How to use a digital camera's electronic shutter to emulate Jacques Henri Lartigue's famous photograph "Theodore Schneider n°6 driven by René Croquet at the ACF Grand Prix"
From ‘botched’ photo to iconic image by Sylvie Aubenas
In July 1913 Jacques Henri Lartigue was just nineteen years old. A sports enthusiast and amateur photographer since the age of eight, he began photographing car races from the age of eleven. He even sold a few pics to the La vie au Grand air magazine which covered all major sporting events for a wealthy customer base who adored these new leisure activities.
But a snap taken on the 12th July 1913 at Amiens of « Theodore Schneider n°6 driven by René Croquet at the ACF Grand Prix », was regarded by the budding reporter as not being up to scratch for magazines. He thought that this image, which was to become one of the most famous photographs of the 20th century, was botched… It was blurred and the main subject matter had barely made it into the frame. Lartigue, having been treated by his banker father, was using a Netter, « the camera all sportsmen should have » according to the slogan. But the shutter with its vertical curtain could barely capture the speed of racing cars: tyres ended up blurred and elliptical; the vehicle body was clear but truncated; spectators slanted backwards and the horizon was tilted… We can see the struggle between the rush to take the shot and the speed of the vehicle. This imperfect image therefore remained in storage. In 1924 Man Ray took a similar shot at Cannes and dedicated it to artist Francis Picabia, a fan of high powered cars. It was published in André Breton’s, La révolution surréaliste (The Surrealist Revolution). He immediately understood that the haziness and distortion in the photo were far from being defects, they had the aesthetic audacity to embody this modern thing called speed. When Lartigue looked at his photo again in the Fifties he suddenly saw its beauty. When MOMA in New-York suggested running a major exhibition in 1963, he decided to add it to his selection of exhibits. And that was the beginning of its fame.
http://www.diptyqueparis-memento.com/en/the-story-of-a-photography/
But a snap taken on the 12th July 1913 at Amiens of « Theodore Schneider n°6 driven by René Croquet at the ACF Grand Prix », was regarded by the budding reporter as not being up to scratch for magazines. He thought that this image, which was to become one of the most famous photographs of the 20th century, was botched… It was blurred and the main subject matter had barely made it into the frame. Lartigue, having been treated by his banker father, was using a Netter, « the camera all sportsmen should have » according to the slogan. But the shutter with its vertical curtain could barely capture the speed of racing cars: tyres ended up blurred and elliptical; the vehicle body was clear but truncated; spectators slanted backwards and the horizon was tilted… We can see the struggle between the rush to take the shot and the speed of the vehicle. This imperfect image therefore remained in storage. In 1924 Man Ray took a similar shot at Cannes and dedicated it to artist Francis Picabia, a fan of high powered cars. It was published in André Breton’s, La révolution surréaliste (The Surrealist Revolution). He immediately understood that the haziness and distortion in the photo were far from being defects, they had the aesthetic audacity to embody this modern thing called speed. When Lartigue looked at his photo again in the Fifties he suddenly saw its beauty. When MOMA in New-York suggested running a major exhibition in 1963, he decided to add it to his selection of exhibits. And that was the beginning of its fame.
http://www.diptyqueparis-memento.com/en/the-story-of-a-photography/
You can see that the effect of panning with Lartigue's vertical curtain shutter is that the static background is slanted away from the direction of motion and the fact that the panning was too slow to keep up with the car has had the effect of slanting the car in the direction of motion. This gives the interest to the image, making it look as though the car is going incredibly fast, almost science fiction fast!
If you want to read more about this, try the article linked here:
http://www.wrotniak.net/photo/tech/fp-shutter.html
Mirrorless cameras I believe give you the option to use mechanical or electronic shutters. In the case of the electronic shutter, the light falling on the sensor isn't all sampled at the same time. Instead the sample is taken based on a horizontal line scanning across the image. This is effectively the same mechanism as Lartigue's vertical curtain shutter on his large format camera.
As the scanned horizontal line passes across the image the background is moving with respect to the sensor (because we are panning with the camera) and the car is moving with respect to the sensor (because we are panning too slowly to follow it). As someone who has been panning to follow subjects on and off for many years it is difficult to achieve this because my automatic preference is to follow the subject as perfectly as I can.
Those who know me might realise that I mostly use Pentax cameras and Ricoh/Pentax doesn't currently produce a mirrorless camera. No, but my current main camera is the Pentax K-3 mark III. It has an ability to take multiple shots while minutely shifting the sensor in an attempt to achieve higher quality images than the sensor would usually achieve (called Pixel Shift Resolution). This effectively uses an electronic shutter action, but that action was not available to the user directly, only in this mode. A later version of the firmware however made the electronic shutter action available to the user. The only obvious benefit of this was to extend the camera's fastest (mechanical) shutter speed from 1/8000s to an electronic shutter speed of 1/16000s. The reported disadvantage of using the electronic shutter at high speeds was that any panning would result in slanted backgrounds.
A-ha I thought. I can have a go at playing with the effect Lartigue used. Here is one of my best (not very good) attempts so far.
Note how the building is sloping to the left while the car, most noticeably its wheel, is sloping to the right. This is of course the opposite of Lartigue's effect, arguably making it look as though the car is reversing.
It seems that Lartigue's camera was "scanning" from bottom to top and my camera is scanning from top to bottom? Never mind, that would just mean I need to turn my camera upside down to create the effect. Of course I also need a more interesting subject!
If you want to read more about this, try the article linked here:
http://www.wrotniak.net/photo/tech/fp-shutter.html
Mirrorless cameras I believe give you the option to use mechanical or electronic shutters. In the case of the electronic shutter, the light falling on the sensor isn't all sampled at the same time. Instead the sample is taken based on a horizontal line scanning across the image. This is effectively the same mechanism as Lartigue's vertical curtain shutter on his large format camera.
As the scanned horizontal line passes across the image the background is moving with respect to the sensor (because we are panning with the camera) and the car is moving with respect to the sensor (because we are panning too slowly to follow it). As someone who has been panning to follow subjects on and off for many years it is difficult to achieve this because my automatic preference is to follow the subject as perfectly as I can.
Those who know me might realise that I mostly use Pentax cameras and Ricoh/Pentax doesn't currently produce a mirrorless camera. No, but my current main camera is the Pentax K-3 mark III. It has an ability to take multiple shots while minutely shifting the sensor in an attempt to achieve higher quality images than the sensor would usually achieve (called Pixel Shift Resolution). This effectively uses an electronic shutter action, but that action was not available to the user directly, only in this mode. A later version of the firmware however made the electronic shutter action available to the user. The only obvious benefit of this was to extend the camera's fastest (mechanical) shutter speed from 1/8000s to an electronic shutter speed of 1/16000s. The reported disadvantage of using the electronic shutter at high speeds was that any panning would result in slanted backgrounds.
A-ha I thought. I can have a go at playing with the effect Lartigue used. Here is one of my best (not very good) attempts so far.
Note how the building is sloping to the left while the car, most noticeably its wheel, is sloping to the right. This is of course the opposite of Lartigue's effect, arguably making it look as though the car is reversing.
It seems that Lartigue's camera was "scanning" from bottom to top and my camera is scanning from top to bottom? Never mind, that would just mean I need to turn my camera upside down to create the effect. Of course I also need a more interesting subject!