[Leica] Motion contest blur

[lrzeitlin at aol.com (lrzeitlin at aol.com)]

 I'm glad that no winner has been declared in the Motion contest. Years of 
being an art critic for several local newspapers have convinced me that 
image selection by a single juror is a fallible process. Some images and 
photos that have been declared "Best of Show" by one juror have been 
rejected by another. It's all a matter of personal taste, the Zeitgeist, and 
for all I know, the phase of the moon. But I'd like to get something off my 
chest without, hopefully, offending anyone.


About BLUR. It is well to remember that blur is an artifact of the 
photographic process. I am appalled by some comments made during the Motion 
contest that suggest that a depiction of blur automatically implies movement.


Normally the human eye doesn't see blurring of a moving object. When we look 
at something in motion our eyes alternate between quick eye movements and 
focusing on a single point on the object. When our eyes are moving, we are 
functionally blind. We see the moving object as a series of still images 
which our brain fuses together into a concept of motion. When we track a 
moving object by fixating on a single point the motion blur of the object is 
eliminated. Instead the background itself becomes less clear.


To see what I mean, remember that the refresh rate of the normal human eye 
is between 15 and 20 times a second. Early motion pictures used 16 frames a 
second to depict motion. Now drive down the highway at 60 mph. (Try 100 kph 
if you are mileage impaired.) The roadway seen out of the windshield appears 
perfectly sharp. You can read the traffic signs, see the bumps in the road, 
even the dead squirrel crushed by the previous car. Now point your camera at 
the roadway and take a picture through the windshield at 1/20 second. 
Everything I mentioned will be blurred. The foliage along the edge of the 
road will no longer be sharp, Bumps and potholes will be indistinct. And you 
will be unable to tell if the carcass on the road is a squirrel or a cat. 
The camera doesn't have a brain. Hopefully you do.


Cameras traditionally recorded a moving object as blurred because older 
films required a shutter speed which was insufficient to record the details 
of the scene at a moment in time. In the early days of photography exposure 
times were measured in minutes. Or the camera itself would shake and 
everything in the frame is blurred. Over the years viewers of still pictures 
learned that blurred images meant that the object shown was moving. 
Interpreting a photograph is a learning process. There is little in a photo 
that truly duplicates reality. ?


Most modern digital cameras incorporate camera motion detectors to minimize 
the effects of camera shake. One part of the pre WW2 Leica/Contax conflict 
was the argument about which direction of shutter movement, vertical or 
horizontal, produced the most convincing representation of object motion. 
Contax seemed to be the winner, at least in auto and bike racing since the 
vertical motion of the shutter distorted wheels so they appeared to be 
tilting forward. This implied rapid motion. Auto and bike posters of the era 
were drawn to emphasize this effect.


Appropriate selection of shutter speed or following the motion of a moving 
object can introduce enough controlled image blur to give the impression of 
motion but you have to know what you are doing. BLUR DOES NOT AUTOMATICALLY 
MEAN MOTION. Sometimes it just means bad photography. Motion should be 
suggested by picture content. Not by exploiting a past limitation of the 
photographic process. Remember that Harold Edgerton's strobelight photos, 
the first that captured the motion of really high speed objects like bullets 
cutting a playing card, were perfectly sharp.


In the 21st. century. it is well not to be bound by the limitations of the 
past or the opinions of mossbacks like myself.


Larry Z