Slashdot Mirror
How One Photographer Is Hacking the Concept of Time
An anonymous reader writes "Hungarian photographer Adam Magyar doesn't work like most artists. He takes the world's most sophisticated photographic equipment, then hacks it with software he writes himself — all in order to twist our perception of time inside out. In this latest story from the digital publisher MATTER, Joshua Hammer discovers how Magyar's unique combination of technology and art challenges the way we understand the world. At one point, Magyar realized he needed a 'slit-scan' camera, 'the type used to determine photo finishes at racetracks and at Olympic sporting events by capturing a time sequence in one image. Such cameras were rare and cost many thousands of dollars, so Magyar set out to build one himself. He joined a medium-format camera lens to another sensor and wrote his own software for the new device. Total cost: $50. He inverted the traditional scanning method, where the sensor moves across a stationary object. This time, the sensor would remain still while the scanned objects were in motion, being photographed one consecutive pixel-wide strip at a time. (This is the basic principle of the photo-finish camera.) Magyar mounted the device on a tripod in a busy Shanghai neighborhood and scanned pedestrians as they passed in front of the sensor. He then digitally combined over 100,000 sequential strips into high-resolution photographs.' There are pictures and videos interspersed throughout the article."
So his last name is "Hungary" in Hungarian? What an amazing coincidence! Like Lou Gehrig .. what are the odds that he got the disease named "Lou Gehrig's Disease"!
(I got nothing)
Wrong. Some of his work is pretty wild, especially the vids. Really cool stuff, this.
I'm glad he gets out more than the stereotypical slashdot developer. I would imagine that a series of slit scan camera shots of a basement and the action in there would be quite boring.
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
As long as it doesn't take away from another activity, then the cost of time is nothing. If this were not the case, then it would never be cheaper to cook at home rather than go to a restaurant.
I should add that you could also calculate it as a profit. Take the cost of a commercial alternative (said to be thousands of dollars in the summary), then subtract material and time costs. What's left is your profit.
Seriously even though people do things I could care less for, its awesome to see what "ONE" person can do and how imaginative they can be. Stuff like this is what use to drive me to "build" things when I was kid. Damn all those days drooling over parts and tools at Radio Shack.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Sure, if the time to write the software was worth nothing.
Of course, if he enjoyed doing it or got some sense of satisfaction, hell it's cheaper than a movie. Total cost could have been less than $0.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
This is the same photographic technique used to create the stargate special effects in 2001: A Space Odyssey, but putting the camera on a trolley and zooming it in. Here's a really good video on the evolution of the technology. http://youtu.be/KhRo2WbWnKU
For artistic slit scan photography, check out Jay Mark Johnson's work. It's much more interesting than this stuff, imo.
I suspect he is getting much higher resolution images out of his rig. According to TFA his prints are 8 feet wide. You can scale up an iPhone image that high, but you will see a difference.
But still, many roads lead to Rome...
What do you know I wrote a novel
The website where the story article is hosted is pretty terrible. It's apparently based entirely on some sort of JavaScript hacks. I can only zoom one photo before the JavaScript code crashes. Then, when I try to reload, it loses the position I was on the page. I also dislike those texts and images that change brightness and scroll in dis-syncronization with the rest of the page. Not to speak of those "Share" buttons jumping out from behind page elements when I move my mouse cursor around. This page, although apparently meant to be "artistic", is sadly just a staple of horrible and dysfunctional web design.
So if I buy a bicycle instead of that Bugatti Veyron I've been lusting for, it means I have a tax problem because of that $1,700,000 profit, (minus the cost of the bicycle)?
Brilliant!
All the government's budget deficit problems were nothing but an accounting error!
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
There's an free iPhone app to simulate a slit-scan camera. It doesn't take a "$50,000 camera".
Sure, but the actual smartphone camera cannot really compare with a high-end digital SLR or $16,000 Optronis video camera that can capture up to 100,000 frames per second?
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Let me guess, you either didn't read the article, or didn't understand it:
He's not taking a single exposure. He's taking a very large amount of small slices over a span of time, and stitching them together into a single image.
He hasn't so much taken a 'snapshot in time' like a traditional camera, he's made images out of snapshots which occurred across time.
Which means he's taking objects going by at a pretty good clip, and combining a whole lot of them into something which looks like a single astounding image.
Some of his images have a time lapse quality to them, because they show things which are both in motion and still, over a time sequence:
If you read the article, you'll find he's done much much more than "Hacking camera software to change how it takes pictures" -- the resulting images look like a still frame, but are composited from a time lapse, and are MUCH more sophisticated than you seem to realize.
Why do people on Slashdot persist in dismissing things they don't really understand? What he's done is taken what look like still images, but are in fact a cross section in time.
That you think all he's done is to hack camera software means you don't have the barest idea of what it is he's actually done.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Please post some examples of your hobby, so that we can pick it apart for no good reason. Or maybe that is your hobby, in which case - good job.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Way to miss the point.
With a stationary slit-scan camera he's imaging t*Y, not X*Y.
If you spend $50 and gain something equivalent to a $5000 camera, then you have essentially created a $4500 profit.
Math. How does it work?
Required reading for internet skeptics
It certainly does present time in an unfamiliar way visually. Use your imagination a little and it becomes a lot cooler.