On the Run!

The camera in the iPhone might not be the technically most sophisticated thing… However, it creates a lot of interesting effects like color shifts, distortion and slurring – it’s a bit lomo-like! The distortion is due to the slit scanning of the camera creating the long-feet effect in the photography below. The explanation is that not all areas of the picture are scanned and recorded and the same time – depending on the shutter speed. There is an interesting WIRED article about it.

Let’s have a look at the iPhone camera specifications. It’s got a fixed-focus lens, 2.0 megapixels and supports geotagging using iPhone’s built-in GPS. The iPhone does not support video recording. The iPhone display however is just great featuring a 3.5-inch widescreen display with 480×320-pixel resolution (163 ppi).

The slit scanning of the cam can give you a headache if you don’t accept it as a feature and learn how to use it to create distorted pictures… 

So if you move the camera during exposure, or if the subject of the photo is moving, interesting distortions result. This effect isn’t new at all, as seen in the famous photo Car Trip by Jacques-Henri Lartigue. Back in 1913, he used one of those focal-plane shutter cameras.

More runner photographs on Lumilon Photography.