Spinning Loops

Still images that move - spinning sequences of images

Utilising the Persistance of vision phenomenon, many moving image optical toys and devices were created in the 1800s that created illusions of moving images by presenting sequences of images on devices such as discs and drum that could be spun and/or viewed through mirrors.

first three from Site EarlyCinema.com, fourth from Link

Spinning - 'Thaumatrope'
a small disc held by pieces of string.

Spinning and Mirrors - Phenakistoscope

Spinning and Viewing - Zoetrope
developed by Horner which eliminated the need for a mirror and allowed several people to view the device at one time. A drum with an open top into which was placed a hand drawn sequence of pictures on a strip of paper. The pictures were placed around the inside of the edge of the drum and could be viewed through slots in the outside of the drum.
Spinning reflected prisms of mirrors

Spinning and Mirrors and Projecting and Viewing - Praxinoscope
Using a drum design which revolved, as with the Zoetrope, the images were viewed reflected in a prism of mirrors which rose from the centre of the drum. Each mirror as it passed flashed a clear image opposed to it. The result was perfect animation without the loss of luminosity in movement which was experienced with the Zoetrope. Reynaud’s Theatre Optique came remarkably close to the cinema - all that it lacked was the addition of photography.

Praxinoscope animation from link

Build a Zeotrope http://cmp1.ucr.edu/exhibitions/education/vidkids/zoetrope.html

Mutoscope

Locomotion Loops - Eadweard Muybridge - Photography of Capturing Movement

Sequential Recording of Photographs - Sequential Viewing and Playback

San Francisco photographer, Eadweard Muybridge conducted motion-sequence still photographic experiments and is called the "Father of the motion picture" even though he did not make films in the manner we know them as today. Eadweard Muybridge developed a fast camera shutter and used other state-of-the-art techniques of his day to make the first photographs that show sequences of movement. In Muybridge's most famous motion studies, a row of cameras snapped a dozen or more photographs of a passing horse; the public was astonished to see proof that a trotting horse can simultaneously have all four hooves off the ground. For this experiment Muybridge devised a fast camera shutter and used a new, more sensitive photographic process, both of which dramatically reduced exposure time and produced crisp images of moving objects.

He used Several Cameras to Record Successive Photographs of animals and people in motion. He compiled his research into books - one being Animals in Motion (1899)

1878 Eadweard Muybridge achieves success after five years of trying to capture movement. Muybridge was asked, in 1873, by the ex-governor of California - Leland Stanford to settle a bet as to whether horses hooves left the ground when they galloped. He did this by setting up a bank of twelve cameras with trip-wires connected to their shutters, each camera took a picture when the horse tripped its wire.

"At the time, photographers use the collodion wet-plate negative that needs from 20 seconds to 5 minutes exposure time. This is done by removing the lenscap and replacing it. An instantaneous photograph is defined in the British Journal of Photography Almanack (1868) as having an exposure under half a second. But even then any rapid movement will only be photographed as a blur. Muybridge reacts startled at the boldness of Stanford's request but promises to try...
...body moving at the rate of thirty-eight feet to the second...
...The space of time was so small that the spokes of the wheels of the sulky were caught as if they were not in motion...
...a horse's picture taken while going thirty-eight feet in a second...
...According to Muybridge new photographs are made at 1/1000 part of a second. "Link

Muybridge developed a projector to present his finding. He adapted Horner's Zoetrope to produce his Zoopraxinoscope - first motion-picture.

Muybridge secured sets of sequence photographs of successive phases of the walk, the trot, and the gallop.

Muybridge's photographs reveal movement only through the sequential ordering of the images, an ordering which was an integral part of Muybridge's presentation of his work.

In 1879 Muybridge continuous to photograph with 24 cameras and threads that hang between the shed and the background. By moving across the track the horse pushes against these threads. Through the push 2 spring-plates come in contact with each other and complete an electrical circuit that makes an electro-magnet cause a hammer to strike which releases a catch and both slides of the shutter move simultaneously in opposite directions. Besides horses also other animals and athletes of the Olympic Club in San Francisco are photographed. Of each of the series of images Muybridge makes a single photograph as he has done with "The Horse in Motion."

Making a Wet Collodion Negative (6:08) Real Video Clip link

Chronophotography - Etienne-Jules Marey 1830-1904

Isolate and Track Movement

Book Animal Mechanism (1874)

Étienne-Jules Marey (b. 5 March 1830; d. 15 May 1904) started his career as an assistant surgeon in 1855, and specialised in human and animal physiology. In 1867 he became Professor of Natural History. He was the inventor of the "chronophotograph" (1888) from which modern cinematography was developed. Some in fact see Marey, rather than the Lumière brothers, as the true father of cine photography, though Marey's equipment had no transparent film, no perforation of film stock, and no claw to move the film along. Whereas Muybridge had used a number of cameras to study movement, Marey used only one, and the movements being recorded on one photographic plate. Characteristic of his pictures were his studies of the human in motion, where the subjects wore black suits with metal strips or white lines, as they passed in front of the black backdrops.
In the early 1880's Marey published pictures of birds in flight made with his "photographic gun". A forerunner of the motion picture camera, it had a sight and a clock mechanism and made 12 exposures of 1/72th of a second each. Marey's observations concerning the changes in the shape of birds' wings in relation to air resistance was vital in understanding the phenomenon of flight. Link

Marey was using photography to visualise the up to then unseen nature of movement. Marey was not interested in using photography to represent the exterior motions of his subjects. His photographic method sought to capture the basic principles underlying movement, not simply its representation. Marey also developed several ingenious techniques to further track and isolate movement......One such technique was to cloth his subject completely in black, except for thin white bands which indicated the position of movement of the arms and legs. Photographed against the black interior of one of the "hangers" at the Station Physiologique, the subject's form was reduced to its essential components. These images of soldiers running were part of Marey's research into determining a scientific means of training soldiers.

His scientific interest is to find the external conditions that influence motions as walking, running and jumping and to measure the energy expended at each instant. Not only of human locomotion but also for horses and of birds in flight. These pages contain only his photographic endeavours from 1882 until his death in 1904 with his cameras as a guideline and animations of his photographs and films. During this time Marey has frequent contacts with Eadweard Muybridge (1881), Albert Londe, and Ottomar Anschütz, and also the Lumières and Edison (1889). http://web.inter.nl.net/users/anima/chronoph/marey/

Chronophotography
is the name Étienne-Jules Marey (1882) uses to describe the time (chronos) photographs of movement sequences. For Marey his chronophotographs are a means to dissect, otherwise invisible stages of movement, for study. This is also true for the other chronophotographers although not always purely scientific...
The chronophotographer has to know all the ins and outs of the photochemical process and the cameras he uses. He has to rely on his own knowledge or on that of instrument makers for the adaptations to the camera, the shutter and timing devices. Although Eadweard Muybridge starts as early as 1872 the technical limitations of the wet collodion plate and the conventional shutters make it difficult to get good results. The wet collodion plate needs an exposure time of several seconds. This process is replaced by the dry plates (1880), the more sensitive gelatin bromide emulsion on paperfilm (1888) and finally the celluloid film (1890). More info (good resource on area)

Marey mapping the body

In 1882, Étienne-Jules Marey successfully employed intermittent movement in a photographic "gun" used to "shoot" birds in flight. Marey achieved a frame rate of 30 images, and employed strips of sensitized paper that used celluloid instead of glass. George Eastman improved upon Marey's work and developed the first convenient celluloid roll film using photographic emulsion. With movie film now available, a practical movie camera was just around the corner Link

LINKS
Chronophotography Links - some video clips available
http://web.inter.nl.net/users/anima/chronoph/index.htm

Video Clips of early work
Etienne Marey Early Films
http://www.nmpft.org.uk/insight/info/fencing.mov
http://www.nmpft.org.uk/insight/info/dropcat.mov