Chronophotography is an antique photographic technique from the Victorian era

Victorian era

The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...

 (beginning about 1867-68), which captures movement in several frames of print. These prints can be subsequently arranged either like animation cels

Cel

A cel, short for celluloid, is a transparent sheet on which objects are drawn or painted for traditional, hand-drawn animation. Actual celluloid was used during the first half of the 20th century, but since it was flammable and dimensionally unstable it was largely replaced by cellulose acetate...

 or layered in a single frame. It is a predecessor to cinematography and moving film, involving a series of different cameras, originally created and used for the scientific study of movement.

Definition

Chronophotography is defined as “a set of photographs of a moving object, taken for the purpose of recording and exhibiting successive phases of motion.” The term chronophotography was coined by French physicist Étienne-Jules Marey

Étienne-Jules Marey

Étienne-Jules Marey was a French scientist and chronophotographer.His work was significant in the development of cardiology, physical instrumentation, aviation, cinematography and the science of labor photography...

 to describe photographs of movement from which measurements and study of motion could be derived. It is derived from the Greek word "chronos

Chronos

In Greek mythology, Chronos in pre-Socratic philosophical works is said to be the personification of time. His name in Greek means "time" and is alternatively spelled Chronus or Khronos.Chronos was imagined as an incorporeal god, serpentine in form, with three heads—those of a man, a bull, and...

" (time), combined with photography.

History

Photography is an art and science which was invented and developed beginning in the 1830s. Initially, it was used as a documentation device – for portraiture, historical moments, battles in war, and so on. With how rapidly the technological and artistic world began to develop, new uses and ideas for the camera also began to develop. With the invention of the camera, art no longer necessarily had to capture life. The camera became the dominant source of accurate depiction of life. As the technology became more sophisticated, so did the activities for which people needed cameras.

As early as the late 1860s, photographers were able to make “moving pictures” out of prints of photos, taken in rapid succession, of a moving object. This stop-action technique led to the early development of chronophotography. In 1872, Leland Stanford

Leland Stanford

Amasa Leland Stanford was an American tycoon, industrialist, robber baron, politician and founder of Stanford University.-Early years:...

, former governor of California and horse enthusiast, hired Eadweard Muybridge

Eadweard Muybridge

Eadweard J. Muybridge was an English photographer who spent much of his life in the United States. He is known for his pioneering work on animal locomotion which used multiple cameras to capture motion, and his zoopraxiscope, a device for projecting motion pictures that pre-dated the flexible...

 to provide photographic proof that a galloping horse had all four hooves off the ground.

Setting a course with cameras whose shutters released via tripwire, he photographed the horse as it galloped past each camera, and organized the photos in order on the edges of a drum-like cylinder, called a zoetrope

Zoetrope

A zoetrope is a device that produces an illusion of action from a rapid succession of static pictures. The term zoetrope is from the Greek words "ζωή – zoe", "life" and τρόπος – tropos, "turn". It may be taken to mean "wheel of life"....

. When spun, the zoetrope’s images imitate moving film.

The images of the horse caused astonishment in the public, as no one had seen such precise documentation of the movement of the animal. Muybridge was subsequently commissioned to photograph a variety of other moving subjects.

Later, in 1878, Albert Londe

Albert Londe

Albert Londe was an influential French photographer, medical researcher and chronophotographer. He is remembered for his work as a medical photographer at the Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris, funded by the Parisian authorities, as well as being a pioneer in X-ray photography.During his two decades...

 was hired as a medical photographer by neurologist

Neurologist

A neurologist is a physician who specializes in neurology, and is trained to investigate, or diagnose and treat neurological disorders.Neurology is the medical specialty related to the human nervous system. The nervous system encompasses the brain, spinal cord, and peripheral nerves. A specialist...

 Jean-Martin Charcot

Jean-Martin Charcot

Jean-Martin Charcot was a French neurologist and professor of anatomical pathology. He is known as "the founder of modern neurology" and is "associated with at least 15 medical eponyms", including Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis...

. Londe used a camera with nine lenses and intricate timing system to study the physical and muscular movements of patients. Over time Londe refined this system to be able to take a sequence of twelve pictures in as little as a tenth of a second.

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

Georges Demeny

Georges Demenÿ

Georges Demenÿ was a French inventor, chronophotographer, filmmaker, and gymnast.-External links:* digitized by the...

, Marey’s assistant, developed even further applications for the reproduction of movement, primarily in creating a simple projector called the stroboscope

Stroboscope

A stroboscope, also known as a strobe, is an instrument used to make a cyclically moving object appear to be slow-moving, or stationary. The principle is used for the study of rotating, reciprocating, oscillating or vibrating objects...

. He and German photographer Ottomar Anschutz

Ottomar Anschütz

Ottomar Anschütz was an inventor, photographer, and chronophotographer.-Biography:He invented 1/1000 of a second shutter, and the "electrotachyscope" in 1887...

 shared the development of projecting technology, using chronophotographs and projectors to create movement much like the projection we know today. Anschutz carried this concept even further, developing chronophotographs to run through his projectors as entertainment. Anschutz then managed to develop a folding hand camera with a “focal-plane shutter

Focal-plane shutter

In camera design, a focal-plane shutter is a type of photographic shutter that is positioned immediately in front of the focal plane of the camera, that is, right in front of the photographic film or image sensor.-Two-curtain shutters:...

,” an early model of a folding bellows, and a flatbed-type press camera

Press camera

A press camera is a medium or large format camera suitable for use by press photographers.Press cameras were widely used from the 1900s through the early 1960s and commonly had the following features:* collapsibility into strong, compact boxes...

 that allowed photos to be taken at 1/1000 second exposures. This enabled a faster setup of Muybridge’s multiple-camera system, able to take more exposures faster due to the rapidity of the shutter speed. He also invented a personal viewer for his chronophotographs, a revolving disk in which the photos could be viewed with illumination from an electric spark

Electric spark

An electric spark is a type of electrostatic discharge that occurs when an electric field creates an ionized electrically conductive channel in air producing a brief emission of light and sound. A spark is formed when the electric field strength exceeds the dielectric field strength of air...

 (rather than projection). Chronophotographic inventions following those of the “inventors of the cinema” (Muybridge, Marey, Demeny, and Anscutz) became the foundations upon which cinematic film was created.

Process

Setting up a sequence of cameras to photograph the movement of a subject as it progresses in locomotion originally created chronophotographs. This could be done via tripwire or electrically timed shutter release attached to each individual camera. The photographer then paired together a sequence of twelve different wet-plate

Collodion process

The collodion process is an early photographic process. It was introduced in the 1850s and by the end of that decade it had almost entirely replaced the first practical photographic process, the daguerreotype. During the 1880s the collodion process, in turn, was largely replaced by gelatin dry...

 photographic prints of the subject in motion. The subject could range from a running horse to a human descending stairs, or inanimate objects being thrown, launched, or falling. To overlap the phases of movement on a single plate, like the work of Marey and Demeny, a photographer would fix a single plate by using strips of celluloid for each separate, irregular image. Marey also later developed a device, called a “gun,” which took twelve successive photographs on a set of discs. The disc contained 12 openings around its circumference. In front of this disc was a second disc pierced with a slit. Pressing the trigger of the gun began a mechanism to rotate the discs. The disc carrying the 12 frames rotated 1/12 of a revolution while the disc carrying the shutter slit revolved once, so that each of the 12 openings appeared in turn behind the lens and was exposed through the slit. [3] When printed, it gave the same effect as his layering process. (Eventually, Marey was able to photograph on actual rolls of film and project the frames in sequence.) Depending on the purpose of the chronophotograph, it could later be affixed to any of several devices either to be displayed in motion or to compare phases of motion in layers.

Uses

Chronophotography’s original purpose was to help scientists study objects in motion, primarily humans and animals. It was also used for practical purposes, such as judging timed events and recording historical ones (horse and dog races, performances) and studying the movement of projectiles for war. With Anschutz’s development of non-scientific, entertaining chronophotographs, chronophotography became the basis for the invention and development of cinematography. Due to the development of projection devices, (the zoetrope, Marey’s zoopraxiscope

Zoopraxiscope

The zoopraxiscope is an early device for displaying motion pictures. Created by photographic pioneer Eadweard Muybridge in 1879, it may be considered the first movie projector. The zoopraxiscope projected images from rotating glass disks in rapid succession to give the impression of motion. The...

, Anschutz’s Schnellseher, and ultimately, Albert Londe’s high-speed multi-exposure camera which ran film through a projector in a new way), the display of chronophotographs as entertainment became more sophisticated and useful than ever before. Before long, cinematic devices spawned from original chronophotographic predecessors, with which audiences could watch continuous loops of entertaining activities (for example, the “peep show

Peep show

A peep show or peepshow is an exhibition of pictures, objects or people viewed through a small hole or magnifying glass. Though historically a peep show was a form of entertainment provided by wandering showmen, nowadays it more commonly refers a presentation of a sex show or pornographic film...

” devices built using Thomas Edison

Thomas Edison

Thomas Alva Edison was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb. In addition, he created the world’s first industrial...

’s backlighting technology which showed mildly smutty films) . From these developments in history, cinematography and silent film of moving images were invented.