Rolling shutter effect can make stunning iPhone photos

Check out this blog post for more information on the anti-aliasing effect caused by the iPhone camera. It goes more in depth, and provides MATLAB code as an explanation for the effects.

http://blog.alexbeutel.com/135/image-aliasing-of-plane-propellers-in-photos-and-video/

Reminds me something also ;)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFuvSlfl4Fw&hd=1

This has been taken on an iPhone 4 last week.

Taking the propellor photos without blur would require very high shutter speed (i.e. very low exposure time) - am not sure how iphone 4 could have capture the propellors so clearly (even though they are curved due to the rolling effect -- but they are still very sharp)

We need an app to fake this then :)

I took a very similar picture with my iPhone 3G, on an Aeromar flight...

http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/86ufv7--QauqlnHX3lBUcg?feat=directlink

[IMG]http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k271/StevenLPeterson/IMG_0278.jpg[/IMG]

looks familiar :-)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/chrisflix/4873583323/

Well as much as the Rolling Shutter Effect looks cool in such cases, I can't say I've experienced the effect; the images out of my 3GS tend to be more grainy than anything else, as the camera tries to clean up the focus. Has anyone actually succeeded with a 3GS, or is this unique to the iPhone4? Cheers.

Very clever effect

This isn't just digital cameras.

All film cameras with "high speed" shutters (at least that I know of -- this includes a lot of consumer and pro cameras) really have TWO shutters. One slides across to expose the film to light, and the second slides across to block the light.

For "low speed" shots (say anything under 1/250th of a second) normally one shutter entirely opens, then some time passes and the second comes and shuts the light off. For faster shots the second shutter starts closing before the first is full open.

Exactly what the cut off depends on the camera, but you can paint an X on a spinning plate (say a sanding disk on a power drill) and spin it fairly fast (say 300rpm) in a dark room and use a flash to take an exposure. Some cameras will refuse to sync with the flash if the shutter speed is fast enough that the second shutter is moving before the first is closed. Other cameras (like Canon and Nikon SLRs with their self branded strobe systems) will fire the flash on each independent piece, on those the first image you see distortion on the X is when the second shutter had to move before the first was shut.

(some strobes "just" make sure the fire during the whole exposure, but that means the flash exposure has to take shutter time into account which you normally get to ignore -- and yes you DO sometimes want short exposures with flash, to freeze a fast moving object, or just to use fill flash to soften shadows)

Of corse this normally makes boring pictures, so while it WORKS on film cameras, most folks will never experiment with it except on digital.