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Rolling Shutter Skew Calculator

Estimate how far a pan slants vertical edges when the sensor reads out one row at a time, or find the fastest pan that stays inside a skew tolerance.

milliseconds for a full frame, from the camera spec sheet
one direction of the relation
pixels, as recorded — 3840 is UHD
pixels; sets the readout time per row
frame widths per second — 0.5 is two seconds to cross the frame
frame heights per second; adds the stretch or squash
Enter a readout time and a pan speed to see the skew.

A rolling-shutter sensor exposes a frame row by row, so the last row records a moment later than the first. During a pan the scene slides across the sensor while that happens, which leans vertical edges by the distance travelled in one full readout: skew in pixels is the frame width multiplied by the pan speed in frame widths per second and by the readout time in seconds. Vertical motion is stretched or squashed by the same fraction, reported as a percentage of the frame height. Row time is the full readout divided by the frame height in rows. The tolerance mode inverts the relation to give the fastest pan that holds the lean to a chosen percentage of the frame width. Readout times come from camera specifications and change with crop, frame rate, binning and codec, and this model assumes a constant pan and evenly paced readout: it does not predict motion blur, uneven row timing, lens distortion or stabilisation. Everything runs in your browser with no storage, uploads or network access.