In my grandmother's family album there are pictures going back to the 1840's. They didn't have color back then everything was brown.

Those photographs look better in quality than the stuff NASA has put out from the Phoenix Project already because everything looks black or pebbly.

I don't think they know how to take pictures or they're not trying very hard.

Originally posted by sarcastic
In my grandmother's family album there are pictures going back to the 1840's. They didn't have color back then everything was brown.

That is great, you probably have photos made with several different methods, like daguerreotypes, colloidal emulsions (my sister got a 95% score on her last year of photography at the university because she re-created the colloidal process on painted paper) and other less know methods, there were many at the beginning.

Some of the photos were brown (sepia) because it was a method that transformed the silver of the photo into silver sulfide, and this is much more resistant to the passing of time.

Those photographs look better in quality than the stuff NASA has put out from the Phoenix Project already because everything looks black or pebbly.

Those photos were probably taken with very long exposures, something like 3 to 5 minutes was common with the first photos, and even after photography became more widespread, a 30 seconds exposure was normal.

Also, the negatives (or sometimes positives, depending on the method) were very large when compared to present day photos and to digital processes.

The photos taken by machines lack the knowledge of the photographer, and automatic settings can not rival a good photographer, and family photos may have been adjusted at the developing process and/or after the print was made, these things are not possible with the robotic photographers on Mars (or anywhere else).

I don't think they know how to take pictures or they're not trying very hard.

They obviously know how to take photos, but it depends on what is the mission's goal.

If their primary objective was to take photos then they could have equipped the lander with a better camera that would take large, high quality photos.

But then they would have the problem of sending all that data back to Earth, so they should have a different method of sending the data and a large on-board storage.

Also, something that most people forget (or don't know) is that the Sun light on Mars is much weaker than what we get on Earth (something like 60% of the what we have on Earth), and that is one more reason why the photos on Mars sometimes are too dark, Mars is really slightly darker than Earth.

Large Mars Spirit skull with eyes intact. Smaller masked LIVE head facing cam. Another LIVE face Small dead skull(note the eye socket holes) Live elfish vampire looking gnomes I was looking for my giant Mars skull ,much larger and more humanoid than the Skipper Mars skull. I'll post it soon.

The top Mars skull is quite large.A human with that size skull would be estimted ove ten feet tall.It's not positively humanoid,but certainly looks close to human.Spirit spring 2004.

Sol 44 Spirit The faces onMars appear on the side of a distant hill and obviously could not be that huge.Their faces are smaller than yours,yet why do they appear only where the darkened background reveals them? I have told you why before,but let's see the masterful crickets ummm critics explain this one.

Originally posted by vze2xjjk

Sol 44 Spirit The faces onMars appear on the side of a distant hill and obviously could not be that huge.Their faces are smaller than yours,yet why do they appear only where the darkened background reveals them? I have told you why before,but let's see the masterful crickets ummm critics explain this one.

When you talk about the "darkened background" do you mean that the faces only appear in the negative image? I ask this because the background is not dark unless we invert the colours or change the image in any way.

I'm saying you could throw a rock from the rover and hit an animal even if you were a bad aim because they are so many in number.I'm saying they are about 30 feet away or so ,plus or minus 10 feet either way. If they were closer they would BLUR UP and PIXELATE the view of the hill more,and more likely not register at all as solid or in PARTIAL focus. Take your own hand at arm's length and focus a still or video cam to the horizon(turning your auto-focus OFF),then move your hand in and out watching the blur. Or better yet place a YARDSTICK 10 or 20 feet from your cam and do the same,focus on the horizon. You are seeing past and thru it as if it's not there at all. Now why the fist-sized faces appear large against the gigantic far away hill should become more clear after a few such trial experiments. The faces are in the NEAR FOREGROUND but just out of focus,and so they appear superimposed on the flat background that's like a stage curtain.By comparison the sky is so bright that it easily washes out almost all evidence of the other faces(taller or closer) that happen to be all around.The animals are very social and travel in groups of various species,unlike Earth animals.Packs of genetically unrelated animals,unlike the great herds of Africa savannah wherea million birds of one breed like flamingos PINK OUT the sky. Tiny female,body unknown.

Here's another bit of info on an animal blurring out from movement like the long exposure 1800's old timey photography. Lets say a cobra snake stands upright 3-4 ft in the air and is only 10 feet away from the ROVER cam.If he bobs back and forth a distance of 1 foot while the multi-exposures are clicked he will blur out much more than if he were 30 to 40 feet away because the amount of motion/distance would be less from the Point of View of the cam. Sure the cobra at 30 to 40 feet would appear drastically smaller,but the slight movement would blur him out less,even if he moved exactly 1 foot in both cases near and far ( like an upside down pendulum). They can't all be PRETTY BABIES.

Imho, these are all rocks. You don't even know if those are holes, it could be darker stone Try this.... when looking at those rocks in pictures, try to imagine not houses or skulls, but do what you do when you look at clouds. Try to let your mind go, and see whatever is there. All of a sudden, you'll find that there are not only skulls there, but boats, dogs, motorcycles, whales, elvis, blenders, and all sorts of other things. Or in other words, your brain is just putting images to those shapes. They are none of those things, and they are also not skulls as far as I can tell. Nor pyramids, statues, tools, houses, roads, DQs, you name it.

I like the idea that we might find some alien artifact on Mars or some other planet, but I'm thinking when we do find this, we'll know it. We won't have to be trying to justify that two depressions on a slightly round stone means there is an ancient dead alien.

Finally, the range that these rovers have is honestly quite tiny in comparison to the size of the planet. In my mind, it would be astronomically unreal to find even one skull. Let alone stuff in every picture people seem to see stuff.

Originally posted by vze2xjjk
If he bobs back and forth a distance of 1 foot while the multi-exposures are clicked he will blur out much more than if he were 30 to 40 feet away because the amount of motion/distance would be less from the Point of View of the cam.

What do you mean by "while the multi-exposures are clicked"?