Re: Groom Lake photographs from 06/30/2008

On Sep 3, 12:59�pm, "Lumpy" <lu...@digitalcartography.com> wrote:

m...@sushi.com wrote:

I have an IR filter I got from a military vehicle (flea market
purchase, not midnight auto supply). I have placed it over a spotlight
and made a wicked IR illumantor. I pointed it at the camo dudes and
they didn't indicate anything unusual, so I don't think they use much
in the way of night vision.


I've seen plenty of photos (yours?) of cammo dudes
sitting near "wal mart" at night. Photos are
illuminated by IR(?) or night amp vision(?).

If they're sitting there in the dark, surely
they're watching the target with something
other than the naked eye.

Simple NV (amplification) is pretty common. Police agencies
nearly everywhere have them. Civilian hunters
have them. I would sure guess that cammos have
at least the simple versions if not something
more elaborate like tripod mounted, high power
binocular.

Yet if you've lit them up with IR and they
haven't hid, that sure suggests they aren't
IR, at that particular time at least.

Craig 'Lumpy' Lemke

www.n0eq.com


There are tricks regarding nighttime photography. Often people just
shoot at dusk and call it night. This works really well if the subject
is some facility that has automatic lighting. That is, the light make
the image appear at night, yet there is still enough light to do
photography on a tripod.

This is the shot I did with gen 2 Soviet era NV and image stacking:
http://www.lazygranch.com/images/fg/camoave.jpg

I know you can do better with Kodak Portra BW 400, i.e. that B&W film
you develop using color chemistry. This is one I shot from the power
line overlook using moonlight:
http://www.lazygranch.com/images/misc/plo3.jpg

I've use Macophot extended red film and it does get through long
distance haze for telescope photos. However, the problem is negative
film is low contrast as compared to slide film, and the haze reduces
contrast. It seemed to be a wash to me, and I no longer have a 2 hour
turn B&W lab.

I've found that using UV filtering (real UV filtering, not those phony
UV filters you get from Tiffen) helps a lot. I've have two of the
Anderson long pass filters for telescope use. I combine one with a
KR1.5 and the color looks reasonable for Tikaboo shots.

If have have a UV source and anything that reacts to UV, you can show
how poorly the standard camera filters reject UV. I did this both with
uranium glass and a green oscilloscope screen, using a 380nm UV
flashlight. Incidentally, those UV flashlights are fun in the desert
if you want to find scorpions. They glow green under UV. I'm amazed at
how many there are on the desert floor. Those people that insist on
wearing flip-flops or sandals ought to think twice!

The trick with the Portra BW 400 is to pretend the iso is 50. The film
is extremely low contrast and won't bloom much from the specular light
sources.

Probably you could get the same results with a digital camera, but you
would have to stack images since CCDs tend to bloom.