How to make people disappear?

cliveh · Nov 22, 2014

RattyMouse said:
No, this is not solely pinhole territory. I just saw this morning some digital shots from a Leica user who made Shanghai look absolutely EMPTY of people. I just wish he said how long of an exposure it took to get that effect. Hundreds of people in the scene, none on the photograph.

If they were digital shots then it could be Photoshop manipulation, as there is a function on Photoshop where from a series of shots taken from the same position the computer will remove anything that moves. If you want to do this on film, then stacking a few ND filters may do the trick, or pinhole as already suggested. However, some movement can be quite effective, check out this guy:-

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=A...Fwww.alexeytitarenko.com%2Fcity3.html;540;518

mdarnton · Nov 22, 2014

I have several large format lenses in self-cocking shutters, and figured the easy way to accomplish this would be to figure some exposure for 1 second, then fire off 25 shots at 1/25 over some longer period of time. That would give time for even the loiterers to clear out.

TheToadMen · Nov 22, 2014

RattyMouse said:
No, this is not solely pinhole territory.

My 30 minute shot was made with an old Russian FKD 18x24 cm plate camera with a Industar 37 lens (300 mm f4.5), using my hat as a shutter.

TheToadMen said:
I once made a 30 minute exposure inside an old church (paper negative 18x24 cm). Some people came wandering in, looked at the altar for a while and moved on. None of them showed up in the image. One guy stood there for maybe 8 minutes or so and he is barely visible like a faint ghost.

Bert from Holland
http://thetoadmen.blogspot.nl

cliveh · Nov 22, 2014

TheToadMen said:
My 30 minute shot was made with an old Russian FKD 18x24 cm plate camera with a Industar 37 lens (300 mm f4.5), using my hat as a shutter.

Can we please see the image?

TheToadMen · Nov 22, 2014

cliveh said:
Can we please see the image?

I was afraid someone might ask. I have to see if I can find the neg or print, since it was made before I moved and I'm not sure in what box it is. But you said "please" so I'll give it a quick look tomorrow.

removed account4 · Nov 22, 2014

i remember seeing photographs from a eastern european? german? russian?
photographer in the last year, where people vanished ...
they were ghosted going downstairs, catching the bus, subway &c ..
there was a hint of humans, like bill's feet, but not much.

TheToadMen · Nov 22, 2014

jnanian said:
i remember seeing photographs from a eastern european? german? russian?
photographer in the last year, where people vanished ...
they were ghosted going downstairs, catching the bus, subway &c ..
there was a hint of humans, like bill's feet, but not much.

Did you mean this one? I love this image.

(Alexey Titarenko - City of Shadows - St. Petersburg, Russia)

removed account4 · Nov 22, 2014

YES !

thank you

TheToadMen · Nov 23, 2014

jnanian said:
YES !
thank you

I think he made multiple exposures, mounting up to the "normal" exposure time needed for a single shot.
A sort of time laps, if you like.

Poisson Du Jour · Nov 23, 2014

Disappearing people are par for the course on long exposures with a pinhole camera. But a successful "disappearing act" depends greatly on having every single person moving about constantly, not stopping and looking around. It's otherwise very simple to digitally remove people, and that effect is something that is a lot more common than the traditional (analogue) method of a long exposure and planned approach to nulling movement.

RattyMouse · Nov 23, 2014

Well, I went out and bought an ND filter...but sadly was shafted by the store. I was told it was an 8 stop (they didn't have a 10) filter but it turned out to be a 6 stop filter. I didn't get that figured out until I got home with it. Damn B + W for not being more clear on their labels. That's $100 out the window now.

Anyway, I shot with it and even stopped down to f/22 and using Acros film, I could not get longer times than 16 seconds.

Oh the joy of living in China..........

Hatchetman · Nov 23, 2014

There should be a way you can shoot some film at ISO/ASA 25. Pan F+ does great at that speed if you can get it there. That would give you two more stops.

Bill Burk · Nov 23, 2014

RattyMouse said:
Well, I went out and bought an ND filter...but sadly was shafted by the store. I was told it was an 8 stop (they didn't have a 10) filter but it turned out to be a 6 stop filter. I didn't get that figured out until I got home with it. Damn B + W for not being more clear on their labels. That's $100 out the window now.

Anyway, I shot with it and even stopped down to f/22 and using Acros film, I could not get longer times than 16 seconds.

Oh the joy of living in China..........

Hi RattyMouse,

You can overexpose black and white film significantly. So even though the camera or meter may have told you 16 seconds at f/22 was the limit... You could expose 30 seconds, or a minute and still get an excellent negative that will print successfully in a darkroom. It would take probably twice as long to print (so if your print time is usually 15 seconds, a two-stop overexposed negative might take 30 seconds to print).

Three or Four stops overexposure is still printable, though it starts to become inconvenient and some degradation is likely.

Also, Reciprocity Law Failure works in your favor for this scenario (if you're familiar with that).

pdeeh · Nov 23, 2014

Bill Burk said:
Also, Reciprocity Law Failure works in your favor for this scenario (if you're familiar with that).

Not with Acros

Bill Burk · Nov 23, 2014

pdeeh said:
Not with Acros

Right. Oh well.

Arvee · Nov 23, 2014

Ratty,

You can stack that ND with a polarizer and get a couple more stops.

John Koehrer · Nov 23, 2014

If you can convince the folk in the picture to wear this it it might do for you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PD83dqSfC0Y

pentaxuser · Nov 23, 2014

This whole thread has resurrected a thought in my head that has been there for a while and which I hope has relevance to Ratty's thread.

Many years ago I saw an amazing shot of a U.K. motorway with no vehicles on it although the motorway was open and had traffic. It was explained that a high value ND filter had been placed on the lens and given the long exposure none of the vehicles had remained long enough in the frame to register

OK straight-forward enough up to now to understand but the question is would it work nowadays? 30 years ago traffic on a motorway was fairly constant but there were gaps between vehicles when for very short periods there was no traffic. Nowadays on our motorways traffic is often nose-to-tail i.e. apart from the safe minimum or in many cases less than the safe minimum distance between each vehicle there is in effect a constant stream of "solid" traffic.

I suspect that this solid stream would show up as a kind of solid streak a bit like the example already given of people on the stairs, no matter how powerful the ND filter i.e. the traffic/people density means that it is in effect a stationary object.

Question: Am I right?

If in theory I am, then how would you know how often a vehicle or person for that matter, had to pass the camera in order to work out at what point the density meant that it would be impossible to make the people/vehicles vanish and for that matter how powerful the ND has to be in cases that could still render the traffic/people invisible?

Thanks

pentaxuser

Dr Croubie · Nov 23, 2014

I was thinking about this further over the weekend, and it's all about timing.

Just assume for a start that cars (or people) are the same brightness level as the roads.
So if there are cars around for 50% of the time, no matter if they're all in one line and then all clear, or interspersed or what, then you're taking a photo where the cars end up recording the same number of photons on the film as the road does.
I'm pretty sure you could see that.

Now imagine that there are cars 33% of the time. You'll get cars showing up against the road, but they'll be there only 1/3 of the time, the road will show up the other 66%.
So there are twice as many photons from the road than the cars, so the cars are 1-stop below the level of the road.

How many stops do you need to go down before you can't see them anymore?
That's where I've got no idea, maybe 3 or 4 at least. So you'd have to get cars interspersed at what, 5-10% of the time compared to the roads?

Of course, that's if the cars have the same brightness as the roads.
Look back at that subway shot of the USSR. There's a hand on a handrail clearly visible in a few places, it was obviously holding the rail for a step or two, then moved to the next spot and again.
The hand itself was probably already a stop or two above the brightness of the relatively dark grey coats, so besides being there for not much time it's shown up easily, about the same brightness as the background.

So in short, I don't know, try to aim for at least 90% background 10% people/cars/whatever in terms of time in one spot, probably even 95% or better if you can.

pdeeh · Nov 23, 2014

TheToadMen said:
Did you mean this one? I love this image.

(Alexey Titarenko - City of Shadows - St. Petersburg, Russia)

Bert thank you VERY much for this, I hadn't seen Titarenko before and it's rather impressive stuff.

It was so impressive I posted the links on another forum I use, because I consider many of the photographers there have a good eye and would appreciate it ... to which the almost universal response has been "Yeah but his photos wouldn't look like anything without the tricksy special effects and they just all look the same anyway" ....

Sigh.

chacun à son goût of course, but it is the kneejerk dismissal without looking for more than a few seconds that is so very dispiriting ...

RattyMouse · Nov 23, 2014

Bill Burk said:
Right. Oh well.

Thank you. I'll switch and try some FP4 to get that shutter open even longer.

Old-N-Feeble · Nov 23, 2014

How to make people disappear?

Elect to very powerful positions those who would try to dissolve the US Federal Reserve Bank. (this isn't intended to be humorous)

TheToadMen · Nov 23, 2014

pdeeh said:
Bert thank you VERY much for this, I hadn't seen Titarenko before and it's rather impressive stuff.

It was so impressive I posted the links on another forum I use, because I consider many of the photographers there have a good eye and would appreciate it ... to which the almost universal response has been "Yeah but his photos wouldn't look like anything without the tricksy special effects and they just all look the same anyway" ....

Sigh.

chacun à son goût of course, but it is the kneejerk dismissal without looking for more than a few seconds that is so very dispiriting ...

I know what you mean. But to me this is an inspiring image and I'm going to try it myself someday somehow. Maybe not original anymore but a great learning curve it will be too.

DREW WILEY · Nov 24, 2014

Bring along a pet skunk.

ME Super · Nov 24, 2014

During the cold war, you could've sent them to East Germany or the Soviet Union. Now, you could send them to North Korea. They'd disappear there for sure.

How to make people disappear?

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