Believe it or not, the photo below hasn’t been Photoshopped:
The guy who took the photo says:
The cheap CMOS sensor of an iPhone does not expose the whole thing at once, it scans from left to right. If you take a picture of something that moves very fast (like an airplane prop) you can get some crazy pictures out of it since each column represents a slightly different time.
This oddball-but-cool effect is reminiscent of some of the distortions you see with scanner photography (for some examples, see this page).
Maybe it’s time to pull out those camera phones and start snapping pics of oscillating or rotating objects!
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I’ve seen this happen when I take pictures in the car with the windshield wipers going. Very nice effect.
Cool effect!
so… iPhone is cool one more time! it adds cool effects and expands your creativity. It does amazing work. With one touch of screen you can stun your friends and lots of internet users in the moment! F A N T A S T I C! Another super-feature!
It`s not a bug, it`s a feature.
the process is called slit-scanning.
It’s a bug, not a feature.
it also makes you look retarded.
I also noticed this effect while trying to take a picture of a fast moving train..
http://flickr.com/photos/johnhennig/2499211981/in/set-72157605108621877/
Not nearly as cool looking as the plane prop, but still a fun shot. Great work btw…
I wonder witch way the propeller is turning? Can anybody explain how the effect is generated? how the camera scans the image?
The propeller is turning clockwise as you see it in the picture. The little black strip near the hub of the prop is a deicing boot that is on the leading edge.
Here are a few prop shots from inside that I took a while back:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/23369064@N00/2445247941/in/set-72157603622401568/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/23369064@N00/2445243547/in/set-72157603622401568/
it’s an effect caused by a rolling shutter.
if they had used a sensor with global shutter this would not have happened.
it’s a limitation of the sensor, if you like to see it as a feature, be my guest apple fanboi
I know this sounds stupid but how do some of the propellor things end up not attached to the center thing that spins them? I understand that it captures the image in bars but how would it be able to distort it so it became unattached? Wouldn’t it just end up with a bunch of little propellor pieces all unaligned but still in a circle? Somebody please help me understand this so I don’t feel so dumb.
I am wondering why this person was standing so close to a rapidly spinning propeller :)
Haha. Apple quality, they say…
wow! super awesome! i’ve noticed some weird effects with my iphone camera as well. Especially when someone else is using their flash at the same time you’re taking a photo.
I think its the new un disclosed feature of an Iphone.
Hi, Stephen Kelly . My name is Zoom. Pleased to meet you.
SHOOPED! i can tell by the pixels
mi hermao es gayyyyyyyyyyyyy :D coooollllll efect
Cheap cameras? They allow you to take 4 dimensions pictures!! Nice concept!!
bad cameras are always the best ones! lo-mo
I don’t believe you… If it really has been taken with an iPhone then post the original picture. It has no apple footprint if you look inside it. All pictures that are taken from an iphone have this string somewhere in it: “£Apple iPhone”.
Yours doesn’t….
Nice though…
Best Regards,
monoco.
i no. my bff has an iphone: she takes lotsa pics. theres always the apple sign on it. ( :
J’ai le même chez moi, çà s’appelle un Coupe Frites !
Blah blah blah iPhone. Christ on a tortilla you fan boys are pathetic.
This bug occurs with every cmos based camera made. Well… cheaply made. Anyone who’s taken a picture with a camera phone, ANY FUCKING CAMERA PHONE, from a moving vehicle will tell you that.
Mac bigots are so much like religious zealots it’s kind of scary. Another feature my ass.
Aw, is Michael kind of threatened by the Apple juggernaut as he watches Microsoft flounder and fail and crash in the marketplace? BOO HOO!
I didn’t know that’s how the iPhone’s camera works.
Michael, I think you missed the rather obvious humour in some of these comments lol
Cue a spate of look at the fcuk’d photos I can make with my iPhone and perhaps a few Darwin award candidates :p
imagine what ppl would be saying about that if it were a zune and not an iphone
Looks great… who cares how it was created, or what created it.
FAKE !!! Look at the spinner ! (the central part) It is not moving !!! ;-P
This is a four dimensional object crossing through our 3-dimensional brane.
The mac fanboy haters are far more passionate than the mac fan boys! It’s almost like they are the technogeek equivalent of homophobes, disguising their own self hatred for being secret fan boys of their own computer junk.
@Michael: “This bug occurs with every cmos based camera made. Well… cheaply made.” Tell that to the makers of the RED camera. Not exactly cheap, but still a CMOS sensor. This camera is in greater and greater use in film and TV all the time.
@ Monoco: The church didn’t believe Galileo either. Galileo was right. You are wrong.
@ Everyone arguing whether it is a bug vs. feature: It is neither or either, depending on your perspective. Is it a bug that paint brushes don’t photorealistically depict a subject in any painting on which they are used? The rolling shutter is a *limitation* of the CMOS chip, but since it is there by design, it can’t be considered a bug. Again, it is there by design.
@ Man: Thank you for being right and not being stupid.
@ Stephen Kelly: Good question! Also a much funnier topic of discussion.
looks great!!
Here is a simulation video demonstrating how it happens:
http://scalarmotion.wordpress.com/2009/03/15/propeller-image-aliasing/
“cheap camera” ..?
but you know prices of ‘real’ cameras? cheap? the iphone?
what a mentality…
It can’t make videos too
@ meh
“cheap camera” ..? cheap? the iphone?
The iPhone is not cheap but the iPhone is not a camera. The iPhone has a cheap camera attached to it. So you can say that the iPhone is a cheap camera. This is perfectly good mentality!
Yes indeed, it is a slice through 4-dimensional space-time on an oblique angle. Another interesting way to think of it is that the propeller sweeps out a corkscrew along the time dimension, and the photograph is taking a slice through that on an angle.
It makes me think: if only the CMOS censor didn’t sweep across the field of view, and captured a single strip streaked across the width of the photo, then you’d have a ‘photo finish’ type camera. Imagine the cool photos you could take! I’d love it if an iPhone app could do that, but I’m guessing the sweep is hard-coded into the camera hardware.