Chronophotography

Muybridge Photography

Chronophotography is an old photographic technique from the Victorian era that captures and prints movement in several frames. These prints can then be arranged as celluloid animations, or layered in a single frame. To do this, it uses a series of different cameras, originally created and used for the scientific study of movement, but which makes it be considered as a predecessor of cinematography and moving film.

Definition

Chronophotography is defined as “a set of photographs of a moving object, taken with the aim of collecting and displaying the successive phases of movement”. The term chronophotography was invented by the French scientist Étienne-Jules Marey to describe photographs of movement from which measurements could be taken and movement could be studied. Derived from the Greek word χρόνος chronos (‘time’) combined with “photograph”.

History

Photography is an art and a science that was invented and developed in the 1830s. Initially, it was used as a documentation device —for portraits, historical moments, battles in wars, etc.—, and with the As the technological and artistic world began to develop, new uses and ideas for the camera also appeared. With the invention of the camera, art no longer necessarily had to capture reality as the camera became the most accurate way to describe it. As technology became more sophisticated, so did activities that required cameras.

As early as the 1860s, some photographers were making "moving pictures" by taking pictures of a subject in a series of poses simulating phases of movement and then, using certain devices, displaying them one after the other in rapid motion. succession. This stop-motion photographic technique was very important because the photographic material available at the time was not sensitive enough to allow the many and very fast exposures that were necessary to photograph moving subjects. Improvements in the sensitivity of photographic emulsions allowed chronophotography to become a reality.

In 1872, Leland Stanford, governor of California and horse enthusiast, hired Eadweard Muybridge to provide him with photographic evidence that, at times, a galloping horse had all four legs off the ground. Muybridge lined up several cameras on a part of a race track. The triggers were connected to a series of cables that would activate the mechanism as soon as the horse galloped past on a white background. One of the silhouettes in the resulting photographs would confirm Leland Standford's suspicions. Years later, in that same decade, with the improvement of photographic plates, he obtained much more precise results. Muybridge also placed the sequence of photographs on the inside of a zoetrope; thus when the device rotated, an observer could see, through its slots, an animated image.

The images of the horse surprised the public, as no one had ever seen such precise documentation of the movement of an animal. Muybridge was later commissioned to photograph other moving objects.

Later, in 1878, Albert Londe was hired as neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot. Where he used a camera with 9 lenses and an intricate system of time to study the physical and muscular movements of the patients. Over time, Londe refined this system so that he could take a sequence of twelve images in just a tenth of a second.

Physicist Étienne-Jules Marey began using the technique to study movement, flight and exercise more closely. He soon discovered, by superimposing celluloid prints one on top of the other, that he was able to see the phases of movement and thus study the relationships between them in a single frame .

Georges Demeny, Marey's assistant, developed further applications for the reproduction of motion, creating a simple projector called a stroboscope. Demeny and German photographer Ottomar Anschütz shared the development of projection technology, using chronophotographs and projectors to create animations quite close to today's moving projections. Anschütz took this concept much further, developing chronophotographers to be used, along with projectors, for entertainment. Anschütz later developed a folding handheld camera with a flat focal shutter, a model that allowed photographs to be taken at 1/1000 second exposure. This allowed for a faster setup of Muybridge's multi-camera system, capable of taking more exposures faster thanks to the fast shutter speed. He also invented an individual display for his chronophotographs: it consisted of a rotating disk on which photos could be viewed with the illumination of an electric spark, rather than a projection. Later chronophotographic inventions after these inventors (Muybridge, Demeny and Anschütz) laid the foundations on which cinema would later be created.

Operation

Positioning a sequence of cameras to photograph the movement of an object as it moves gave rise to chronophotography. This could be done using trip cables or with timer triggers on each camera. Different photographic impressions of the moving subject are then arranged. This subject could be a galloping horse, or a person going down some stairs, or inanimate objects being thrown or falling To superimpose each of the phases of the movement on a single photographic plate, as Marey and Demeny did, a single plate has to be fixed using celluloid strips for each separate image.

Marey later developed a device, shaped similar to that of a gun, whose purpose was to photograph short sequences of the natural movement of birds during flight, taking twelve successive photographs on a set of discs. The disc had twelve openings around its circumference. Opposite this disk was a second disk perforated with a groove. By pressing the trigger of the "pistol", the mechanism is started and the discs begin to rotate. The disk that has to house the twelve frames rotated at 1/12 revolutions, while the disk that has the shutter slot rotated only once. In this way each of the 12 openings also appears behind the camera lens and is exposed through the slit. When the images were printed, the result was the same as the process of taking the photographs separately.

Marey was capable of photographing on rolls of film and then projecting them as a sequence. Depending on the intentions of the chronophotographer, it could be fixed later on any display device to compare the different phases of movement.

Uses

The original purpose of chronophotography was to help scientists study moving objects, particularly people and animals. It was also used for other very practical purposes, such as judging events in which time played an important role (dog or horse races), documenting historical moments, or studying the trajectory of projectiles of war. With Anschütz's invention of chronophotography unrelated to scientific research, chronophotography became the basis for the invention and development of cinematography. Due to the development of projection devices (the zoetrope, Muybridge's zoopraxiscope, Anschütz's electrotachyscope...) the exhibition of chronophotographs as entertainment became much more sophisticated and useful than ever. later, cinematic devices grew out of the original chronophotographic cameras, with which audiences could view continuous loops of images (for example, the peep show devices built on Thomas Edison's backlight technology). From this moment, cinematography was born.

Chronophotography in Spain

The engineer, geophysicist and inventor Eduardo Mier y Miura translated Modern photography: practice and applications by Albert Londe the year after it was published in France (Madrid: Fuente y Capdeville, 1889), and he used his techniques in some of the nearly twenty patents he created. We can see the current chronophotography in Spain exemplified by Xavi Bou, a photographer and geologist who has made the series "Ornitographies", a neologism derived from "bird" and "writing", focused on poetically making visible the invisible path of the flight of birds.

Origin

After the international impact of Eadweard Muybridge's horse gallop sequence in 1878, Étienne Jules Marey decided to apply the new technique to his studies on animal flight. The failed attempts of different inventors to achieve a flying machine, led the Frenchman to apply his graphic method to try to discover the mechanics of the flight of insects, which finally led him to that of birds, Marey opted for photography to record from a distance this aspect. The photographs taken were unsatisfactory for the scientific expectations of the French physiologist. The American photographer had managed to freeze some poses of the flight using a shutter time of 1/500 of a second, but in an independent and disordered way, therefore no reliable conclusions could be drawn.

Based on his experience, Étienne Jules Marey devised an innovative procedure that he called chronophotography.

The object of the chronophotography will be to accurately determine the characters of a movement. This method must, on the one hand, represent the different places of the space traveled by the mobile, that is, its trajectory, and on the other hand, express the position of this mobile on this trajectory in certain moments. (Marey, 2002, 71).

To achieve this, he associated the camera shutter with a high-precision clockwork mechanism. After a failed first prototype of a photographic rifle, Marey created a new fixed-plate chronophotographic machine. To a traditional 13x18 cm bellows camera he incorporated a rotating shutter disc, designed to achieve intermittent exposure at regular time intervals. With this system, the photographed motifs formed a peculiar and unprecedented image, in which the entire movement broken down into its different attitudes could be seen at a single glance.

Ornithography: Xavi Bou

Based on this iconographic heritage, Xavi Bou, after fifteen years in contact with the subject, and having founded in 2009 the studio specialized in digital retouching La Crin, felt the need to make a project of personal creation beyond professional commissions of a commercial nature. So he got involved in the «Ornitographies» project.

To achieve this, he says the first attempts were made with an SLR camera and slow shutter times, but the result was a blurry trail of motion in which no details of the bird could be seen. It was then that he decided to focus his attention on the chronophotography procedure, due to its ability to generate a sequenced and defined description of the different phases of bird movement.

From a technical point of view, the first step consisted of replacing the particular camera designed by Marey with modern instruments, adapting to the possibilities of the new digital technology. He initially shot the photographs using burst shooting, later overlaying the images using numerous layers in the Photoshop editing process. But the limited number of shots per second of the photographic equipment conditioned the final result; For this reason, he thought of using slow-motion video recording, which makes it possible to film up to 60 frames per second. However, the low resolution that this mode allowed at that time led him to rent professional cameras commonly used for cinema, such as the Sony F27, the PXW-FS5 or the Blackmagic Ursa Mini 4K. And despite the fact that some of these models let you capture up to 120 fps, he decided to work at 60 fps to maintain all the quality of the RAW format. On the other hand, the optics that he usually uses are a 35 mm, the 24-110 mm f4, and the 70-200 mm 2.8, all from Canon, choosing the wide angle when the birds pass near or overhead, and the telephoto lens. when looking to focus on a specific specimen, as well as a flatter perspective that enhances the background of the scene.