Calculators / Motion Blur
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Motion Blur.

How far does a moving part smear during exposure? Set a part speed and an exposure time — blur reads as speed × time in microns, and dividing by the pixel size gives the same answer in pixels, weighed against the standard one-pixel budget.

Object-space blur
50.00 μm
blur_obj = v · t
Pixel-space blur
1.00 px
blur_px = blur_obj / p
Inputs
Auto-fill from a catalog camera Premium
mm/s
μs
μm
OBJECT-SPACE MOTION CONVEYOR t = 0 t = t_exp v = 500 mm/s Δx = 50.00 μm ×N SENSOR PLANE (MAGNIFIED) p = 50 μm blur = 1.00 px

Part motion during exposure smears object features by Δx = v · t in real units; on the sensor that maps to (Δx / p) pixels of blur. Pixel-blur class: pixel-budget.

How this is calculated
blur_obj = v · t = 500 · 0.000100 = 0.05000 mm = 50.00 μm
blur_px = blur_obj / p = 50.00 / 50.00 = 1.00 px
MVF-019 · Motion, Line-Scan, and Timing · Motion blur is the product of object speed and exposure time in real units, divided by the object-space pixel size to read in pixels — the canonical kinematic-blur reading for any constant-velocity motion perpendicular to the optical axis
About this calculator

Motion blur is the part's translation during exposure — set by speed × time, read in real units or pixels, balanced against the one-pixel sampling budget.

Pick a part speed and an exposure time, and the blur length reads as v · t in object space. Divide by the object-space pixel size and the same answer reads as pixels of blur on the sensor — which you weigh against the standard one-pixel sampling budget.

A part moving at constant velocity v perpendicular to the optical axis translates by Δx = v · t during the exposure; projected through the lens, that maps to Δx / p pixels of blur, where p is the object-space pixel size (sensor pitch ÷ magnification). The relationship is simple — double the speed or the exposure and you double the blur; halve the pixel size and you double the pixel reading. At the default 500 mm/s, 100 μs, and 50 μm pixel size, that lands at 50 μm of smear and exactly 1 px — the standard one-pixel screening budget.

Exposure-vs-blur is the central knob: longer exposures gather more light but smear more. Pick a target — sub-pixel for metrology, around one pixel for screening, looser for shape-reading — and back-solve the exposure. As line speed climbs, that one-pixel budget collapses (a 2000 mm/s line allows only ~25 μs), which usually forces a strobe decision or a move to line-scan geometry.

Sibling calculators

Reach for these next

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C2 Calculator live
Object-Space Pixel Size
Upstream provider for this calc's third input: sensor pitch ÷ magnification gives the object-space pixel size p that motion blur divides into. Run it first to pin p at your operating magnification.
M2 Calculator placeholder
Rolling Shutter Flash Duration
The rolling-shutter counterpart — when each row's exposure starts at a different time, this global-shutter model breaks down. M2 sizes the strobe-pulse window where every row is exposed at once.
C4 Calculator live
Nyquist & Practical Resolution
The sampling side of the same coin — Nyquist & Practical Resolution gives the static resolution from pixel pitch, while motion blur gives the loss from movement. A 1-px blur eats roughly half your Nyquist headroom.
LT1 Calculator placeholder
Strobe Duty Cycle
When the exposure budget collapses below what steady light can deliver, strobing concentrates the photons into a short pulse — and that pulse, not the shutter, sets the effective exposure for blur.
Catalog matches

Cameras with global-shutter exposure ranges that bracket this register

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Area-scan camera placeholder
Basler ace acA1920-40gm (Sony IMX174)
Standard global-shutter MV camera, 35 μs – 10 s exposure. Its 35 μs floor handles speeds up to ~1430 mm/s at the one-pixel budget before strobing is needed — and global-shutter readout means this constant-exposure model holds cleanly.
High-speed camera placeholder
FLIR Blackfly S BFS-PGE-122S6M (Sony IMX226)
High-resolution, fast-frame global-shutter (5 μs – 30 s) for 1000–3000 mm/s lines. The fine 1.85 μm pitch enables higher magnification — which tightens the blur budget, since a smaller pixel reads more blur from the same smear.
Line-scan camera · different physics
Teledyne DALSA Linea HS LH-HS-04K05B
Line-scan reference — caveat: this area-scan blur model doesn't apply here. In line-scan the part's motion sets the along-scan sampling instead (speed ÷ line rate). When speeds push past streak class (> 3000 mm/s), this is usually where the inspection migrates.
About motion blur and the exposure-speed tradeoff

Reading on the exposure-vs-blur knob, when to strobe, and how rolling-shutter changes the model

Editorial Guide · Coming Soon
Motion Blur and the Exposure-Speed Tradeoff — Picking the Pixel Budget
What blur_px = v·t/p means at the sensor, why one pixel is the standard budget, and how the four blur regimes map to inspection tasks — from metrology to shape-reading.
Editorial Guide · Coming Soon
When to Strobe vs When to Slow Down — Lighting the Motion-Blur Cliff
The key moving-line decision: once the exposure drops below ~100 μs, steady LED light usually can't keep SNR up, so a strobe packs the same energy into a short pulse. Worked examples on spotting the strobe-vs-slow-down inflection point.
Editorial Guide · Coming Soon
Global Shutter vs Rolling Shutter — Why Motion Blur Assumes Global, and What Changes with Rolling
Why the blur model assumes global shutter, and how unstrobed rolling shutter turns motion into skew rather than blur — plus when to reach for the Rolling Shutter Flash Duration calc instead.
Take it further →
Take motion-blur screening into a full station-feasibility run
This is the kinematic-screening pass — the one-pixel budget against your speed, exposure, and pixel size. StationPro reconciles it with the camera's exposure floor, the light you can actually deliver, the strobe ceiling, and the recipe's fidelity target — and tells you which constraint is binding.
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