Originally posted by alienandersonI have a graphical illustration of that problem up on Video & Media:
The first video in that clip is explained in a discussion I watched the other day
Basically, the plane does not show up in the long shot as it is too small. The camera does not have high enough resolution to capture the plane until it zooms in a bit.
Watch from around 07:00 for a detailed explanation
media.abovetopsecret.com...
I started out with the DVD quality version of the video. Then I did a Virtual Earth reconstruction by putting the "camera" where the chopper would have been and looking in the same direction. I go about finding the plane differently than Simon Shack. I actually locate it in the virtual geography and not on a two dimensional plane. I draw in a representation of the plane, into the virtualy produced picture.
I went to a lot of trouble to scale the plane. I got it right, as far as the length of it goes. I had to make a decision about fudging on the thickness of the fuselage. I had it worked out to where it would have been something less than two pixels. I decided it was closer to two than it was to one, plus it would have looked like hell, if I had gone with one.
I inserted the frame (actually I cut off part of the bottom) from the video to show that I was in the right place and that the width of the virtual picture matches the video frame. You notice right away that there is a big difference in scale, between my produced picture, and the archived picture. Now, if in the large scaled picture, the plane's fuselage would have only taken up completely, one pixel, what would it be in the smaller scaled picture? Something less than one pixel? Does something smaller than one pixel even show up on a video camera. I don't know, but maybe someone who knows how that particular camera works, would know.
[edit on 30-4-2009 by jmdewey60]


