutter speed is too slow. Go back and read my post #4.

You must use a shutter speed fast enough that the shutter aperture is a moving slit.

- Leigh

rjbuzzclick · Mar 18, 2012

Correct, you need a thin slit traveling at a slow speed. In my example in post #11, I was trying to reproduce the effect seen in Rober Doisneau's photo of the man and woman twisted around each other. If you look closely at her feet, and follow the line of her legs, you'll see that they're twisted oddly. It's not as great of an effect as I would have liked to get, but it's close. At some point I'll try this again and hopefully have better luck. I was using the 1/1000 slit, but "hand winding" it so it traveled across the film in about two to three seconds.

I ran other tests using the different FP shutter speeds on my Pacemaker SG and was able to get some bending on the upright poles of the merry-go-round with smaller slit openings, but no twisting of my model as in Robert Doisneau's photo.

Leigh B · Mar 18, 2012

It's funny...

I was shooting sports with a Speed Graphic in the early 1960s and tried very hard to __avoid__ this kind of distortion.

Times change.

- Leigh

rjbuzzclick · Mar 19, 2012

Leigh B said:
It's funny...

I was shooting sports with a Speed Graphic in the early 1960s and tried very hard to __avoid__ this kind of distortion.

Times change.

- Leigh

Damn kids these days! Hey, get off my lawn!

johnielvis · Mar 19, 2012

you'd probably want a long lens too--this will also exaggerate the effect more than a shorter lens since the relative speed will be faster--relative speed is magnification times real speed

RalphLambrecht · Mar 20, 2012

i thought, yhis image was an example of horizontal shutter distortion with fast-moving subjects, which is different to focal-plane distortion.

Leigh B · Mar 20, 2012

RalphLambrecht said:
i thought, yhis image was an example of horizontal shutter distortion with fast-moving subjects, which is different to focal-plane distortion.

Nope. Horizontal distortion stretches the subject width without distorting vertical lines.

Think of a narrow slit moving across the film. Lines parallel to the slit will not be distorted.
Lines perpendicular to the slit will exhibit distortion, the specifics of which depend on the direction of subject and shutter movement.

As a shutter slit moves across the film, different areas of the film capture different points in time,
i.e. the 1/500th sec at the top of the film is not the same time as the 1/500th sec at the bottom.

- Leigh

Ian Grant · Mar 20, 2012

RalphLambrecht said:
i thought, yhis image was an example of horizontal shutter distortion with fast-moving subjects, which is different to focal-plane distortion.

It depends on what you mean by Horizontal and vertical. These older Focal plane shutters tended to have blinds that had a horizontal slit that moved vertically for the exposure, like modern Seiko SLRshutters. Older SLR's tended to use cloth shutters with a vertical slit that moved horizontally.

When governed by tension and slit width like on a 5x4 Speed Graphic a horizontal edge of the shutter curtain slit takes just over 1/10th of a second to cross the film plane at the minimum tension #1, yet with the narrowest slit width this gives a shutter speed of 1/350th. So there's a time lag of 1/10th between the exposure at the top and at the botton, slightly longer if a wider slit is used.

Even at the top speed of 1/1000 which is at the maximum tension #6 there's a lag of 1/35th of a second.

Ian

Schlapp · Mar 20, 2012

http://www.flickr.com/photos/schlapp/2833892718/

Using a auxiliary shutter [slot in cardboard in front of lens]. My partner walking .

Sirius Glass · Mar 20, 2012

Leigh B said:
Hi Sirius,

Your shutter speed is too slow. Go back and read my post #4.

You must use a shutter speed fast enough that the shutter aperture is a moving slit.

- Leigh

I tried 1/30s, 1/25s, 1/20s, 1/15s, and 1/10s multiple times slowly panning cars move 50mph perpendicular to me at about 40 feet away using a 7 1/2" lens.

Newt_on_Swings · Mar 20, 2012

Moving roll film would work as well. I asked about this a bit back as well. I'll post the link for the old post when I can find it later.

Focal plane distortion

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