Chronophotography

In the 19th century the frenchman Étiene-Jules Marey developed the technique that resulted in chronophotography, an application of science (the study of movement) and art (photography). Chronophotography was the precursor to cinematography and was later used by photochronographers like Eadward Muybridge and Ottomar Anschütz.

The digital chronophotograpy experiments make usage of the programming software Processing and a set of recorded images or live images from a (web)camera. The result contains either the light or dark movement from a fixed viewpoint.
The duration of recording (or 'shutter time') can be endless when used in a dark or light setting, but is limited when it's used in a changing setting like outside. For instance the third image on the right is a light recording from 5:50 in the evening when it was dark until 07:50 in the next morning when the sun arose.

Digital Chronophotography could be used as a generic tool for tracking movement like for instance sports, traffic and security. It would however be interesting if it would track movement in full color instead of only light and dark movement. Other improvements could include the calculation of an histogram, alpha adding, fading of pixels in a certain time, tolerance of colours and usage of tracking of a certain colour or set of colours.

Download source code

Download the Processing source code:

• .pde file for usage with (web)cam;
• .pde file for usage with a set of jpg images.

Instructions are written in the source.

More images can be found here.