# Old bicycling photo - "real" or staged? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 21, 2010, 4:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-bicycling-photo-real-or-staged/536828 "2010-04-21T04:07:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![beowulff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beowulff/32/542_2.png) [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2010, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-bicycling-photo-real-or-staged/536828/41 "2010-04-21T19:03:33Z")
> [@RedSwinglineOne](#): > > …except for the fact that the two pictures do seem to show the riders in the exact same position. Maybe this is a museum display or some such thing? Uhhh… Maybe they just used 3 cameras. After all, if you are going to burn a metric butload of flashpowder, then you might want to make sure you get at least one decent photo. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2010, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-bicycling-photo-real-or-staged/536828/42 "2010-04-21T19:17:27Z")
> [@beowulff](#): > > Uhhh… > Maybe they just used 3 cameras. > After all, if you are going to burn a metric butload of flashpowder, then you might want to make sure you get at least one decent photo. But then you have to synchronise the shutters in order to get the same scene from three different angles, or have long shutter times and fast flash, as discussed above. ---
**Author:** ![beowulff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beowulff/32/542_2.png) [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2010, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-bicycling-photo-real-or-staged/536828/43 "2010-04-21T19:33:47Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > But then you have to synchronise the shutters in order to get the same scene from three different angles, or have long shutter times and fast flash, as discussed above. These are trivial problems. You folks must think that photographers back then where using a hat over a lens as a shutter. The Kodak Brownie was introduced in 1900 - it had a mechanical shutter. I haven’t been able to find supporting documentation, but I suspect that there were professional cameras with mechanical shutters than would accept a pneumatic cable release available in 1901. To fire all the cameras at the same time, you just used three releases powered off of the same bulb. ETA: [Shutters from the 1880’s - 1920’s](http://licm.org.uk/livingImage/Shutters-Blind.html) ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2010, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-bicycling-photo-real-or-staged/536828/44 "2010-04-21T19:50:49Z")
For those who think it’s staged: So what would be the point of staging this picture? What would be the motive? Also, if you were going to go to the trouble of staging a picture, why not stage something truly fantastic? > [@beowulff](#): > > Uhhh… > Maybe they just used 3 cameras. > After all, if you are going to burn a metric butload of flashpowder, then you might want to make sure you get at least one decent photo. My thought as well: three pictures taken on a single flash. ---
**Author:** ![Morbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/morbo/32/389_2.png) [@Morbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morbo)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2010, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-bicycling-photo-real-or-staged/536828/45 "2010-04-21T20:05:08Z")
> [@spoke-](#): > > So what would be the point of staging this picture? What would be the motive? > > Also, if you were going to go to the trouble of staging a picture, why not stage something truly fantastic? The “Pictures of Fairies” market was saturated? ---
**Author:** ![billfish678](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@billfish678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billfish678)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2010, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-bicycling-photo-real-or-staged/536828/46 "2010-04-21T20:06:09Z")
> [@scr4](#): > > OK let’s think about this quantitatively. Would you agree that even the fastest of these riders look sharp, with no more than 1/4 inch of motion blur? > > So, if the shutter speed was 1/100, it means they were riding at less than 25 inches per second, or 1.4 mph. I’m fairly sure that speed is too low to maintain the angle of the riders shown in the photo. It also seems unlikely that they can ride that slowly and still stay on the highly banked surface. Fair enough. But you are assuming two things. That it is speed and not mostly friction that is keeping them up there. Heck, part of their act may to have gone as slowly as possible and having people wonder how they stayed up there. It would not surprise me in the least that natural rubber on rough wood has a very high coefficient of friction. And that 1/100 of second is as fast a shutter speed as you could create. Lets say I make a spring driven guillotine with a 10 mm slot in it. When I pop that sucker, it goes a meter in a second (say the words “one thousand one” outloud at normal speech speed..that is about one second and a second is a long time). Let it pass in front of a 10 mm diameter lens. There is your roughly 1/100 of a second right there. I can easily imagine being able to make such a device that is way faster than that. Maybe not one that fits inside a camera, but certainly something big, heavy, and bulky that sits in front of the camera. Now, of course a fast shutter speed means you gotta have a lot of light. But money and lots of flash powder takes care of that. One observation I have is that it appears to me that the guy in the back is the blurryest of the bunch, which would make sense to me if they were actually moving (I was looking mostly at the wheel spokes to decide this). Now granted, the pixel resolution is certainly borderline for making this observation. Or maybe the guy in back is just a little bit more out of focus. Or maybe this is just wishful thinking on my part. And, of course at this resolution, all those tires could just be sitting on tiny nails in the wood we can’t see. IMO, there are two issues. Is this photo “faked” in some way? Probably lots of hints and details here that can be used to make a decision. The second, were they CAPABLE of making such a photo back then? IMO, a pretty solid yes they were if someone was willing to put some work and money into getting such a photo (though, like the moon landings to come later, it might just be easier to fake it than do it). ---
**Author:** ![Apex\_Rogers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e480ec/32.png) [@Apex\_Rogers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apex_Rogers)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2010, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-bicycling-photo-real-or-staged/536828/47 "2010-04-21T20:16:05Z")
> [@Quercus](#): > > I’ve got some observations, in decreasing order of importance: > A big reason to think it’s not live-action, is that in the none of the riders have their handlebars turned. I’ve never tried it, but I don’t _think_ you could ride on a curved wall like that without steering around the curve. And definitely the rider in the right front couldn’t avoid running into the wall; there’s no way he’s balancing on a track stand either with his front wheel straight. The curved track will automatically steer the riders back toward the middle and depending on the angle of the track and the radius of curvature, they might even be able to keep the handlebars straight and follow an even circular path around the track. Just think about the “Proving Ground” tracks that automobile companies use; they are banked in such a way the that driver can keep the wheel straight but follow the round path of the track. The same thing looks to be going on here. The guy in the front right looks like he’s still on flat ground (look at the rear tire) and about to enter the track. That’s why the bike is vertical and it looks like he’s going to hit the wall–that’s what he’s trying to do: merge onto the track. From this, we can conclude that the riders are likely going pretty slow so this guy can join them, but still you can see their bikes are at an angle from vertical and so they are in a realistic posture for where they are. > [@](#): > > Plus, the supports for that wall look really flimsy to support the stresses of four (or just three?) guys standing on it, let alone riding around it. Notice that the base of the track sits directly on the stage; this is doing pretty much all of the load-bearing. The support are only there for stability and making sure the thing doesn’t move around too much. It looks like there are 4 supports on the side we can see, giving a total of 8. I have no trouble believing that these supports would be enough to keep the track from moving around. > [@](#): > > Thirdly, the shadows show there are at least three light sources. The shadow of the rightmost rider is about 45 degrees in front of him and to his left (pointing the same direction as some barely visible shadows from the wall at the far rightmost edge of the inside), but there are very distinct shadows from the slats of the wall directly below him that point almost into the camera, about sixty degrees away from the rider’s shadow. And the floor in the center has a pattern of shadows evidently caused by a light near the floor to the left of the track (a light that is masked by something off camera to the left, so there’s a brightly lit section of floor to the left, then a darker section, where there are shadows of the track from the light source to the far right). This doesn’t mean a whole lot, but makes it unlikely this is a flash picture. Doesn’t mean much like you say, there do appear to be multiple light sources in the picture. > [@](#): > > And finally, the bike on the left front looks to me like it has a very loose chain (looser than I would expect for something as high-performance as circus tricks), but I could easily be wrong about that. The chain looks a bit loose, but it would still be functional and I don’t see a reason to say the picture is staged just from that fact. A chain in motion will still sag like that, especially at the slow speed they must be going. The only thing that would make me think it is fake is the sharpness of the spokes. This could have been touched up though, and the spokes painted on after it was developed. If this was a promotional photo, then I would expect some extra steps might be made to make it look as good as possible. My thought is that the photo is real, that the riders are in motion and not merely rigged to look so. I do not know enough about the state of turn of the 20th century photography to know whether that short of an exposure was possible, but even if it wasn’t, the spokes could have been painted on. ---
**Author:** ![Projammer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/projammer/32/559_2.png) [@Projammer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Projammer)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2010, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-bicycling-photo-real-or-staged/536828/48 "2010-04-21T20:19:09Z")
> [@spoke-](#): > > For those who think it’s staged: > > So what would be the point of staging this picture? What would be the motive? > > Also, if you were going to go to the trouble of staging a picture, why not stage something truly fantastic? Why stage it? It’s a publicity photo and they didn’t want motion blur. Truly fantastic? Maybe for 1901 it was. Consider that special effects in the original Star Trek shows and Star Wars are now considered cheesy. I notice the tires on the three bikes on the track are positioned directly over the rails so that bracing could be easily accomplished. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2010, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-bicycling-photo-real-or-staged/536828/49 "2010-04-21T20:27:23Z")
> [@billfish678](#): > > Now, of course a fast shutter speed means you gotta have a lot of light. But money and lots of flash powder takes care of that. Good luck syncing a fast shutter with magnesium flash powder. Even well into the 20th century, flash sync speed with electronic flash was generally limited to 1/60-1/125 second. > [@](#): > > One observation I have is that it appears to me that the guy in the back is the blurryest of the bunch, which would make sense to me if they were actually moving (I was looking mostly at the wheel spokes to decide this). Now granted, the pixel resolution is certainly borderline for making this observation. Or maybe the guy in back is just a little bit more out of focus. Or maybe this is just wishful thinking on my part. I thought that, too, the first I saw the photo, but I wasn’t able to decide whether that’s actual motion blur I’m seeing or not. I’m not sure why the cyclist farthest away would be blurrier, though. If they’re moving, the closer ones should be blurrier, assuming they’re going about the same speed. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2010, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-bicycling-photo-real-or-staged/536828/50 "2010-04-21T20:28:42Z")
> [@Projammer](#): > > I notice the tires on the three bikes on the track are positioned directly over the rails so that bracing could be easily accomplished. The more I look at it, the more this seems to be the likeliest possibility. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2010, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-bicycling-photo-real-or-staged/536828/51 "2010-04-21T20:35:47Z")
Zheesh, I should have read the OP better. I didn’t even realize there were other angles of the photo to consider. It’s clearly a set-up photo, in my opinion. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2010, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-bicycling-photo-real-or-staged/536828/52 "2010-04-21T20:52:33Z")
> [@](#): > > For those who think it’s staged: > > So what would be the point of staging this picture? What would be the motive? > > Also, if you were going to go to the trouble of staging a picture, why not stage something truly fantastic? Easy. They have a stage show, where they really do ride around on the track. They want to print up promotional materials for this stage show, so they want a photograph of them doing it. Unfortunately, with the camera technology of the time, they couldn’t get a good picture of them actually in motion. So they brace the riders in position somehow (wires, or rigid braces on the far sides of their bodies, or whatever) so they can hold the pose for a still picture. ---
**Author:** ![billfish678](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@billfish678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billfish678)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2010, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-bicycling-photo-real-or-staged/536828/53 "2010-04-21T20:59:36Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > Good luck syncing a fast shutter with magnesium flash powder. Even well into the 20th century, flash sync speed with electronic flash was generally limited to 1/60-1/125 second. When the shutter is significantly faster than the flash you dont HAVE to have precision sync. You just end up not using your flash efficiently. And efficiency is not a big problem for a setup like this. You just use more flash. If it takes my flash powder a half second to burn, but I’ve a 1/400 shutter speed, my sycn only needs to be a fraction of a second. And if I run a few cameras with various timed offsets, it doesnt even have to be that good. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2010, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-bicycling-photo-real-or-staged/536828/54 "2010-04-21T21:02:44Z")
> [@beowulff](#): > > These are trivial problems. > You folks must think that photographers back then where using a hat over a lens as a shutter. Not especially, I just think it’s a less likely explanation than them being posed and supported by braces/wires. If you’ve got a fast shutter and a powerful flash, you can take good pictures of action that appear to freeze motion completely. Great. so why would they even _want_ to photograph the exact same moment of action from three different angles? Why go to the trouble? It seems much more likely that the identical scene in the three different pictures is an unfortunate side effect of photographing a scene that is not actually moving. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2010, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-bicycling-photo-real-or-staged/536828/55 "2010-04-21T21:20:51Z")
> [@billfish678](#): > > When the shutter is significantly faster than the flash you dont HAVE to have precision sync. You just end up not using your flash efficiently. And efficiency is not a big problem for a setup like this. You just use more flash. Yes. I know. I’m a professional photographer. This is all second nature. > [@](#): > > If it takes my flash powder a half second to burn, but I’ve a 1/400 shutter speed, my sycn only needs to be a fraction of a second. And if I run a few cameras with various timed offsets, it doesnt even have to be that good. The times I looked up had ranged from a low of 1/7 second to like 1/100 of a second. That’s a difficult manual sync. Mind you, not impossible, but a damned real pain in the ass. Regardless, flash isn’t being used in this photo, unless you can figure out a way in 1901 they can not only reasonably sync the flash with a fast shutter speed, but also with other flashes (as evidenced by the multiple light sources in this photo.) It’s just stage lights or a mix of stage lights with ambient, and some kind of braced set-up. ---
**Author:** ![runcible\_spoon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/9fc29f/32.png) [@runcible\_spoon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/runcible_spoon)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2010, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-bicycling-photo-real-or-staged/536828/56 "2010-04-21T21:33:46Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > Not especially, I just think it’s a less likely explanation than them being posed and supported by braces/wires. > > If you’ve got a fast shutter and a powerful flash, you can take good pictures of action that appear to freeze motion completely. Great. so why would they even _want_ to photograph the exact same moment of action from three different angles? Why go to the trouble? > > It seems much more likely that the identical scene in the three different pictures is an unfortunate side effect of photographing a scene that is not actually moving. This is the big one for me - it may have been possible with the tech of the time to do this with multiple synched flashes and shutters, but why the hell would you? Unless the photo in question is from a tech demo, I can’t think of a good reason to put that much effort into what would have been fairly ground-breaking photography techniques, just to do the same thing you could accomplish with some pretty basic bracing and/or wires. Hell, they’re in a theater, so there’s a good chance there’s already a rigging system set up, so it’s not even that far out of the way. ---
**Author:** ![TerpBE](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bc8723/32.png) [@TerpBE](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TerpBE)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2010, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-bicycling-photo-real-or-staged/536828/57 "2010-04-21T21:38:44Z")
Here’s something else to consider…if all three photos were taken at the same time, would the photographer/camera for the first picture be visible in the frame of the third picture? ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2010, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-bicycling-photo-real-or-staged/536828/58 "2010-04-21T21:44:22Z")
> [@Projammer](#): > > Why stage it? It’s a publicity photo and they didn’t want motion blur. That’s what I think, as well. It was likely done to advertise this particular act, and the photographic technology of the time likely wasn’t capable of producing a usable image of the act while it was actually performing. ---
**Author:** ![yoyodyne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/a9a28c/32.png) [@yoyodyne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yoyodyne)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2010, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-bicycling-photo-real-or-staged/536828/59 "2010-04-21T21:44:24Z")
> [@billfish678](#): > > The second, were they CAPABLE of making such a photo back then? IMO, a pretty solid yes they were if someone was willing to put some work and money into getting such a photo (though, like the moon landings to come later, it might just be easier to fake it than do it). The shadows always give it away. ---
**Author:** ![RedSwinglineOne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/a9adbd/32.png) [@RedSwinglineOne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RedSwinglineOne)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2010, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-bicycling-photo-real-or-staged/536828/60 "2010-04-21T21:48:47Z")
> [@spoke-](#): > > So what would be the point of staging this picture? What would be the motive? I think this is the problem. I was trying to choose between a real and staged photo, when the photos may be secondary. I’m conviced this is some kind of static display. Not for the purpose of taking the photo, that hardly seems worth the time, but for a museum or to promote something. Weren’t wax museums big around this time? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-bicycling-photo-real-or-staged/536828.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-bicycling-photo-real-or-staged/536828.md?page=4)