Olympic Project Photos

[Guest]

Well, there has to be some logical reason that there is no eye shine visible, and Art's sketch offers a reasonable explanation for that, by showing the dark space previously thought of as an eye as space between the fingers/hand in the upper part of the pic to whatever is just below it. I can't reconcile the lower arm coming up like in your pic, Art, with any activity it might be doing, but who knows? Btw, the fingers of the upper hand are definitely not too small, they are in proportion to the subject's head.

[Guest Cervelo]

That logic would be its not a face, stare at this long enough and you will see whatever you want to

[Doc Holliday]

If it was a joke it would probably be 'funnier' than that.

Bears and other animals have blurry indistinct trail cam photos. They aren't all pin sharp crystal clear.

im not sure about these particular pics, but kerchak has a point.

ive got a trail cam that takes pretty good shots except for whatever is in motion, like if a deer turns its head as the camera trips the body will be clear but the head blurs. ticks me off actually,but thats what you get on clearance sale some times.

[Bonehead74]

Well, there has to be some logical reason that there is no eye shine visible...

Perhaps there is no eye in the image to shine.

[Guest]

Come On.. is this really worth starting a thread over. You have got to be kidding me..

[Guest OntarioSquatch]

Come On.. is this really worth starting a thread over. You have got to be kidding me..

I thought it would be worthy of a discussion. I still do. Maybe you don't see anything in the image?

[Guest Peter O.]

Based on relative sizes, the Squatch's face would be at approx. the same distance from the camera as the mountain lions in the same series. So why is the Squatch so blurry? Since the camera obviously uses flash, motion should be pretty frozen, perhaps with a secondary, more blurry, ghost image, though at night there isn't much ambient light for a ghost image to form.

Based on this, personally I think it's something extremely close to the camera such as to be out of focus. You can see the intense flash hotspot at the top of the pic.

edit: the flash hotspot is very small, adding more support to my opinion.

Edited May 7, 2012 by Peter O.

[Guest]

That logic would be its not a face, stare at this long enough and you will see whatever you want to

Come On.. is this really worth starting a thread over. You have got to be kidding me..

Yes gentleman, if we could see something it would be a lot better.

[Guest BFSleuth]

Blurry pictures have to do with the length of exposure time vs animal movement. Here is a helpful link:

http://www.trailcamp...hrangetest.aspx

Note the following quote:

"Why are some pictures blurry?

Another thing to consider is blur. Some trail cameras take great night pictures if nothing is moving. However, if there is an animal walking through, it can blur so badly you can't I.D. the animal or even count points on a set of antlers.

So, why are some trail cam pictures blurry? On some cameras, the manufacturer gives the trail camera long exposure times. Exposure time is the amount of time the cameras shutter is held open, letting light in. The longer the exposure time, the brighter the photo. However, long exposure times equal blurry pictures when movement is present. For instance, Spypoint trail cameras have an exposure time of 1/7th of a second. On the other hand, Reconyx trail cameras can have an exposure time of about 1/2000th of a second. That is why Reconyx night pictures are almost always crystal sharp."

Example of blurry picture with motion... Oh no! It's Blobman!

Another issue with blur can be caused by condensation. In the Olympics this can be a problem. Condensation can fog the lens.

Focal length will be another issue. If the focus is set for anything beyond 15' for example, and the animal gets very close then it will also be blurry.

In this case you have a close up fast moving "something". Hard to tell what it is. However, as Derekfoot noted there was DNA collected from the camera and it will be interesting to see what the results of that test is all about after his NDA expires.

[Guest Peter O.]

For instance, Spypoint trail cameras have an exposure time of 1/7th of a second.

I would not have expected the guy to be blurry. That is unnecessarily long for a flash-only exposure, but it's not sufficient for blur with flash as the only light source. The flash duration on those things must be unusually long to compensate for a low power output, also. My Alien Bees 640 Watt-Second strobes have a flash duration of 1/600 or less. I'm not sharp enough anymore to judge the exposure length of the blobman OTOH but it's not far-fetched to assume that the "flash" (if you could still call it that ;-) ) was lit for the entire 1/7 to make that guy blurry at a slow walk.

Thanks for your post--I forgot to consider flash duration in my above post. (Normally for a night shot with no ambient light I'd just set the camera to max sync speed, which for my cameras is and has been OTOO 1/125 though 1/60 on some Soviet models.) According to the article, these must work by having a fixed shutter speed and then adding enough flash for proper exposure. Counter-intuitive.

edit: well, not really "counter-intuitive" but not the way I usually think about taking a picture...\

edit2: duh, it can't be a "fixed" shutter speed for either the reconyx or the el-cheapo because taking pictures during the day would be hard, for opposite reasons. it's late, i should go to bed

Or... night is a lot brighter than I remember... lol.

Edited May 7, 2012 by Peter O.

[Spader]

kinda reminds me of the Shroud of Turin negative.

[Guest BFSleuth]

Peter O., I'm definitely not an expert with trail cams. Derekfoot may be able to give a little more information by letting us know the model of camera used for these images. We could check the specifications and see how long the flash exposure is set. The flash on this particular shot I think is not visible light, but might be infrared. If it is infrared then it might need longer flash time to get the shot, which would explain the blur with an animal in motion.

It is interesting that if you google "blurry trailcam pictures" the first page of hits have a lot of BF referenced web pages.

If you look at a number of trail cam pics in hunting forums you will come across a number of night time images of deer or animals moving that are very blurred out, the statement that you can't even see the number of points is certainly born out.

[chelefoot]

From the OP web page:

"The camera that took these particular photos is a Reconyx RC60. We almost exclusively use RC60 and RC60HO cameras in our research. The camera was set to take 5 photos in rapid fire setting for each trigger. "

Still checking for info on how long the flash exposure is set for that particular camera, or if that is an adjustable setting.

Some of the specs of that trail cam:

• Trigger Time 0.404 s

• Recovery Time Instant

• Detection Range 80 ft. or more

• Detection Width Wide

• Flash Range 35 ft.

[Guest BFSleuth]

Thanks for the clarification chelefoot. I did a search on the issue and came up with this comment in a hunting forum talking about the Reconyx R60:

"If the target animal moves at all while the shutter is open, the animal's image is blurred. The Reconyx has multiple exposure settings to reduce motion blur, but these options have trade-ffs. To reduce motion blur, the shutter-time is reduced. But this will also reduce flash illumination (distance an animal can be seen into the dark). If you want more illumination, the shutter can be delayed to produce more light saturation of the image, but this increases motion blur."

It seems that with IR flash if you want to have a greater area of illumination the shutter has to stay open longer, increasing problems with motion blur. It is a trade off... if you want to eliminate motion blur then the area illuminated is reduced to just a small area in front of the camera, if you want to capture a wide area then the motion blur becomes an issue.

In the case of this image, with the subject so close to the camera, then motion relative to the field of view is greater, so motion blur would be expected to be a greater issue.

[Guest Peter O.]

Thanks for the info guys. Sorry my second post was nearly incoherent, but it was pretty late at night ;-) I tried a brief search to find out any of the technical specs of the Reconyx camera(s) but the manufacturers seem pretty tight lipped, I'm assuming for marketing reasons.

From what you posted above, BFSleuth, it seems that the IR illumination is indeed longer than a normal flash, and the camera does indeed vary the light duration based on the exposure. So yes, that would result in increased blur. Your point is also confirmed to some extent by the blobman. If the trailing ghost wasn't so evident, and the end part (on the right side) of the blobman exposure wasn't so blurry, it would look a lot like a rear-curtain sync flash photo (aka "slow" sync or "slow" flash) with some ambient light. Of course, we don't really know the exact conditions of that picture. But as it stands, it does seem it was illuminated the entire time the guy was walking.

So, it looks like the only real criticism I'm left with is the apparent subject-to-camera distance. I'm still betting it was very close because of the small hotspot (i.e. the light source didn't have any distance to expand into).

If this is bigfoot, my guess would be that it is a very close-up shot of some part of his anatomy, maybe a part of the arm with hair hanging down? I think we're (I can see it too) reading the various faces into it like a nun reads a "tortilla Jesus". ;-)

2 cents,

Peter