The use of slit-scan photography is actually quite old. It is often called line-scan, photo finish, or streak photography. Slit-scan photography has a rich and colorful history rooted in chemical analog photography. This technique is often used to visualize high-speed events such as missiles and bullets, although it is probably best known as photo finish photography used to determine the outcome of races.
In 2015, Hugo Cardoso embarked on an interesting experiment: built a 35mm slit-scan film camera. That experiment was a big success, which left Cardoso only one choice going forward... go bigger! So he hunkered down at his work bench and set about creating a medium format version.
"Slit-scan photography," as it's known these days, has a long history. It is related to focal plane shutter distortion in the film era and to the rolling shutter effect in the digital age.
French photographer Micaël Reynaud first made it onto the blog in May of 2012 when he created a trippy-but-cool example of what the dolly zoom (also known as the Hitchcock zoom) looked like when stretched to its extremes.
A couple of days ago we shared Adam Magyar’s incredible Stainless video series, shot from a moving …
Slit-scan imaging can make for some pretty trippy photos and videos. The technique involves capturing (or displaying) one "slit" at a time through a frame, causing motion to take on a bizarre appearance as each line in the image shows a slightly different moment in time. French filmmakers Adrien Mondot and Claire Bardainne used the technique a couple of years ago for the video above, which makes two dancers look like human Slinkys.
Slit-scan cameras are used to shoot finish line photos due to the fact that recording a moving subject along a strip of film makes it impossible to miss any frames. Engineer and photographer James Guerin was interested in the distinctive look, so he went about building his own slit-scan film camera using an old Pentax SLR.
He ended up with the heavily modified camera seen above: a Pentax ME Super SLR that's equipped with a special winding system that automatically moves film across a narrow slit as the photos are being exposed.
We’ve featured slit-scan photographs and slit-scan still camera apps before, but have you ever seen …
Yesterday we reported on how US Track and Field saw its first “photo finish” tie this past …
Metamorphose is a project by photographer Frederic Fontenoy that consists of slit-scan self portraits created in outdoor locations. The technique produces an effect that makes his body look like it's metamorphosing into some other life form.
Slit-Scan Camera is a new app for the iPhone that lets you shoot trippy slit-scan photographs. Rather than capture a whole image at once, the slit-scan app exposes each scene through a "sliding slit", giving anything moving within the frame a strange, warped look.