Slit photography

**Sylvester Graham** · 14-Nov-2012, 18:51

This guy has been trending: http://www.jaymarkjohnson.com/

Uses a "slit camera" to sample one dimensional lines that repeat across the two dimensions over time. I can't figure out how someone would do this on a physical piece of film, though. Would you move the film? Or the camera?

**ckeith** · 14-Nov-2012, 19:56

I have a Roundshot 28/220 panoramic camera that spins the top half and moves the film past a slit to take the picture. I think that with a different mount that would hold the top of the camera and let the bottom spin I could use it to take this kind of picture. This winter I might make up a mount like this on my milling machine and give it a try. The trick would be to set the scan time so that the moving object would have the right length to height ratio with out needing to do a lot of fixing in the digital world. Since this camera uses 120 film and only gets a few shots per roll trying could get expensive fast.

I think some of the early deep space craft used a scanning camera with just a few pixels that mechanically scanned both up and down and across to take the picture.

Keith

**Brian C. Miller** · 14-Nov-2012, 20:57

With large format, either method works just fine.

Slit photography has been used in sports for a long time to determine who is the winner, and it can give you some crazy results. (I think it's still used.) Anyways, what you do with a 35mm camera is make a filter that is opaque and has a slit in it. The shutter is opened, and the film is moved in the camera. There's a number of contraptions that people have build for this purpose. For LF I would build a rail, and move the whole camera across the slit while the shutter is open.

**SergeiR** · 14-Nov-2012, 21:15

Scanning back on your 4x5 will have that exact effect...

**Ed Bray** · 15-Nov-2012, 06:58

Phew, I thought this was a new form of nude photography.

**retnull** · 15-Nov-2012, 08:33

A useful link, mostly focused on digital projects, but includes some film-based work --
"An Informal Catalogue of Slit-Scan Video Artworks and Research":
http://www.flong.com/texts/lists/slit_scan/

**retnull** · 15-Nov-2012, 08:36

Originally Posted by SergeiR

Scanning back on your 4x5 will have that exact effect...

Indeed, and so will any lowly camera with a rolling shutter, like an iPhone:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVwmtwZLG88&

**SergeiR** · 15-Nov-2012, 09:58

Originally Posted by retnull

Indeed, and so will any lowly camera with a rolling shutter, like an iPhone:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVwmtwZLG88&

Actually most of curtain shutter cameras (aka typical 35mm SLR) will get there too, but object has to move just slightly faster than curtain (distortion in wheel shape is noticeable of bikes/cars)...
In fact, comes to think about it.. FP shutter on speed graphic can do it too

**C. D. Keth** · 15-Nov-2012, 10:30

Here's another thing you can do with a strip camera. This is a self portrait of Andrew Davidhazy, chair of the photographic technology dept. at RIT. It's also, as far as I know, a type of photo originating with him.