The other evening I was shooting some 'sky', establishing which of my cameras would be best for taking video of aircraft contrails. (separate story & thread).
I'd set a Sanyo 'Xacti' up on a video tripod, pointed it due West at the remnants of some contrails, set the focus to manual/infinity, left the aperture at auto and rsolution at 1280 x 720 29.97 frames per second.
I pressed the record button and wandered off for a cup of tea. About 10 minutes later I returned, packed it all away, went inside and slipped the 8Gb SDHC card into my pc and started scanning idly through the footage to see how it would look and whether the camera itself, and the video it produces, is fit for purpose.
While I was clicking through some of the footage frame by frame, I noticed something unusual that I hadn't seen while running the film at normal speed, (29.97 fps), namely a fast moving black airborne object that travels across the entire top left quarter of the sky in about 10 frames.
Ten frames equals about one third of a second. I tell you that so you can make a guess as to how far it's travelled in one third of a second, but you don't a calculator to see that it's very fast, almost faster than the eye can see.
Have a look for yourself - you probably won't see the object the first time you view this, so I've repeated the clip again at 10 times slower, (full frame), then again at 100 times slower with software generated pan and zoom applied. (you'll notice some double imaging on the 100 times slower clip - ignore it. It is a side-effect of running the film so slowly)
Now you've seen the film, it would be great to know what you think right now...
before anyone has tried to change your mind, so I've locked this thread !
I desperately want members to give their opinions on this, but they need to be able to do so without fear of ridicule. I understand fully that most people don't actually have skins as thick as me or Rob Magic and are therefore quite wary of putting themselves in positions where they feel they might be ridiculed. So here's how you, and anyone you show the film to can contribute anonymously:
Please email your opinion to:
ufo@talkswindon.org Our temporary 'UFO' admin will copy and paste the text of your message, (with no identifying information) into a text file before deleting your email.
The admin will then post the unattributed opinions into this thread, before unlocking the thread for the open discussion to start. Let as many people as you like see the film and encourage all of them to send an opinion to
ufo@talkswindon.org they don't have to be members to supply an opinion...(but they do if they want to leave an online comment later).
I reckon the thread should be unlocked next weekend 26th/27th July, or when at least ten anonymous opinions have been received and are ready to be published (whichever comes first)
That's it. I
will give an opinion as to what I think this object is, but I will do it in another thread immediately after I've posted this....within a matter of minutes in fact. The other thread will be date stamped and kept hidden until, (hopefully), a few of you have emailed your opinions in.
When admin publish the anonymous opinions, my date-stamped opinion will be 'de-cloaked' and published alongside them, and the thread will be unlocked for general comment and discussion.
I think it will be interesting to see what people say when they're giving a solitary opinion, and then see what a group discussion produces.
