Foto: © Andrew Davidhazy
Imaging and Photographic Technology Department
School of Photographic Arts and Sciences Rochester Institute of Technology
Have you ever wished you could include in one photograph the front, sides and back of an object so that you could see all the detail contained on the surface of the object at once?...what you wished for is a periphotograph! The photographic recording of the outer or inner surface of
cylindrical objects is referred to as Peripheral Photography. While techniques of peripheral recording are not new, the potential of the technique is generally unknown to most archeologists, art historians and artists.
Periphotographs, sometimes referred to as cyclographs, are made by placing the subject of interest on a rotating table and photographing the surface features of the rotating object through a narrow slit placed in front of a length of moving film in a camera modified to accomplish this task.
Strip photography is a little acknowledged yet quite pervasive application of photography used for the purpose of such widely disparate applications as horse race photofinish photography, ballisticsynchro photography and even panoramic photography that encompasses views including 360 degrees around a camera.
Early on in archaeological research at the British Museum, sometime in the late 1800's, it had already been determined that one could make 360 degree "roll out" or peripheral photographs of the designs drawn on Greek vases and urns by the simple expedient of rotating the object in front of a camera while continuously moving film past a narrow slot onto which the moving features of the vases's surface were projected by a lens.
It remained for other photographers to reverse this scheme and make the camera rotate during the process, instead of the subject, to make uninterrupted 360 degree panoramic photographs of surrounding landscape. The Cirkut camera, manufactured by Eastman Kodak from the early 1900's till the mid 1940's or so is a typical example of such a camera. There are some modern panoramic cameras based on this system such as the Roundshot, the Globuscope and the Hulcherama.
Finally, the method was also put to good use, starting in the mid-1930s at racetracks to determine, indisputably, the order of finish of race horses reaching the finish line in a close race - making a "photofinish" photograph.
While the technique for making periphotographs is fairly well documented in the literature, it apparently is not as widespread a technique as it could be because of the specialized nature and scarcity of commercially available equipment and the apparent complexity of the operational
parameters necessary for the production of successful results. These combine to make this valuable technique one which few photographers or photographic departments are willing to tackle.
Beitrag von: Andrew Davidhazy, Imaging and Photographic Technology Department
School of Photographic Arts and Sciences, Rochester Institute of Technology
