Confused About Photo Capture. . .What Is It?

reply to post by Watts


Good point, really. I used to see it that way, as well, but common-speak infiltrates my post sometimes.

At this point, it remains unidentified, and NOT faked, as I don't know what I allegedly faked,

It is similar to thos old nazi bell type things that are alleged to exist, at least what i've seen in the photos. But I didn't want to impress that concept. . .I wanted unadulturated analysis. . .without preconception of other "UFOs".

I know that's sometimes hard to come by.

Originally posted by Divine Strake
To those who read this thread. This is my last posting here. .

No, it isn't. You have several more posts below.

I am a CGI expert, and have a successful photography business that spans more than twenty years. I have made UFO simulations for various producers at The Discovery Channel and other known entities.

Really??? Hmmmm. How interesting that you failed to disclose this little bit of information until now. So in fact you are quite capable of faking pics and HAVE faked pics in the past by your own admission above. It's just that this one isn't fake. OK. Then the question becomes, if you are an expert in photography, you should have been able to dismiss this pic immediately. Why would you even bother posting it?

It should be noted that some memebers attacked me and the validity of my picture when I only asked ATS members "What is it?" I never claimed it was a ufo. . .only that I didn't see it when I took the photo.

Yes, yes. You've said that many times. We get it (Yawn!). Actually, it IS a UFO. We don't know what it is, but the consensus seems to be it is not an aircraft, alien or otherwise. In fact, the picture is so bad that it is hardly worth discussing, which tells me it is NOT fake. It's nowhere good enough. Even if it were an alien spacecraft it's so poor that it tells us nothing. We have many better pics from the 1950's that are much more compelling than this one.

What is really noteworthy in this thread is your complete over-reaction to other posters here, even to the point of starting a new thread for the sole purpose of attacking one of the posters. You are very quick to bandy about the "disinfo agent" claim, but talk about fake--you have no proof of that whatsoever.

Seriously, ask yourself: WHY would a disinfo agent, a real one, bother debunking this incredibly crappy pic? The purpose of disinformation is to distract from something that very well may be real or to interject some really good fakes into the discussion to keep us all spinning our wheels on the fakes.

reply to post by Divine Strake


Since there arent any apparent navigation lights/lamps and it Doesn't resemble any production powered small aircraft Such as an ultralite...
Beech craft, Cessna 152/172/180, Piper Arrow.
Bell Ranger...Apache, Blackhawk, Chinook....Copters....it's too small for that.

There's nothing that even remotely resembles a known production aircraft in that picture.

Doesn't resemble a bird either. Birds have a body shaped like a tear drop and you can usually see a wing or two protruding from the body and often times a head.

Looks like it's Unidentified to me ....think you caught a UFO.

Plain and Simple.

But Shhhhh....we are not supposed to discuss about such things. Especially on a website advertising to being dedicated to denying ignorance.

We might get arrested for being considered a "Conspiracy Theorist" !

reply to post by Divine Strake


You said you were into photography and image manipulation and that's cool, I'm not trying to debunk anything here I just have a legitimate question to you. Is there any way to calculate the distance of something in a photograph due to how distorted it is compared to other background objects?

Seems like if we know:

A) Some details about the focus of the camera.

B) Some kind of value put on the mean level of distortion due to the focus level on the camera.

Then in a photograph like this we could come up with an estimate of the distance of an object in it, purely based on photo analysis. I am not an expert on this stuff, but I was just wondering out of curiosity?

reply to post by RSF77


Great questions! My reason for stating my knowledge of photography and CGI, I "killing two birds. . ." you know. First, I am saying that this is a first, and my knowledge does not define what I am seeing, or not seeing. So I ask for help by the community.

Second: I'm stating that yes, I am a CGI artist, and although I know it could be faked, I'm stating I'm being honest about it. That's like going in a bank with a gun and saying "I'm just showing this, and I could rob you, but I won't". On ATS that's suicide I don't state my credentials! I'm not willing to forfeit my membership here on a hoax.

I do not know the distance of the the clouds, which is what I could viably use to determine it's size, however, to me it would appear to be .25 to .5 a mile. . .just a skip. I have to see what the data about the pic is.

reply to post by Divine Strake


I know, I'm not questioning your authenticity, no way to really know that anyways.

I was asking because the object just looks more blurred out that other objects in the photo (movement?). It may be something small directly in front of the camera like a piece of dust or it could be a bird at a point in flight where it looks like a UFO shape. Just my 2 cents anyways, I don't know what it is.

I wouldn't know how to go about analyzing the photo like I described above either, just seemed like something that might be possible with evaluation. I could be wrong for a number of reasons.

Originally posted by Vandalour
reply to post by Divine Strake

 

its a bird turning right

reply to post by RSF77


You're not wrong at all, and your questions are super vaild. My curiostiy is a potent as yours here. It could be dust or any number of things that I've not encountered before.

So I don't know either. Perhaps it was a mistake to share this photo. I don't even really care any more. There are more important things to worry about.

Originally posted by schuyler
The purpose of disinformation is to distract from something that very well may be real or to interject some really good fakes into the discussion to keep us all spinning our wheels on the fakes.

well, we are all discusing about this, aren't we?
Terrorists win!

From the file's meta data

ÿØÿà JFIF



ÿþ ;CREATOR: gd-jpeg v1.0 (using IJG JPEG v62), quality = 80

Could you please upload the picture without that red circle, and at 100 quality, instead of 80, please?

Also, I do not want to make any claims as to if this image is genuine or not. And let me be clear, I am NOT saying if this is a valid picture or not. That said, I did notice some irregularities in the image that warrant some close scrutiny. Specifically, there IS what appears to be a very defined box around the object in question.

Here I have done no more image editing than adjusting a few values in the images properties (contrast, and similar)
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/3f2ee73c0a0e.jpg[/atsimg]
If you are having trouble seeing the box, and have an LCD monitor, tilt the monitor away from you so that you view the image from a little "under" your monitor, it should become more visible.

This might be due to an artificat from the JPG compression, which is why I would love to see an image at 100 level quality, or in a more loss-less image format.

Again, a disclaimer, I am making NO claim about the validity of the image, that is up to your own interpretation. I am simply pointing out what I noticed was an anomaly.

Originally posted by Divine Strake
To those who read this thread. This is my last posting here. . .and I say to you this photo was not faked. I know there are others who will say it was, but I must accept that there are those who choose to be close minded to others and their beliefs.

I consider it an insult, and a degradation of character to say I faked it. Further, I will be more that happy to discuss this with any moderater who wishes.

Should that be the case, know that I am confident in the truth and validity of my photographa, and any statement I have made regarding them.

I am a CGI expert, and have a successful photography business that spans more than twenty years. I have made UFO simulations for various producers at The Discovery Channel and other known entities.

It should be noted that some memebers attacked me and the validity of my picture when I only asked ATS members "What is it?" I never claimed it was a ufo. . .only that I didn't see it when I took the photo.

Sorry buddy, You screwed yourself now. CGI Expert+pic =kinda fishy here. ATS people are pretty damn smart. I myself would give you the benefit of the doubt until you said you're outta here. But then you kept arguing. Nice pic though!

reply to post by renegadeS



As you said in your post, that straight line around the object could be due to (and I think it probably is due to) JPG compression. Those straight lines "blocking artifacts" due to JPG compression could be seen all over that photograph, such as in the trees:

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/d486a81addc4.jpg[/atsimg]

I don't think anyone would suggest that the trees are fakes.

One aspect of a JPG blocking artifact is that they come in groups of 8x8 pixels. As you may already know (but others may not) JPG compression reduces the size of a raw image file by combining pixels (fewer pixels = smaller file size). However, when pixels of dissimilar color need to be combined, the JPG compression software must "guess" what color to make the combined pixel. When it does this, it does so in groups of 8x8 pixels, therefore you may get the straight line blocking artifact seen here and in your post.

The straight line in my image is basically the artifacts caused by the JPG compression algorithm trying to guess the color of the pixels between the dark green tree and the gray-blue sky. I think the same thing is happening around the OP's object of interest.

Having said all that, I think the object is simply a bird in flight.

To me, it looks like a bird. But it's hard to say exactly what it COULD be, since it is so blurry. But my best guess would be a bird.