Rolling Shutters

Did a little test today to see if my camera has a 'rolling shutter' approach. It's electronic, but I suppose it could still read the sensor a line at a time and give the same effect(?)

Anyway, having seen a number of photos of airplanes with 'bent' propellors (and a neat video) I thought I'd check out my camera (Olympus XZ-2).

I made a little test rig by taking a cylindrical sanding attachment for a drill, and drawing a '+'  on the end of it. Then I attached it to the drill and ran it at about 1200 RPM (at least, that's what it was rated at).

Some quick math: 1200 RPM is 20 rev/sec. Thinking about an individual 'radius line' (the line I drew on the end of the cylinder from the center to the outside edge) - for it to cover 1/4 of the area of the end of the drill during the time of the shutter being open, the drill would need to turn 1/4 turn . This would be 1/20 sec divided by 4 or 1/80 sec.

So I started at a shutter speed of  1/250 sec (meaning that the blurred line should cover about 1/3 of 1/4 of the disk) and based on the photo below this looks about right.

Then, moving up to 1/500th, 1/1000th and 1/2000th of a second respectively:

Didn't notice much evidence of curving lines and thought it was important that you know :-)

(A pretty good explanation-type video is here, And of course Wikipedia has an article.)

Time for some cat photos

Since the internet is supposed to be full of cat stuff, I thought I should do my bit. Starting with a few pictures of our current cat (Holly) from when she was young (we got her at about 1 year old from the Toronto Humane Society).

(photo by Jon, along with 'some' editing he did)

(this was a month or so later - still quite small)

Then, about a year and a half later:

(perhaps her 'larger' phase')

And finally, about a month ago or so, with one of her favourite toys that has reinvigorated her!

And although she likes to explore the friendly confines of our back yard, she's not really an outdoor cat: