"Wired's How-To Wiki demonstrates how to exploit the iPhone's unusual shutter to take distorted photographs. The trick? Just twist your camera as you're taking a picture."

no way. for real? twisting the camera while taking a picture will distort the photo? get out.

but on a serious note, I find this to be pretty common for cellphone cameras. except the ones I've had in the past weren't as high quality as the iPhone camera.

zikman

but this is the iPhone!

Anyway, I disagree. I say the best time to do it is at night, looking at a lit area.

Phoshi

Nearly every cell phone and webcam uses a CMOS sensor; it's not anything special.

Jarett

I hate my iphone 3g's camera. As a photo-enthusiast, the slow shutter really drives me nuts. especially when i make friends and family stand still for more shots.

Even in the direct noon-day sun the shutter takes forever.

CribbageLeft

Wow. I was really excited about reading this. Talk about a let down.

Sensai

My Samsung g600 will do the same although you have to be careful to avoid it blurring too much.

gamer91

all i get is blur (maybe I'm twisting too fast?)

Sam_Zebian

The iPhone may have a low-resolution, slow-shutter camera, but I'll say this: occasionally, you can get some absolutely stunning shots:

[hallenius.org]

khiddy

Yeah, this was really cool on mine. Instead of a blurry photo, I got a distorted, reeeally blurry photo...

The Amazing Ant

OOps....try this link.

[picasaweb.google.com]

[picasaweb.google.com]

bwohlgemuth

From my trip in St. Thomas last week.....

bwohlgemuth

So, what's stopping me from doing this on any camera? Seems to me that I can just set a slow shutter speed and try it.

waffles

Wow, just because it's an iPhone this crappy CMOS sensor is now a FEATURE of the phone. LOL.

nXt

It has to be a bright light source, which shortens the swipe distance and the time on each pixel - which gives you a nice curve, rather than blur. If you do it when it is too dark, it results in a blur as each pixel gets exposed to a lot more.

Others have thoroughly explained the background on this. Noting special, but a fun trick.

maztec

@CribbageLeft: every camera's shutter lag annoys me until you get into the high end point and shoots and SLRs. :-P (i love my G9)

dekay46

The iPhone uses a CMOS sensor, which more or less "wipes" the shutter across the sensor like a scanner rather than the circular aperture of a traditional camera.

Wired is confusing apertures with shutters.

Some traditional cameras used leaf shutters, particularly large-format view cameras and some point-and-shoots. Basically all normal SLRs and many rangefinders used focal-plane curtain-type shutters.

And basically all standard camera lenses use leaf apertures. On a typical SLR, the aperture doesn't physically change until right before the shutter is tripped; the aperture is wide open unless you use depth-of-field preview (a feature largely reserved for higher-end SLRs).

For view cameras, the aperture also stays wide open, mostly to provide the photographer with a bright enough image to focus on the groundglass. Once you're stopped down, it can be very difficult to see much of anything.

The "psychedelic" effect is nothing new. Many SLRs have auxiliary flash units that offer a choice between front-curtain and rear-curtain sync. This is basically the same concept. If you trigger front-curtain flash, fast-motion scenes have the blur "going backwards"; rear-curtain (a.k.a. second curtain) sync is what you want.

French photographer Jacques Henri Lartigue demonstrated curtain shutter distortion while photographing racing cars in 1912 (the car tires ended up as ovals). Ansel Adams used this classic image to explain curtain shutters in his book The Camera.

Sorry, while the effect does exists, Wired flubbed the explanation.

Deprong Mori

i, too, was expecting more after reading the article title, but still an interesting phenomenon - definitely not a "feature" of any CMOS phone...

Xibalba

I love that for the iPhone this is a cool feature. For anything else this would just be a lousy camera.

crichman

Whoa whoa whoa people - this is not the same as slow shutter speed.

The sensor scans from one side to the other, and more slowly than normal. Imagine looking through a window, then drawing a boat on a rectangular canvas, working from left to right, matching what you draw exactly with what you see in the window(in terms of placement; left stuff on left side, right stuff on right side). After painting the left third of the painting, the boat has moved, but you continue to draw the middle with what you now see as the middle of the window. After painting the middle, the boat has moved again, and you draw the right side with what you now see at the right side of the window.

Using ghetto ASCII art, imagine \SS MINNOW/ is the boat passing by, and [] is the window frame. Let's "draw" what we see, from left to right:

\SS MINNOW/
[S ]

S MINNOW/
[SM ]

NOW/
[SM/]

This [SM/] drawing is essentially what the iPhone camera (or many other cellphone cameras, including my K800i's to an extent) is doing, which is more or less the "scanner" method that Wired describes. Deprong Mori's explanation is; the type of shutter that the iPhone scan resembles is a "focal-plane shutter", where a front shutter moves across the film to allow light in, followed by a second shutter that blocks light, allowing the film to be exposed from left to right(how Lartigue's race car photos were taken).

This is different than using a slow shutter speed because everything is perfectly exposed and sharp, but "smoothed" across the frame. Slow shutter speed with modern cameras will only give you a blurred image for anything that's in motion because they expose full-frame and don't suffer from this left-to-right shutter issue(though with phones, I believe it's due to slow sensor processing or sensor to storage transfer speeds).

You can mimic this effect by finding a xerox machine that scans left to right with the green light thingy, then moving your sheet while it's scanning - you'll get the same kind of distortion effect as the cellphone camera.

Deprong Mori's explanation is totally off for the front-curtain/rear-curtain flash though - this is *not* the same concept, and is something else entirely. Rear-curtain flash is useful for taking a picture of a perfectly exposed, non-distorted runner with a blur(of past, pre-flash action) behind them. Front-curtain flash would be useful for taking a perfectly exposed, non-distorted runner at the starting line with motion blur in front of them (of future/post-flash action).

Chef

Naaah, my mention of front-curtain/rear-curtain flash was mostly to explain how focal-plane curtain shutters work.

Again, this is stuff that Ansel Adams covered 50+ years ago in his books. I used it to point out that the Wired writer is confused between leaf apertures, leaf shutters, and curtain shutters.

I stand by my comment: Wired f--ked up their explanation.

Deprong Mori

@nXt: Well said. When did CRAP become a FEATURE? Now that's marketing. For my next job interview, I am going to boast about my low GRE scores and how being STUPID only makes me a more determined person, and other complete bullshit. iPhone teaches us great life philosophies, huh?

ICEBreaker

Did someone say take photos with one's iPhone?

I think NOT... not with a measly 2MP camera and average lens

Sorry, but the iPhone is not the phone to talk about taking photos.

ICEBreaker

@Chef: Great explanation! that's exactly the way i read it, and looking at the sample pic you can see that is what is happening, not a slow shutter blur.

grahamr

@nXt: Couldn't agree more. This thread should've ended with your comment.

OX4

What is it with lifehacker and the jesus phone? Or now, the 2nd coming of the jesus phone? Would be great if Adam provided some more commentary of his own (like pointing out that most cell phones can do the same thing), and not just regurgitating Wired's inane "info." Oh well, at least he didn't shill his book this time.

kftgr

Yeah, it doesn't work too well with a regular camera, even on slow shutter, because it takes the whole frame at once.

I've had some fun with my cellphone camera too, and it's a far cry from the iphone:
[flickr.com]

mikelietz