|
Search By:
|
|
1882 - "Shooting" Pictures
By the time Muybridge visited Europe in 1881 he was hailed as a major celebrity, having followed up his groundbreaking “Occidental” snaps with, among other things, photographic studies of the naked human form in motion. While in France, Muybridge met Etienne-Jules Marey, a physiologist experimenting with graphic methods of recording animal and bird movement. Marey invented the sphygmograph, a device for measuring blood pressure that is, with a few modifications, still in use today. Although, like Muybridge, Marey’s work was to have a major influence on the evolution of the cinema, he was interested only in capturing motion on film for the purpose of scientific research. The difference between Marey’s and Muybridge’s methods was that the Frenchman had devised a method by which he could record movement on a single camera, rather than employing a bank of them.
Marey had been influenced by the work of Pierre-Cesar Jules Janssen, an astronomer who, in 1874, recorded the passage of Venus across the face of the sun with a ‘photographic revolver’. The device Janssen used was shaped like a gun, and contained a circular plate that revolved each time the shutter was opened, exposing one tiny area of its surface.
By 1882 Marey had devised a similar photographic gun - fusil photographique - capable of taking 12 photographs in one second (Janssen’s invention managed only one exposure every 70 seconds). Marey initially used this ‘gun’ to observe the changes in the shape of a bird’s wings in flight. With this invention, Marey effectively developed the first cinematographic films and, with the introduction of gelatin-based film (eliminating the need for glass plates) by George Eastman in 1885, Marey was able to develop his invention even further.
Marey used his invention, now named the chronophotograph, to record human motion. However, despite the relative sophistication of Marey’s device, it could not record quickly enough to accurately depict motion without blurring or overlapping the shots. Marey solved this problem by dressing his subjects in black and attaching shiny buttons to the joints he felt were most important to illustrate his experiments. By then having his subjects walk in front of a dark background, he successfully captured the pictures he required. By now, using the new gelatin-based film, he was obtaining 60 images per second. By 1888, Marey’s chronophotograph was using Kodak’s rolls of paper film, and he soon went on to pioneer slow-motion and time-lapse photography. [ADD]
Further Reading:
© 2009-2010 moviemoviesite.com