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Post by PeterB on May 31, 2009 23:35:04 GMT -4
G'day folks As some of you may know, I have a regular spot on a radio show where I discuss skeptical matters. For the next talk, I've been sent a book to review - Debbie Malone's "Never Alone". Malone is an Australian psychic with all sorts of claims to her name, but there was one aspect of her claims which I thought I could get clarified best here - spirit photography. Her web-site www.betweentwoworlds.net has a section devoted to photos of all sorts of spirit "phenomena", including orbs and ectoplasm. Now I think I understand orbs as simply small out-of-focus particles like insects or rain drops (though I'd appreciate confirmation of that), but I don't know enough about photography to provide mundane explanations for the other phenomena. Of the photos which appear in her book, she says they were taken with a digital camera using a flash and 400 ASA film. However other photos were taken with a non-digital camera. Would some of you be willing to visit her web-site and have a look at the photos she's posted, and explain to me how the effects occurred? Cheers (Edited to remove offending comma.)
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Post by BertL on May 31, 2009 23:54:25 GMT -4
More of a technical note than anything: the link doesn't work because there's a comma at the end of the link. Try www.betweentwoworlds.net or simply remove the comma from the link PeterB provided. I've only taken a glance at the website, but a lot of the Capitol Theatre photos seem to be having lots of motes of dust twirling around in front of the camera reflecting light off of it. Seeing as it's a "beautiful old theatre", the appearance of dust in the room isn't all that strange.
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Post by gwiz on Jun 1, 2009 7:02:12 GMT -4
The first two of the barracks sequence are long exposures with someone waving lights around, the third could well be a finger or camera strap getting in the way of the flash.
A lot of the pictures seem to be flash combined with a long exposure - the flash gives a normal-looking background while camera movement during the rest of the exposure trails anything bright through the image.
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Post by PeterB on Jun 1, 2009 8:09:15 GMT -4
Thanks BertL and gwiz, in particular the bit about the flash and long exposure. Interestingly, she doesn't mention the length of exposure in the book...
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Post by trevor on Jun 2, 2009 6:14:16 GMT -4
I had a look at some of the pictures and apart from the photographer commenting on the 'spirit' or 'I couldn't see this when I took the picture' They looked like; dust, shadows and people moving lights around with the shutter left open. I used to experiment like that when I was a kid. Just leave the shutter open in a dark area move around and bingo the path of the light makes lines and you can't see the person walking around. I think she is full of it. I checked out her website and it is just another con artist taking advantage of vulnerable people. Very sad.
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Post by JayUtah on Jun 2, 2009 12:11:38 GMT -4
I can create "orbs" at will, duplicating the conditions that would exist in the environments in which those photos were taken: generally dark surroundings, recently disturbed air or surfaces, and flash photography with short depth of field.
The "smears" are indeed long exposures in which the flash has fired at some point. If your shutter speed is sufficiently long, the motion of the camera will cause any naturally bright portions of an otherwise dark scene to smear. But when the flash fires, it acts like a very short shutter (ca. 1/250 second) and captures a crisp image. The viewer is likely to think that the flash-produced image is "the" image and that the isolated smears from natural light are some sort of anomaly.
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Al Johnston
"Cheer up!" they said, "It could be worse!" So I did, and it was.
Posts: 1,453
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Post by Al Johnston on Jun 2, 2009 16:40:11 GMT -4
You don't even need flash: this one was the result of picking up the camera just before the long exposure ended:
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Post by Kiwi on Jun 8, 2009 6:26:17 GMT -4
The two photos on the home page are simply examples of lens flare. Point any camera towards the sun and all sorts of effects can occur, depending on how the lens was made, what aperture is used, and other things. Those two photos even show the shape of the diaphragm blades (bottom centre and bottom left respectively) through internal reflections. Look up AS12-46-6806. It has a similar effect, which my spirit guide has just told me is not actually the sun and lens flare, but Pete Conrad's great-great-great-grandmother on his mum's side, who managed to get herself into Pete's picture and who, although she thought he was a very naughty boy for swearing so much, just had to take a look at what he and Al were up to on that gosh-darned ol' moon. Apparently, she wasn't amused by the Playboy pictures and thought someone should have a word to that Dave Scott fella about them.
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raven
Jupiter
That ain't Earth, kiddies.
Posts: 509
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Post by raven on Jun 15, 2009 1:10:27 GMT -4
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Post by echnaton on Jun 15, 2009 9:16:38 GMT -4
I'll drink to that!
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Post by drewid on Jun 16, 2009 8:17:14 GMT -4
There's some good single malts there as well.
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Post by PeterB on Jul 7, 2009 8:47:17 GMT -4
Well, I don't know how it happened (perhaps spirits do move in unexpected ways!), but next Tuesday (14 July) I'm going to be on Rusty O'Nhiall's Haunted Downunder radio show (www.haunteddownunder.com), talking about Debbie Malone's spirit photography. That's a two hour show, though with other guests as well.
Knock me down with a feather, I'm gobsmacked, and I probably look like a stunned mullet. :-)
Seriously, though, I'd never heard of the guy or his show before. But I'm excited by the opportunity to spread the skeptic view.
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Post by BertL on Jul 7, 2009 9:06:58 GMT -4
Meanwhile, Larry King captured the ghost of Michael Jackson. This is the most ridiculous thing I've heard in a while. Do people actually buy this stuff? I mean, come on...
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Post by gillianren on Jul 7, 2009 12:48:00 GMT -4
Yes, Bert, they do--and for a great deal of money.
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Post by PeterB on Jul 10, 2009 11:36:13 GMT -4
Well, for those of you who are interested, I'll be on the Haunted Down Under radio show this Tuesday from 9am to 11am Eastern Australian Standard Time (GMT+10). The show's host has already posted some comments about the topic of discussion: www.haunteddownunder.com/?p=889
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