[Leica] Motion contest blur EXPLANATION BY LARRY ZEITIN and Dr. ted !

[tedgrant at shaw.ca (tedgrant at shaw.ca)]

Dr. ted responds to Larrry's photo description way down below..


And Dr. ted responded: ;-)
Oooohh dear me now you've gone and done it Larry!!!! You've scared the hell 
out of  them with your high tech  language and description!!!!

You may know what all that stuff means, however none of that ever entered my 
mind nor probably many of the others while shooting for fun or salary! Never 
in 60 plus years while shooting car racing, Olympic athletes or any other 
fast moving bit's and pieces. Nor me strapped into a "STOCK CAR IN A RACE AS 
A PHOTOGRAPHER PASSSANGER! " Heck of ride! Great fun! :-)

Hell I just looked and knew it was going pretty fast and clicked the 
shutter,  "click!" Faster if I wanted them stopped and slower if I wanted 
everything to blur like they were all going like a flying bullet! I've never 
been a techie. My photo world has always been of pure "KISS SIMPLICITY 
WITHOUT THOUGHT! Just "REACTION TO WHAT I WAS MOTIVATED BY!" And my gut 
instinct!

Yeah I've had people tell me that's not possible and I had to be thinking 
about it. Nope, during my years it has been a manner of "see shoot fast if 
you want to stop it! And if you want it to look like it was going really 
really fast? Use a slower shutter speed, swishy - pan and still "click 
fast!" :-)

I suppose though it comes down "To Each his own in how one does their 
thing!"  You have your ways and I have mine and it's not likely ever the 
twain shall meet?

cheers,
Dr. ted









----- Original Message ----- 
From: <lrzeitlin at aol.com>
To: <lug at leica-users.org>
Sent: Monday, August 12, 2013 8:05 PM
Subject: [Leica] Motion contest blur


> 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
>
>
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