Digital VS Traditional images

[Frootloop]

I was just sitting here looking through various online images of "UFOs" and other phenomena, and started thinking about whether digital picture technology is such a good thing to use a field where an imag' authenticity will be scrutinised.

Ok, so digital has the "convenience" of not using a film medium, it produces truely instant images which are easy to copy and share. BUT, is this neccessarily a good thing in this field? ANY image is all too easily doctored, manipulation and addition to the image is within the possibilities of most camera owners now which must go some way to muddying the waters of the phenomenon with fake images. Well to be fair, fakes did surface from traditional film, but was it really as straight-forward as digital manipulation afterall, when you buy a traditional film-based SLR, it doent come with a free image studio does it?

As for snapping images of truely unexplained phenomenon, you are still limited by the megapixel capacity of your digital camera, the interpretation (and quality) of the image by the camera's sensor and the compromise of the widely used jpeg image format (if your camera doesnt support RAW or other lossless formats).

Aside from the explosion in availability of low end digital cameras, most cell-phones also now have cameras of varying quality and resolution with questionable lensing abilities, poor light sensitivity and a point and shoot system with little or no adjustments except for "special modes" such as night-time "enchancement" which at best will produce a blurred and sometimes overexposed image. ok these camera's are probably adequate for candid snapshots of your drunk buddies on a friday night at the bar, but for photographing a serious subject matter? forget it. And if by some chance, an object IS successfully snapped by a low end camera, its most likely going to be in the distance, so the user would be forced to make use of the camera's digital zoom feature which pixelates and interpolates the hell out of the subject matter rendering it open to all kinds of speculation.

If by some chance a compelling video or clean snapshot is made of a UFO, where is it displayed to the masses? Photobucket perhaps?..... ok, unless you have a pro account, it will reduce the image to a size suitable for display on a screen, so thats going to lose you a lot of detail from your 10MP image. Youtube seems to be filled with UFO videos, again, compressed and full of artifacts.

So, is real image analysis possible from material shot today with digital cameras given the amount of poor quality, low resolution images filled with compression artifacts? Or should we be thankful that there are so many cameras out there now waiting to grab a shot of evidence?

 

[fitzbew88]

So, is real image analysis possible from material shot today with digital cameras given the amount of poor quality, low resolution images filled with compression artifacts?

I think you're making a good point, but even a bad image is better than nothing. (With reservations, see below.)

Or should we be thankful that there are so many cameras out there now waiting to grab a shot of evidence?

Should we be thankful? Good question. I don't know about "thankful". Maybe we should be nervous.

There are a lot of very justified concerns about whether photos will ever give us any kind've "proof" that the UFO phenomenon is real. Personally, I don't think photos alone are ever going to convince anyone who is determined not be be open-minded.

In my opinion, any photo is only part of any anomalous event. Truly, I think the photographer is more important than the photograph. Their background, their narrative, how the event effected them. I would reject a real good photo from a dubious eyewitness.

 

[Frootloop]

There are a lot of very justified concerns about whether photos will ever give us any kind've "proof" that the UFO phenomenon is real. Personally, I don't think photos alone are ever going to convince anyone who is determined not be be open-minded.

In my opinion, any photo is only part of any anomalous event. Truly, I think the photographer is more important than the photograph. Their background, their narrative, how the event effected them. I would reject a real good photo from a dubious eyewitness.

I agree that the photo is only part of the "story" in any given event. There are many accounts of encounters that stand up better despite the lack of or poor photographic evidence simply because of the reputation of the witness/experiencer and/or the way they put forward their account. Ok, even this is highly subjective, but again, it all stacks up to strengthen or weaken the case. Again, its also the number of witnesses that help to give an event credibility. If multiple witnesses come forward with simmilar accounts of an encounter or sighting, that will of course help to strengthen the case. If one single witness comes forward with a poor story, then at worst, it could be misinterpretation, at worst, a poor hoax.

There appears to be more images and video of UFO's and paranormal events than ever. Im sure this isnt because as a species, we are experiencing more encounters, but more to do with the fact that cameras are more readibly available and the worldwide distribution of these images is easy (albeit poor quality images from integrated camera phones and low resolution dedicated stills cameras). Ok, so the quality/quantity of images may be a trade off and something we have to live with for now. That said, perhaps the real photographic evidence come from a normal film type camera? even perhaps from an old image (leaked or released) taken many years ago? If it does, im sure it will stand up far better to scrutiny than the modern digital equivalents

 

[dorkbot]

A few misc thoughts:

While there are certainly tradeoffs between the two, overall I think the additional capabilities of digital have been quite a boon. With digital you can potentially get the EXIF data from even the most ignorant user and knowing the camera model along w/ focal length, aperture, exposure, ISO could be very helpful to a qualified analyst.

Digital has it's own issues but it eliminates traditional issues like differences between batches of film emulsion, dirt inside the camera, the huge amount of variables involved in wet chemistry developing such as time, temperature, water quality, chemical age and potency, air bubbles, dust in drying, agitation techniques etc, proper fixing and washing techniques.

Maccabee has pointed out that even though VHS is a big step down from 35mm in terms of image quality it introduced something extremely useful in the form of fairly accurate time codes from which performance data has been calculated.

You could also argue that the learning curve to properly operate a film camera and the developing process is substantially higher than what is required to operate an enormously sophisticated modern consumer point and shoot.

Biedny has pointed out that as far as authenticity goes it is entirely possible to fabricate an image in a computer and transfer it back to the analog film of your choice. This is well traveled territory in the fine art B&W community.

I would agree that the low quality of images on the net is a real problem. There is absolutely no excuse for this at present, especially when it comes to UFO investigators and organizations. These people need to be publishing the original, unmodified source files w/ either an attached MD5 sum or preferably, a PGP signature. No excuses!

Both media are easily doctored. It also seems to be fairly rare to see extremely high quality fakes that can fool the experts. I'm sure there are high quality fakes out there but most of the amateur photoshopped and cgi efforts have been pretty clearly identified as such in a very short amount of time.

I'd also agree with what has been said about knowing the photographer being an important part of the equation. However, it's been my observation that a lot of people seem to only be interested in photos taken by completely ignorant photographers. If you are a soccer mom who accidentally photographs a ufo then the image is genuine. If you have an interest in ufos and have a lot of technical capability then the image is fake.

I'll admit that I'd love to see some ufo photos from 8x10 negatives though.