Skyfishing: Low Elevation High Speed Disk photo + video

originally posted by: NoCorruptionAllowed

originally posted by: AlphaHawk
a reply to: Pylgrym

These are not bugs. Some of these objects fly behind the chimney of neighboring house, or behind a tree

How do you know this if you can't see them with the naked eye?

It certainly can't be determined by the video footage you've provided, as the flying objects are dark, as are the trees, chimneys and everything else seen..

They could as easily be flying in front, as behind.

Even though bugs can fly at a wide range of different speeds, they usually do not fly in a straight line except for bees which can only fly 7mph..
These things captured here look too large to be bugs. They look more like some kind of device.

Edit: They also look dull on the bottom and lighter on top like metal does from having the sun above them.. Maybe some ARE bugs and some are something else?

You have no idea of size or distance from the camera so they could quite easily be bugs.

Here is my #2 most interesting low elevation capture this year.

While stepping through a skyfishing video, I saw a weird fast blip of a shadow. Then another, another, and then a waterfall of weird dark objects, small, moving very fast - flying overhead or falling fast. There are 80+ "things" here, I don't know what I am seeing, so I analyzed the footage from a number of perspectives to get a better look. Here are the results of my work.

Original Images + Contrast Boosted Image:


Zoomed Contrast Boosted Image:


The Video

Interesting - while most of them are 'falling' from above down into and thru the bottom of the frame, there are many that seem to 'materialize' into place (spot of empty sky) within the frame and then continue down (this is more noticeable in the second and third "gradient shift" portions of the video.

There are also (just a few) that 'fall' into frame and then seem to 'dematerialize' rather than continuing down...

I wonder, if the video camera had captured a 'big' enough frame 'area', would we see all the 'disks' materializing into and then dematerializing out of empty sky?

What I mean is: If it had been a person seeing the 'whole' sky, as apposed to just the camera's limited 'framed' portion of sky, and they were actually seeing these things (pretending for a moment they could easily be seen with the naked eye), would all the disks be seen to suddenly appear from no where, fall a distance, and then disappear?

a reply to: Pylgrym

It's most likely out of focus insects, or dust, seeds or pollen floating in the air here are two examples.



As the point of focus changes from background to foreground you see the change, the insects go from out of focus circles to in focus insects.

Or this example



If its in focus it's well defined if out of focus it's a blob of light.

Now as you have some decent equipment why not try using a photographers logic first before try to make out it's some kind of mystery.

Wmd, in fact the reason I film is to capture mysteries on video. I do my best to also use photographer's logic, I'm not the most technical user, however I meant to post my #1 and #2 Low Elevation videos together, they weren't filmed far apart, and I wondered if there was a connection between the video anomalies.

Check out these images from a 30 minute skyfishing video I captured of similar group of small fast 'things'. This video has more clear images of the 'disk' shaped things I started this thread with, zoomed in more. Over 100 'things' flew by in this one video. Could they be seeds or pollen? I don't know what I think they are, But they are interesting. Video soon to follow. This was filmed on 3/19/04 at 2:32 PM.

Finally, here is the #1 Low Elevation 'Objects' video I filmed in 2014. Please watch it for the first minute, I have spent many hours editing it for your opinions - we're dealing with things that are nearly invisible at first view, at full speed. I zoomed in more as requested, and captured a huge batch of these things flying by. I have highlighted 103 of them from a single 30 minute video.

I don't think these will be pollen or seeds, because the camera is pointed SW, the wind was blowing firmly SW according to the weather underground history data, but the objects are traveling NW. So they are flying against the wind, not floating with it.



m.youtube.com...

a reply to: Pylgrym

How do you know the wind direction at their level you can't go by weather data also as you don't know the size of the objects you cant say how far away they are.

Have a look at this the sun in the video below is positioned to high light the objects look at the tree movements on the right yet the strands of web can be seen going different directions on screen the other objects insects/pollen can be seen going in all directions.

Yes, that is an interesting effect. I have seen spider webs at the top of trees do that, I filmed it last summer, maybe I can find the video for you. Or that might be a swarm of gnat-like bugs. I have seen the silver spider strands with the sun glimmering on them many times. I am familiar with these "tricks" of the lens. The difference is:

~ flying in 'formation's with relative positions synchronized, there are many groups of 2 and one clear "3".
~ changing color? a few of the clearest change from reddish orange/brown/white/dark
~ rotating rapidly in the same direction (I think, spinning counter-clockwise)
~ travelling in the same direction (NW) (some go up/down but are generally heading NW)
~ 'possibly' flying against the wind, if weather data is accurate


I can alsoestimate a few things about how far away they are. I focused my camera on a tree about 60 feet away, and then turned the camera up to the clouds. This lets me see things that are between about 30-90 feet clearly. Anything 200 feet away, or a mile away should be a little blurry, as should very close things. So I think the clear white objects are between that range, 30-90 feet away. These are just my personal estimates after using my Lumix for a while. But it wasn't very far away, or these objects would be HUGE, right? They had to be within 90 feet, and probably more like 15-50.

You are right, I still don't know how big they are, that's a wide range to work with.

I think the weather data is relevant, because if that archive is saying the wind was blowing strong SW that day, I assume they mean at ground level. So if I'm tracking objects that are between 15-50 feet elevation, they are contending with a SW wind of 11-32MPH. They can't be any higher elevation that that, right?

a reply to: Pylgrym

Lens data focal length aperture used etc would be handy?

Wmd, here are the details I can provide. I filmed 2 30 minute videos that day, on 3-19-2014. The second one doesn't have anything of interest in it that I've found.

Lumix GH3 with 14-140 lens (mostly zoomed, to 80-90/140)
I didn't write down the setttings used, but I know I was in Manual Movie mode, sub-mode Manual Shutter speed
I think it was set between 150-250th/second shutter speed, which is seems to be the best zone I've found
Double-crop feature is active (double-zoomed basically)
the .mp4 file is 3.5 gigabytes
Aperature is set automatically in this case.

Here's a picture of the file details for file 481.