I'm a long time reader of ATS, but I have just signed up because I find this site absolutely fascinating. So this is my first post.
First of all, let me say that trying to establish some sort of baseline for video and picture quality is a great idea. I have also been intensely
annoyed by the fact that so many videos and pictures of any unknown flying craft (or UFO by definintion if you will) are of such horribly low quality.
Shaky, overexposed, underexsposed, out of focus and so forth.
I remember thinking on more than one occasion that if it was
me who was on the other end of the lens, I would not do such an abysmal job of
filming the wretched thing. I would capture it beautifully, and the object would be wonderfully clear and in perfect focus.
But then it happened to me. All of a sudden I became aware of this brilliant white light hanging in the sky one evening, just at sundown, and I really
thought for an exciting half hour "this is something really weird" and then "I need to film this before it goes away". So I ran and got my Nikon
camera and my best zoom lens (70-300 mm) and I started filming this "object" in the sky.
And lo and behold, after about half an hour of my very best efforts, what did I manage to produce? I ended up with a piece of utterly useless rubbish.
A classic "UFO video", even worse than some I have seen on the internet.
The object I tried to film was Venus. Due to some weird atmospheric condition or other, it seemed to be much closer than it really was. I was
convinced at some point it had to be a drone, but eventually I had to concede it was moving with the other stars. Not doing anything strange. And,
according to a star chart, right where Venus was supposed to be. It came back the next day. and the next, and so on.
But the enormous problems I had filming it still made me realise that perhaps filming a real, moving object in the sky, might not be so easy after
all. First of all the autofocus was running wild, hunting back and forth, and not really helping at all. I had problems with camera shake, eventually
solved by resting the camera on some furniture, and then (as the "object" didn't go away I had all the time in the world - it was Venus after all) by
setting up a tripod. I hadn't used this tripod in a while, so I also fumbled a bit with that.
Now, I have used cameras before. I am not a photographer, but the camera I used is a decent piece of technology (A Nikon D7000) albeit a few years
old. I had decent optics too. And I had all the time in the world to film and take pictures of this thing (I took a LOT of pictures - all useless). If
this thing had flown overhead in a matter of minutes, or even seconds, I think what I would have been left with would have been so bad I would be much
to embarrased to show anyone.
So I think it would be very interesting to see what people could manage in terms of pictures and video of everyday objects flying in the sky. Planes
and helicopters would be favorite, as they would be moving, and have lights. This would have to be spur of the moment decisions to snap a picture or
film something with whatever equipment you have with you at the moment. No planned setup. It would be interesting to see what could be achieved. Sort
of like a baseline for evaluating what one might reasonably expect. I do not know if this has been attempted before? If so I would like to be pointed
to it.
I realise this is not science, and no controlled experiment could be organised on an internet forum, but purely for our own enjoyment, this could be
rather fun. It would be good practice too for when you finally see something that is truly strange, if it ever happens.
Anyone thinks this could be cool, or have this been attempted already?
BT
edit on 26-2-2016 by beetee because: Typos