Some fundamentals of the images that mislead observers
- Washed out colors
People look at the images and see light colored clothes, what looks to me like a white tshirt and khaki pants, although the vast majority of comments I've read are about a painter or cook.
Early on the Orlando police were at the scene and looked at the camera and were quoted:
At first, police thought he was wearing light-colored clothing. But then crime scene investigators working with the surveillance camera noticed their own dark uniforms also appeared light.
"That kind of concerned them and they started looking a bit more at that camera," explained Sgt. Barbara Jones, Orlando Police Department."
Dark police uniforms appeared light. This is significant when the POI is equipped as a law enforcement officer. But pointing out that the Orlando police found their own uniforms to appear light in the camera has done very little good over the years. People still talk about painters and light clothes.
So I decided to do some more research on this. I was willing years ago to buy a model of the surveillance camera and conduct tests if I was able to determine the model of camera and the settings, but I never did see that info. And ten years have passed. But I did next best thing and googled.
I don't know the camera make model and settings, but I know it was an outdoor 24 hour surveillance camera and therefore needed to be able to record in low light conditions at night. I googled those conditions.
What I found is that low light recording uses infrared (IR) light, invisible to human eye. And cameras block infrared during daylight or else, guess what, colors are washed out.
Now either this camera had no infrared block filter for daylight or the physical switch mechanism didn't work, but it appears this 24 hour camera was receiving IR light that washed out the image. The images are black and white and colors show as gray but we talk about washing out colors, or washing out the image.
I googled some more on that and found this very illustrative side by side comparison, don't want to bring undue attention to the poster but this is exactly what I was looking for:
Note that all colors are washed out, the clothes washed out light. In fact, there is a dark sweater that I can't even make out in a normal color image against the background, but the IR washing out the colors shows the perfect image of the draped sweater over the chair. While that's a side note, the point here is that look how dark clothing (law enforcement uniform) appears light. That is not a painter's overall, that is dark clothing washed out by infrared light, in this example a surveillance camera that has no block for infrared. That was the point of the comparison, and very helpful to us.
Lastly, google those conditions (IR washed out colors), you will see a page with this image, and further down the page you will see a similar comparison to an outdoor shot of trees, bushes, etc. Note the washed out colors of the foliage. Now take a look at the POI images. (They are the first two images on my web page, or view whereever you look at them.) Note the top of the hedges and the palm tree. They are washed out in the same manner as the IR wash out image of foliage displayed on that page.
While the images give us important clues, they are not true shades of black and white images. Consider the dark clothing over that chair as law enforcement uniform on this POI, and let's continue this analysis.
More oddities to come.
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