Old photos- Why do cars look like they are leaning forward at speed?

[Zeke Fishburn]

The Marmon Wasp won the first Indianapolis 500 Race in 1911 driven by Ray Harroun.

Great photo.

[RichFox]

All Right! Now i know something I have always been bothered about. The HAMB rocks.

[50Fraud]

Squirrel (first post) and ShortBus are exactly correct. I tried doing this with an old Speed Graphic press camera with a polaroid back, and it worked exactly as advertised. Put the camera on a tripod so the background is dead still, and shoot at the exact moment that the car is in the frame (yes, it takes some practice). Don't pan, as that will give you an upright car and a leaning background.

I used Polaroid B/W film and a very slow shutter speed with a small aperture (don't remember exact numbers, as this was about 30 years ago). Another trick was to wipe the Polaroid print with sepia toner, which gave it an antique look. This is the only image I have left:

[el Scotto]

This is a great thread!! Thanks guys!!

[bonesy]

Great read! Thanks Principal Banjorear, learn something new everyday.

[Kiwi Kev]

You never stop learning on the H.A.M.B.!

[jetmek]

to quote Mr.Spock, "Facinating"

[52 HenryJ]

wow great stuff and interesting read too!!!!

[johnnykck]

I can't believe the stuff you can learn on the HAMB, what a great place!

[Benzine440]

The 1959 Daytona 500 appeared to end in a tie between Lee Petty and Johnny Beauchamp. There is a more distorted version than this one but you can see some of the effect here. It took race officials three days to analyze the photos and to rule that Petty had won by eighteen inches. Although it looks like a three-way heat, the #44 Chevrolet is actually a lap down.

[Malcolm]

Wow - very cool and interesting... Thanks for sharing all the info, guys!

Malcolm

[The37Kid]

Here is Ralph De palma at 150MPH in 1920 at Daytona Beach with his Packard LSR car.

[Beach Bum]

This is one of my favorite early racing images. The photo was shot in 1913 by Jacques-Henri Lartigue.



50Fraud, great photo. I would have taken it for a vintage photo. Isn't that the Barlow Simca?

Cheers,
Kurt O.

[LB+1]

So knowing shutter speed, then the top part of car pictures
movement from bottom of wheel = how fast it is going?

[squirrel]

I think you need one more piece of information, namely the distance between the two blades (width of the "slit" of the shutter)....so it probably is impossible to calculate the car's speed from just looking at the picture, unless you know more about the particular camera.

[73roundlight]

I have always wondered about that too. I think that you can also replicate it with big 4x5 and 8x10 cameras. As I recall some shots that we published a while back had that effect. That Lartigue image is cool. He had some brillient shots. I'll try to find the images from that shot and post.

Best, MRAK

Interesting point that squirrel and LB+1 bring up, is this why it doesn't happen when the pics are shot at a distance?

[Mazooma1]

A 4X5, 5X7, 8X10 view camera will not be able to give you the "speed" effect. They have a standard iris, not a focal plane shutter.
We used a cirkut camera doing panorama photography for many years that did have a focal plane shutter, but then switched to 8X10 cameras in the 70's to avoid the problems and distortion caused by the focal plane shutter cirkut cameras. Also, the cirkut film was expense as each negative was 8"X36".
The problems that we avoided are, of course, the same quirks that gave old speeding car photos their "charm".

[DrJ]

Neat stuff here!
I guess if you flipped the camera the "wrong way" up for the direction of travel you could have that elipse leaning back instead of leaning forward!

Originally Posted by banjorear

...
Kinda like light shining through the backside of the spokes which makes the wheel appear to be spinning backwards?

That's what I think is called the stroboscopic effect.
It's a "flaw" in motion picture picture frame to frame photography where the consecutive frames image different spokes in a wheel as the wheel turns and "stops" them but depending on the wheel RPM and the number of spokes, it can make the wheel's spokes appear to be stopped or even backing up.

It also tells you you are watching film and not video tape, (unless the video tape "frames" as it shoots).

[50Fraud]

Originally Posted by Beach Bum

This is one of my favorite early racing images. The photo was shot in 1913 by Jacques-Henri Lartigue.



50Fraud, great photo. I would have taken it for a vintage photo. Isn't that the Barlow Simca?

Cheers,
Kurt O.

Thanks, Kurt. Yes, it's one of three Barlow Simca Specials, running at a VARA event at OCIR in the mid-'70s. I shot a picture of each entrant using this technique, and gave the matted polaroid prints to the drivers instead of a dash plaque.

In your Lartique photo, he was panning (hence the leaning background), but the car was moving faster than his pan. Great picture!

[4tl8ford]

Originally Posted by squirrel

you could do that by having a shutter which works like a window shade with a slit in it, that moves vertically as the photo is taken. Like a Speed Graphic camera, for example.

the bottom of the picture is taken first, then as the slit moves upward the rest of the picture is taken. So the bottom shows where the car was at the beginning of the shot, the top shows where it was at the end of the shot, and it moved forward during that time.

And the Film was alot slower also.