...The photograph is not actually a still shot of one moment in time, but rather a composite of several thousand different slivers scanned through a so-called "slit-video camera." The slit is 0.002 millimeters in width -- many shots of that width are composed to produce the photo...

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,50464,00.html

--Dan

Old versions used in Horse racing were called strip pictures. Here's a link to a manufacture of the camera and solftware.

http://www.finishlynx.com/

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ShaRRky

A finish photo shows where each piece of the spoke crosses the finish line. So if you think of a spoke that is at 5 o'clock when the hub is at the finish line, in a normal photo the entire spoke would show as being at 5 o'clock. But in a finish photo it will be at 5 o'clock near the hub, but since the wheel is rotating this spoke starts rising so as the parts closer to the rim cross the line the spoke goes to 4 o'clock and 3 o'clock. Hence why it curves up (the actual curve is a function of the speed of the spoke, faster further away from the hub, and the angle of the spoke.

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Gerard Vroomen
3T.bike
OPEN cycle