THIS IS AN UPDATED REPOSTING OF MY EARLIER VIDEO EXPERIMENTS being brought from the main threads by request for perusal.
My goal was to try to video and then take stills from the 60-80 foot mark (according to the estimates made by Gray Hughes based on BG's placement on the bridge). I asked my trusty assistants (my teen daughters) to help me recreate what it would look like if someone was filmed on a phone from the above distance. I chose 70 feet as the median and asked my daughter to walk to the 60 foot mark. The phone used was my Samsung Galaxy.
Please note: during the filming in both experiments, the video was crystal clear at all times, never out of focus, even while moving the camera.
In order to determine whether Libby filmed without using the zoom, for this first part of the experiment I did not zoom during the filming (I would zoom after the still was taken).
Right away we could see the camera eye view at 60 feet does not represent the naked eye view. The camera view makes my daughter look much futher away than she really is. This was a mistake I made the first time I posted this experiment. Somehow I didn't see the disparity between the views while looking over my other daughter's shoulder while she was filming. If filming at this unzoomed level, Libby would have hardly been able to see BG at all.
Still shot taken from video at 60 feet without zoom:
I took that still shot from above, cropped it and then tried to zoom in it to see if I could make out the features of my daughter. Well, as you can see, I have a pixelated mess zooming in and enhancing the photo
after filming
without the zoom on.
For part two of this experiment I again took a video of my daughter walking towards the camera starting at a distance of 70 feet down to 60 feet away. This time I zoomed while filming, grabbed my still and then tried to further zoom and enhance the still shot.
This time, by zooming in to film, it was a much truer representation of how far away BG would have been, which was tragically close. My daughter is still 60 feet away but she is zoomed at the maximum level which is more indicative of real life distance. I grabbed the still from this zoomed video and even before any further enhancements she is already looking blurry.
Still shot taken from video at 60 feet with zoom:
Next I cropped the still that I grabbed, zoomed in even further and enhanced it the best I could. This close up is much better and more detailed but very blurry. You cannot see my daughter's facial features but can certainly see it's a female, hair length and color, clothes type and color, and body lanuage. I don't know all the reasons why my stills might have come out so much worse the Libby's but it could have been my phone. I used a Samsung and we now know that Libby had an iphone.
So based on these two parts of the experiment, it seems apparent that Libby would have zoomed in while filming. BG was actually much closer than the unzoomed camera level showed. He could hardly be seen in the camera's eye view (first picture) and I think Libby would have naturally zoomed in, without thinking, just to be able to see him through the camera. For me, I have no doubt that Libby filmed at the zoomed level.
If that is true then it makes sense also that LE grabbed stills of BG from a zoomed in film. I think they then cropped the still and zoomed in further to get the pictures we have of BG (after much additional enhancing according to LE).
I did try this same experiment with my daughter's iphone (but only part two as I don't believe the first part applies) and taken in the opposite direction on the road to recreate the sun direction that we see in the shots of BG. I will post that separately soon. Oh yes, very importantly, imo and moo, of course.
