Thursday, June 18, 2009

An experiment about an experiment.

I hope this works. If it does I'll post better quality video. This is a test post, really.

What the video shows is the view from Camera 1 on the night I tried out the electroluminescent string. No evidence of any ghosts, but that's okay. I wanted to see if the electric string was a viable and potentially useful device. In principle, it is. The batteries lasted eight hours, which is more than enough for most investigations.

The video is low-quality MPEG because I used the smallest file size possible for this test. The original is on VHS-C tape, transferred to the computer through an interface called 'Dazzle' and then edited with much swearing using the not-at-all-intuitive but actually pretty good software that came with it. You can just about see the shape of Camera 2 on its tripod on the right.

This edited bit has three sections, you'll see the time change in the bottom right of the screen when it moves between sections. The camera was on time-lapse so the seconds jump. First, in daylight at about 10:30 pm, then in darkness around 11 pm, then the point at which the electric string failed at about 3:30 am.

Assuming anyone can access this, I'll put up the Camera 2 view in better quality.

3 comments:

astrologymemphis.blogspot.com said...

Okay; questions: Do y'all have very short nights there? It gets dark here around 9 p.m. It doesn't get light again until around 5 a.m. (this time of year, anyway).

I wondered why the camera appears to jiggle. It doesn't seem to be part of the time lapse because the lapse is in three large sections, not second by second. And finally, what caused the changes in light that appear on the right side of the table just before the end of the vid?

I hate that making these vids is so much work for you, but I did enjoy watching. Now, if you would just capture a ghost next time ...

Romulus Crowe said...

It doesn't get dark at all to the eye, which is more sensitive than the camera. We suffer for it in the winter though.

The jiggle is the camera jolting each time it starts recording. The tripod is sturdy but the cabinet it's standing on isn't.

Romulus Crowe said...

The light change, I think, is the sun rising. It shoots into the sky at this time of year and would be rising on the right hand side of the video. The window faces north so never gets direct sunlight (which will make all the artists jealous).

I'm told there's much more activity here when the nights are darker. I'll be ready.

Now I know how to make this video thing work, there'll be more.

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