Can a reflected blink potentially best the shutter?

A friend recently posted this to my timeline, suggesting that it was an unedited photo. That by the time the shutter opened to the bottom half (right side of this photo) of the sensor, the child had opened his eyes. I know this sort of camera trickery isn't necessarily useful, but it makes me curious. Is he blowing smoke or is something like this actually possible? If so, I'd love hear your suggestions as to what shutter speed range youd suggest using to try replicating something like this. So far I've tried speeds in the 1/250 - 1/500 range with no luck.

Speed of an average blink is 300 to 400 ms- around 1/3. Your shutters are moving vertically, one from the bottom and one from the top. Since his eyes in the reflection are pretty close to the same plane of focus, It's probably doctored. A quick google image search shows this image has been around for at least 5 years.

http://boingboing.net …0/explain-this-photo.html

http://en.wikipedia.or​g/wiki/Rolling_shutter

edit: the camera has two shutters that move so that at fast speeds, the frame is only exposed by an open slit moving from top to bottom. As a result, top and bottom of the frame are not exposed at the same time. To see this in effect simply, use a fast-rotating object (spinning wheel, aircraft propeller, whatever) and photograph it from a point above it on its axis, at a sufficiently high speed. Should give you something weird like this. Same phenomenon.

Anybody who's ever tried to get a kid this age to stand absolutely perfectly still - let alone cooperate - will tell you this isn't doctored.

dave63 wrote in post #17310979
Anybody who's ever tried to get a kid this age to stand absolutely perfectly still - let alone cooperate - will tell you this isn't doctored.

lol::

The speed of light is 186,000 miles per second (Give or take a little) There is absolutely no way you can convince me that the image is not Photoshopped.....

Regards.

110yd

It is possible. Watch this video and skip to 4:50: https://www.youtube.co​m/watch?v=CmjeCchGRQo#​t=293


Scott

That's not the same kid! It's the girl from The Ring!!!!!!

armis wrote in post #17230464
the frame is only exposed by an open slit moving from top to bottom. As a result, top and bottom of the frame are not exposed at the same time.

Or side to side if you shoot in portrait orientation.

I think the speed of light further enforces that this is possible. While the shutter slit was traveling across the frame, the light was fast enough to be different from one side to the other.

110yd wrote in post #17417004
The speed of light is 186,000 miles per second (Give or take a little) There is absolutely no way you can convince me that the image is not Photoshopped.....

Regards.

110yd

does the speed of light come into though - I'd have thought the speed the shutter flashes across the sensor would be the limiting factor.

google says around 300 milliseconds for a blink so with the right shutter speed and timing I think this could be done (am not quite awake enough to try it myself yet though )

the speed of light is very important here - it actually makes it possible - as long as someone could blink quickly enough

if 300 to 400 milliseconds is actually the time it takes to fully blink then 1/2 this time is the relevant time as he has started on the left with his lids shut

lets also say that some people can actually blink faster than the average range at 200 milliseconds - thus 1/2 of this is 100 milliseconds or 1/10th of a second

now, it doesn't appear his eyes on the right are fully open (lets say 1/2 open) so now we are talking about 1/20th of a second

i am not a shutter speed expert, but if you found a camera with a slow shutter mechanism (low flash sync speed would be the telling point), such as a Leica Range Finder @ 1/50 or a 1970s SLR with a 1/30th Sync Speed with its Focal Plane Shutter, then now you are in the ball-park of it being possible

with a modern DSLR camera and a 1/200 or 1/250 sync speed, the shutter speed required to have the second curtain closing to freeze the eye in the closed position and still not have the 1st curtain (in Portrait mode curtains going left to right) having exposed the sensor to the now 1/2 opened eyed seems to be too fast (i.e. SS of 1/300 is more than 1 order of magnitude faster than the theoretical 1/10 of a second described above)

so i think it is possible, you just need the right type of camera and the perfect timing and a fast blinker - and a lot of attempts

I do think it's very possible, but....


I have my doubts that what we're seeing is actually any different between the actual kid and the reflection. Here's why;

• The reflection has some distortion, and a part of me thinks his eyes are actually closed in the reflection, but the distortion 'enlarges' his eyelashes or the line between lids to make it seem that his eyes are open (half open is what I see at best).
  
  
• Also, it looks like it's the reflection looking at the camera (mom/dad), and not the child. ie, if his eyes were open on the left, would he be looking at the camera, or the turned off TV? The reflection says he's looking at the camera via the blank tv screen. Not something I would expect. This brings me back to thinking the reflection distortion above.
  

wallstreetoneil wrote in post #17421519
i am not a shutter speed expert, but if you found a camera with a slow shutter mechanism (low flash sync speed would be the telling point), such as a Leica Range Finder @ 1/50 or a 1970s SLR with a 1/30th Sync Speed with its Focal Plane Shutter, then now you are in the ball-park of it being possible

That would be 1/60 for a 1970s era SLR, btw. And that would still require that the portions of the frame being compared be on the opposite far edges of the frame to gain that much of a time interval...closer in, the time interval would be shorter.

I severely doubt all those factors managed to line up for this particular shot.

Nathan wrote in post #17417104
Or side to side if you shoot in portrait orientation.

this.