More "Anonymous" Chicago UFO images

Originally posted by ArMaP
I think the hunt for the phone model is an impossible one.

Only knowing that it does not put EXIF data and takes pictures at 640x480 its not enough to find what model could be, there must be dozens of phones that fall in that category.

Yes you are correct. I have thought of that extensively. I was thinking and fooling around with my hex editor and comparing all 4 ufo photos and their headers with other phones pictures headers (whew thats long) in an attempt to isolate a certain kind of image processor chip.

Image processors (and almost every other type of processor) puts a unique "signature" (for lack of a better word) on what they process. IF (and thats a big IF) I can isolate the particular sequence of data in the header of each ufo photo, maybe I can find out what chip (image processor) processed it. This is will give us the chip i.d., and from then we can find out what phones have that chip. Its a REAL long shot, but hey - isn't that what research is about?

I've heard talk of being able to manipulate a photo in say, photoshop - then take a picture of that with your cell phone.
Now, how REAL is this technique ?
Is it feasable? Has anyone tried to do this in an attempt to analyze it?

Or this mirror trick I've heard of - taking a picture of a photo that was edited, in a mirror in an attempt to cover up the manipulation. Are these proven techniques or just speculation?

If so I'd like to see because if this is true, we should be focusing on how to tell if one of those, or a similar technique was used first. If the cell data is acurate and solid, that doesn't say much if it was photographed on a computer screen or mirror right?

Does the JPG file format provides a way of recording that data?

If the photos appear to only follow the basic JPG specification and that specification does not provide a way of identifying the producer of the image then I think that you cannot find that information on those files.

Originally posted by zeeon
Your phone has EXIF tags attached. So it's not a motorola razr.

Wait a minute there zeeon... remember all the tests we did with my Motorola RAZR?? Mine had EXIF tags in it...

About 10 posts have been added whilst i wrote this but i'll paste it anyway:

The mentioning of whether the pics were taken quickly in succession or slowly enough to allow 4 shots is dependent on the speed of movement of the object. If it were moving at the speed of a hot-air baloon or blimp, then enough time would be available, even with saving the pics in-between shots.
For someone to take a pic, any object must be moving slowly enough to allow the taking-out and set-up of the camera in the first place. The nearer the object is, the slower it must be moving to allow time for the initial observation and subsequent first shot. The near-ness of this object (if real) indicates it was probably moving quite slowly.

A couple of observations:
The first shot (compared with the others) seems to indicate that it was at the point of least distance from the camera along it's path.
If you compare all 4 pics side by side in 'paint' there is a definite reduction in object size from one shot to the next which is something a faker probably wouldn't account for.

Also, my phone is a recon unit that is about a 8months old (not sure what recon means exactly in the sense of whether it was used before I bought it?), It's a SonyEricssonk608i. I just switched it on and took first pic within 15-20 seconds( not used to taking pics) and I tested how fast I could then take further pics.... It auto-saves them and I could take each pic within about 7-8 seconds of each other.

Now, some calculations can be done regarding the approximate speed of the object:
Looking at the first pic, we can see the fence has posts that are approx 1meter high and approx 2meters apart. Assuming the fence is the same all the way around the enclosure, now take a look at pic4 (in the other thread). The fence on the far right has about 20+ posts from the near side to the far trees.
So the distance in pic1 from the camera to the far trees can be taken as approx 50meters.
It's hard to say whether the craft is directly above the far tree-line and from looking at all the pics I'd guesstimate that it is approx twice the camera-tree ground distance. That is approx 100meters ground distance away.
From the composite 3shot pic (by 12m8keall2c), a guess can be made that the object has travelled about the same ground distance (100meters) from pic1 to pic3. This is a guess comparing angles and line of sights.
Now assuming the phone-cam used was a more modern type which auto-saves pics and the pics were taken in about the quickest time available, say 8 seconds; then the object speed is approx 100/8meters/sec or say 13m/s.
This converts to approx 30 miles/hour.

Now, after doing the above calculation I realised just how hard it is to guesstimate from pics with not knowing the scale of the object but it was a good exercise never the less.

EDIT: Should be 100/16 meters/sec above as pic1 to pic 3 is two lots of 8secs!
Hence object is at approx 15 miles/hour!



[edit on 10-2-2007 by st1234]

Originally posted by zeeon
I've heard talk of being able to manipulate a photo in say, photoshop - then take a picture of that with your cell phone.
Now, how REAL is this technique ?
Is it feasable? Has anyone tried to do this in an attempt to analyze it?

I did more or less that to see if that famous O'Hare photo could have been made using the "congestion" photo.

I did not use a cell phone because I do not have one, I used a digital camera that does put the EXIF data on it, so this is not exactly what you are asking for.

Anyway, here it is.

Test

Originally posted by damajikninja

Originally posted by zeeon
Your phone has EXIF tags attached. So it's not a motorola razr.

Wait a minute there zeeon... remember all the tests we did with my Motorola RAZR?? Mine had EXIF tags in it...

i know, thats why i said the phone that took the UFO photos inst a razr

Originally posted by zeeon

i know, thats why i said the phone that took the UFO photos inst a razr

Ahh ok. Makes sense now. Thanks for clarifying.
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Removed triple nested quote

[edit on 10/2/07 by masqua]

I wonder if this is real? date unknown ( found while looking for the famous thunder bird photo)




here ??? www.worth1000.com...

[edit on 10-2-2007 by RUFFREADY]

Originally posted by st1234
From the composite 3shot pic (by 12m8keall2c), a guess can be made that the object has travelled about the same ground distance (100meters) from pic1 to pic3. This is a guess comparing angles and line of sights.
Now assuming the phone-cam used was a more modern type which auto-saves pics and the pics were taken in about the quickest time available, say 8 seconds; then the object speed is approx 100/8meters/sec or say 13m/s.
This converts to approx 30 miles/hour.

Now, after doing the above calculation I realised just how hard it is to guesstimate from pics with not knowing the scale of the object but it was a good exercise never the less.

Well, if your math and estimates are close enough, then we're looking at either a blimp, or a helo. Because those, imho are the only two aircraft that can fly @ 30 mph.

I wonder if we can get more input on this theory and see what can come about...

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trimmed BIG quote

[edit on 10/2/07 by masqua]

Originally posted by RUFFREADY
I wonder if this is real? date unknown ( found while looking for the famous thunder bird photo)

Link doesn't work boss - anyone else?

Originally posted by zeeon
Your phone has EXIF tags attached. So it's not a motorola razr.

It is a RAZR. The tags were put there by iPhoto. I should have just uploaded the raw, unrotated image, which is here.

Slight oops, see my EDIT........ now get 15miles/hour.

Note, a real UFO/alein craft i suppose would be able to go as slow as it likes if it can hover (as in the Ohare case).

Cliff notes for someone who doesn't get the tech/photo jargon fella's? Is the image holding up in terms of authenticity or not?

Originally posted by st1234
Slight oops, see my EDIT........ now get 15miles/hour.

Note, a real UFO/alein craft i suppose would be able to go as slow as it likes if it can hover (as in the Ohare case).

Hmmmm, it sounds like maybe that UFO was hovering but obviously not in one stationary position.
We don't know how long the craft hovered in one area at a time before moving over across the sky to the next point where it hovered again for a few minutes, if that's what it was doing. Due to these calculations we need to take this into consideration too because what we are seeing in these photo's do not look like blimps.

I think the 'tags" refered to in the Razr photo are just info from the JPEG not EXIF tags. Is anyone sure that the 4 UFO pics are untouched from the camera phone? They may have gone thru a program and been saved even if not changed. I would bet they are just the raw photo's though.

EDIT: Just to clarify. The pic is open to view, "yep that's the one I was looking for, I'll rename it UFO001", then using the viewer it is renamed with as Save As, which rewirites another copy. This is verses just a file system file/rename command.

[edit on 2/10/2007 by roadgravel]

Originally posted by DimensionalDetective
Cliff notes for someone who doesn't get the tech/photo jargon fella's? Is the image holding up in terms of authenticity or not?

As far as I'm concerned it is, yeah. The main problem is that we're dealing with a compressed image which isnt lending itself well to being thoroughly examined. What has been ruled out is obvious fakery, and there's some very compelling aspects that dont point to a faked shot(s).

I saw someone mention the methods of faking using mirrors and etc. There's a myriad of ways to fake it, and some if done right are nearly flawless.

Paste up
Digital composite (most common these days)
Small model on site / small model on blowup
Reshoot past composite (print or monitor-although monitor shots are usually easy to spot)
Re-render over original shot

Thats only some. One day soon I'll do some like this and post them on my CM board (link below) so I can show some of the things to look for.

Thanks jritzman! You put a heck of a lot of work into analyzation of these photo's, so if you're giving it a reserved thumbs up, then this must be something truly amazing. I appreciate you dumbing it down for me a little. LOL!

Originally posted by jritzmann
The main problem is that we're dealing with a compressed image which isnt lending itself well to being thoroughly examined.

Can it be assumed then that intentionally compressing images may be a strategy for hiding shenanigans?

Originally posted by MrPenny
Can it be assumed then that intentionally compressing images may be a strategy for hiding shenanigans?

All operations that reduce the amount of detail are good to hide the "shenanigans".

Saving the image with more compression, resizing the image, applying a littler blur or noise, photografing the computer's screen, all those operations have the same result, degrading the original image.