Persistence of vision is made use of in cinematography. It is the ability of an eye to continue to see the image of an object for a very short duration even after the removal of the object. We are able to see the movie pictures in a cinema due to the persistence of vision.

The still pictures taken by a movie camera are projected on the screen at a rate of about 24 pictures per second. Under these conditions, the image of one picture persists on the retina till the image of next picture falls on the screen and so on.

Due to this, the slightly different images of the successive pictures present on the film merge smoothly into one another and give us the feeling of moving images. Thus the principle of persistence of vision is made use of, in the motion picture projection in cinematography.