UFO App for Phone Camera

I don't know how to do it myself, but I wish someone would invent a UFO app where you could put a little icon on your phone so that if you want to take a picture of something quickly all you do is click it and it would open your camera and automatically set it to the highest possible clear zoom. Maybe it would even start taking videos or stills with having to touch or adjust anything. Just click the app and boom you're taking pictures.

This occurred to me the other day when I saw this balloon-like thing floating by. After a few seconds to figure out that it was unusual (larger than an ordinary party balloon and dark gray with some reflectivity) I tried that experiment to see how long it would take me to whip out my camera and get an image of it. It was only around for 30-40 seconds. The results were not very impressive, even though I have a decent camera with an optical zoom. Here it is after I zoomed and manipulated the speck in the video:



But if I had a "quick draw" app, maybe I could have done a lot better. Maybe there's already an app out there that does it already (I rarely have an original idea). Just a thought.

I use an iPhone and it only takes me a few seconds to pull my phone out and pull up the camera app. That being said..I do like the idea of an app for ufos. There could be warnings for folks when someone sees a ufo to alert people to look up.

a reply to: Royweeezy

i like the idea for tracking..

as in.. when you see one you alert on a map & someone else can look for it coming .. sort of a heads up...

then take a picture or video..

a reply to: Blue Shift

I agree.
The worst is when you see an object in the sky. It's remaining stationary as you fight to get your stupid phone out of your pocket.
Unlock the thing, and are left mind-effed because for some reason your camera app Icon is no longer there.
Then having the object stay in position all the while, when any other time it would had already been gone.

That happened to us about 6 months ago.
I yelled at my wife asking wtf she would delete the camera app.
She swore up and down they she didn't.
I googled it, and apparently it's a thing with Iphones.

originally posted by: Royweeezy
I use an iPhone and it only takes me a few seconds to pull my phone out and pull up the camera app. That being said..I do like the idea of an app for ufos. There could be warnings for folks when someone sees a ufo to alert people to look up.

Maybe linked through Facebook or something like that.

FWIW, it would also be useful for quick capturing other stuff like Bigfoot or newsworthy events or paparazzi shots of celebrities. But from my experiment it's not so much getting the app open, it's making the adjustments, which includes setting the optical zoom to maximum (although I suppose you could set the default to whatever you want). Another useful feature might be a smaller targeting frame, since it's hard to see the thing on the screen and I was just pointing where I thought it might be. These danged UFOs don't stick around very long and they are not very big in the sky.


Context image.

I think it would be a good seller. I say don't hook it up to FB as not to exclude non FB users. Also FB would want all of your creative app rights and anyone who made it would be absorbed into the Big F with. At least, I'd imagine so, that's what Google does at least from what I've been told.

UFO Network App--let users find, photograph, and track UFOs together in the community.

What the UFO community needs is more mutual/group sightings, photographed from different places and angles. Not always easy with 30 second sightings, but for the longer duration (visits?) sightings, it would be useful.

Also include a high priority notification of a UFO spotted in the area. Don't forget to include the ability to turn on notification filters: i.e. only show notifications of sightings with accompanying photographs, or exact location data, etc.

This would be awesome.

That is a good idea. Maybe the app could alert other members when they observe something in the sky.

I have a google pixel for my phone and if I press the power button twice it opens the camera even if the screen is turned off.

originally posted by: Royweeezy
I use an iPhone and it only takes me a few seconds to pull my phone out and pull up the camera app. That being said..I do like the idea of an app for ufos. There could be warnings for folks when someone sees a ufo to alert people to look up.

The iPhone does have an app for UFOs. You just drag and drop whichever UFO you want from the ones available at the top. Then you can also drag and drop a red arrow to point to the UFO before you send the photo.


apps.apple.com...


That gives a better result than the old method of tossing a hubcap in the air which can be a little blurry since the hubcap is moving.

I guess my phone is more cumbersome for taking photos quickly than my regular Nikon camera.On the Nikon I only need to adjust the zoom and press the shutter, it does autoexposure and autofocus if the object is big enough to focus on, but therein lies the biggest problem for photographing UFOs in the sky. They are often just dots and the autofocus features in cameras seem to need something larger than a dot to work on, which is why autofocus doesn't seem to work, and we gets lots of out-of-focus dot images of UFOs.

The only solution to that aside from coming up with a better autofocus that can focus on dots, is to leave the manual focus on infinity, which should generally work on UFOs, since they always seem to be far away. They are not infinitely far away, but far enough so that focus setting will give a good result and not be so blurry like the autofocus shots we often see.

On my Huawei, I can just click the down volume button twice and the camera starts up even when phone is locked.

Sadly the only UFO app I see being made would be one that inserts a UFO into your pictures (just like that Ghost app)

originally posted by: UKWO1Phot
On my Huawei, I can just click the down volume button twice and the camera starts up even when phone is locked.

Can you set the startup defaults so it would immediately go to highest resolution and optical - not digital - magnification, and lock on infinity focus? Then you wouldn't need the app, I guess.

originally posted by: Blue Shift
I don't know how to do it myself, but I wish someone would invent a UFO app where you could put a little icon on your phone so that if you want to take a picture of something quickly all you do is click it and it would open your camera and automatically set it to the highest possible clear zoom. Maybe it would even start taking videos or stills with having to touch or adjust anything. Just click the app and boom you're taking pictures.

This occurred to me the other day when I saw this balloon-like thing floating by. After a few seconds to figure out that it was unusual (larger than an ordinary party balloon and dark gray with some reflectivity) I tried that experiment to see how long it would take me to whip out my camera and get an image of it. It was only around for 30-40 seconds. The results were not very impressive, even though I have a decent camera with an optical zoom. Here it is after I zoomed and manipulated the speck in the video:



But if I had a "quick draw" app, maybe I could have done a lot better. Maybe there's already an app out there that does it already (I rarely have an original idea). Just a thought.

www.libertyheadlines.com...

Sony Xperia anyone?

a reply to: Blue Shift I was just thinking the same thing! I recently upgraded to a Samsung Galaxy 9 and tried to film an Alligator sitting across the pond from my Mother's House(Florida). The thing was a 9 footer! I then realized there are about 3,000 different settings/modes/windows that adjust everything you can imagine, but not one that would give me any distant zoom ability. The Camera is great for taking Japanese Tourist pics, and taking "Selfy-Porn", but is basically useless for anything else. If I ever saw a Big Foot, I would have to have him wait until it all booted up, and then have him come stand next to me just to get a poor pic. The Gator took-off long before I could snap any pic.

even with a real camera, thats why they have different lenses.
zoom lens shoots you in close from far away.

if you iphone had that zoom lens, the giant one you see at sporting events, you would have clearer pics of the ufo

There is (was) an initiative few years ago in that sense, supported by CNRS physicist Jean Pierre Petit (mocked in France for his strong involvement in the UMMO affair during the 80s)

It was including multiple sub-projects such as:
- Spectrokit: low cost hardware add-on on mobile phone camera to capture diffractioned light in order to provide better material for UFO investigation. 3D Printing plan of it is available for free.



- Spectra V.I.G.I.E.: centralized system automatically indexing diffractioned photos received from spectrokit users, by email...

- Théodolite: Iphone app providing external data when taking UFO photo



The project never really took off, but the initiative was quite interesting
link to the project: www.ufo-science.com...

a reply to: Blue Shift

Can you set the startup defaults so it would immediately go to highest resolution and optical - not digital - magnification, and lock on infinity focus? Then you wouldn't need the app, I guess.

When initiated it comes up with the standard camera with AI focus.
It has 10x Optical zoom and 50x Digital zoom.
Focus can be achieved by pressing what you want in focus on the screen.(Doing this on full zoom is a bit of a pain though as any movement of the camera and it's all over the place).

10x Optical
files.abovetopsecret.com...

50x Digital
files.abovetopsecret.com...