Is image on photographic film reversed left to right?

[mikeymike99]

I'm pretty sure but would like confirmation: is the image that is made on photographic film reversed left to right?

[Buenchico]

The answer depends upon which side you're viewing the film from!

If you look at a piece of exposed photographic film (i.e. a 'negative') with the emulsion side (where the image is actually recorded) facing you, the image you'll see is reversed from left to right.

However the 'proper' way to view the film (so that the frame numbers along the edge are the right way round) is with the shiny side towards you. In which case, of course, the image is no longer reversed.

Chris

[mikeymike99]

Thanks Chris. I think it's right, therefore, to say that where the light actually 'hits' the film, the image is reversed. Does this apply for digital cameras which must electronically 'unreverse' the image. And, presumably, the image formed on our retinas is a mirror image which the brain reverses.

[Buenchico]

That sounds about right to me although this post, from Secretsauce, deals with the brain-imaging bit rather better than I can:
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20 080125023327AALDQN2

Chris

[khoey]

When all the images on the film strip have been scanned, the drive motor 26 is reversed and the film is tranported in the reverse direction, left to right, ...

thought i would add my tuppence worth.

[vascop]

The general idea that mirrors reverse images horizontally is a fallacy. If it were true then it would have to reverse things in every direction, and it doesn't turn you upside down!
If you write the word "HELLO" on a piece of paper and hold it up to the mirror then you see it in the mirror reversed, but that's because YOU are presenting it to the mirror reversed.
If you write "HELLO" on a piece of semi-transparent paper and hold it up then you will see from behind the paper as you hold it up. that it is YOU who are reversing the image NOT the mirror.

[vascop]

I meant also to say that it's the camera LENS that reverses the image - and not just left to right but in EVERY direction.

[vascop]

The image on your retina is NOT a 'mirror image' but an upside down and left-right reversed image.
To get the original image you have to reverse it left/right AND reverse it top/bottom.

[Rev. Green]

... and a mirror doesn't really give a "mirror image" it reverses front to back!

Proof: it appears to swap left and right. Rotate it through 90 degrees, keeping it flat on the wall. It should now swap top and bottom. It doesn't, it still swaps front to back.

[gen2]

To quote mikeymike99
Does this apply for digital cameras which must electronically 'unreverse' the image?

No, they are not digitally 'unreversed'.
The image in any camera (film or digital) is both upside down AND back-to-front.
When you get your prints back from the photoshop, they are exactly like that. Every single one is upside down and back to front. I guess fewer than one in 10,000 ever complain since the majority of us simply rotate the pile of prints 180 degrees and view them normally.

[mikeymike99]

Gen 2 said "When you get your prints back from the photoshop, they are exactly like that. Every single one is upside down and back to front."

I'm not sure what you mean by 'back to front'. If this means giving a mirror image then photographs of signs etc would have mirror writing, but they don't.

[vascop]

very funny, BUT,you can't look at prints normally if they've been printed back to front as you put it.

[vascop]

I see what gen2 means: the image on your retina/inside the camera, is the original image rotated through 180 degrees. So all you have to do is rotate it through 180 degrees and you get it back.
Mikey
the signs on your retina are written backwards but upside down as well, and so if you turn the pic the right way up, all the signs are correct.