Series

Rolling — the series

3 essays on one idea, from the one that introduces it to the one that assumes the rest.
  1. 0.0 ms8.3 ms16.7 ms25.0 ms33.3 mslean 1.052° drawn against 1.055° predicted · a still world leans 0.000°no single viewpoint — the rays miss by 33.3 ms of travelthe frame is a stack of projections indexed by row

    Every row is a different camera

    A shutter that reads its rows one after another images each of them from wherever the camera was at that instant, so a frame is a stack of projections indexed by height — a handscroll with the roll running down the picture. Its rays miss their own best centre by the spread of the eye's track, at a ratio of 0.988, and a global shutter's meet to 2 × 10⁻¹⁶ m.

    part 1 · sensor
  2. undone: near 3e-12 px · far 3e-12 pxturning 1 rad/s

    A turning frame can be straightened; a travelling one cannot

    Read a frame row by row while the camera turns at a radian a second and every point is 21 px from where a global shutter would put it, at every depth alike. Turn each row's rays back and every point returns to six trillionths of a pixel, with no depth known. Travel at 3 m/s instead, and the best correction that needs no depth is exact at one distance and 21 px wrong at 2 m.

    part 2 · sensor
  3. 3 m3.6°6 m2.4°12 m1.8°24 m1.6°far1.5°no single viewpoint — the rays miss by the camera's travel during the readoutturning 0.4 rad/s, travelling 2 m/s

    A frame's shear knows travel only over depth

    Read a frame row by row while the camera turns and travels, and every vertical post leans — the near ones more. The lean is the turn plus the travel over the post's depth, and that sum is all the frame holds: twice the travel past posts twice as far draws the same frame to eighteen decimal places. Two posts cannot separate turn from travel. A facade can, because a turn leans the edges of the frame more than its middle, but the two signals are 99.8 per cent alike, and reading them apart takes a pixel on every row.

    part 3 · sensor

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