Filming UFOs/UAPs

Video Cameras

Video cameras are the best skywatching tool you will have to record UFO’s. If you already have a video camera, then use it. If you intend buying a new video camera, then these are the camera features your new camera should have.

Digital - Digital cameras produce cleared and overall better images then analogue cameras. They hold color better, especially reds and orange color’s. More successful video enhancements if you capture something worth looking at. The 3CCD digitals are best though more expensive.

Zero Light Lux - Will capture dim illuminations at night. A must for UFO filming.

Infrared Night Shot - This feature gives you the capability to ‘see in the dark’ and further captures dim illuminations. No color is produced but you can ‘see further’.

Super Steady Shot - A must for hand held cameras to reduce motion, especially at high zoom factors.

High Optical and Digital Zoom Power - The more powerful the zooming range the better. Most of your filming (even at full zoom) will be using the optical zoom ONLY. Only use the digital zoom if the object is slow moving or very high altitudes. (better to get something rather then nothing). Get into the habit of only digital zooming momentarily just to get some footage , then zoom back to full optical zoom. High digital zoom gives too much pixelization of the image and distorts it.

Telephoto Lens - One accessory that you should get is a telephoto lens. These screw into your filter thread and multiply your zooming power. I use a 2x but 3x and 5x are available, but you will never uses the full capabilities of the 5x because it is just too powerful. The images are too shaky for a hand held camera.

Tri-pod - I have tried using a tri-pod for general readiness to film UFO’s, with the camera attached. You will not get any fast objects or overhead objects like this. A tri-pod is best used for distant slow or any slow moving object, especially daytime. You can use your full zoom and get steady images on a tri-pod but are not practical for general use unless you add a quick release feature available from Bogen. Hold your camera in your hand at the ready for any activity. If you consider the tri-pod should then be used, then attach your camera. A good quality fluid head tri-pod like the Miller, or Bogen brand is best. Cheaper ones are too jerky when panning and not worth the savings.

Video Tapes - Try different brands of video tapes. Some brands are better for night filming. They respond better to low light conditions.

Powerful Spotlight, Laser or Strobe Light - If you want to see if you can get a response from a UFO, flash a spot light , laser or portable strobe light at it. Making a triangle pattern in the sky often seems to work, Do this while filming so you can record any response. We have.

see example: UFO captured on Film Over Area 51

Video Camera Settings – It is important to set your camera so that you are ready in an instant to record an event.

Focus – Set to Manual Focus, never use Auto Focus. Auto focus will try to focus on small points of light (especially at night) and automatically zoom in-and-out resulting in footage that is useless or confusing. see example of misidentified ground lights analysis by UUFOH Even daytime footage if filming a small distant or high altitude object may fool the auto focus setting. You want to be able to get clear focus on an object immediately you have it in frame and keep it focused. Sometimes you only have seconds to film an object, so good instant focus is a must.

To Adjust Manual Focus - Apply full optical zoom and adjust focus on a distant object. A Star or Planet such as Jupiter is good, because when the Moons of Jupiter are seen, you are in good focus. Then test the same object in full digital zoom. make any small adjustments for better focus. Then re-test your focus on full optical zoom. When properly adjusted, you are nearly ready to film. Get into the habit to repeat this procedure as first priority each skywatch outing.

Shutter Speed - Normal shutter speed is set to 1/50th of a second. Use this for all night time filming. Higher speeds at night result in ‘jumping’ images. If filming in daytime, you can adjust to the highest setting of 1/10,000th of a second if you wish. Use this setting especially if you want to mount your camera on a tri-pod and let free roll if trying to capture the so called “Rods” or fast UFO flyovers. Fast shutter speeds stop motion blur and allow better image enhancements for analysis.

Aperture Settings - Most video cameras have a feature where you can change aperture settings for different light conditions. These are either auto pre-set by the turning of a dial to adjust, or a full manual adjustment or a combination of both. Get familiar with this setting on your own camera so that you can adjust for best lighting conditions at the time. Day time is easy to adjust, however night time adjustments are more critical. Find the setting that allows the most light into the camera at night. You will see this in the viewer. On the zero light lux cameras, you may find too much light available for clear filming and the viewer shows too much background ‘hash’. If this is happening, adjust the aperture back just until the ‘hash’ reduces to a nice clear dark screen. Test while viewing faint star clusters is best. This also applies if using the infrared night vision feature.

Camera Viewer - Even though your camera may have a fold out side viewer screen, only use this when tracking a slow moving object already framed and easy to follow. Otherwise, always use the main viewer that is mounted parallel to your camera. This allows instant locating and framing of an object, especially small or fast moving objects. You can raise the camera to your eye while looking at the object and instantly find it. By keeping your other eye open, you can increase your chances of instant framing onto it and also see it in real time to see any changes in colour or brightness. A B/W viewer will not show any colour changes.

Audio - Try to record as much important detail of your sighting as you film by speaking clearly enough to understand when you play the tape back. Record details like, direction of approach of the object, its location in relation to known ground based objects, mountains or towns etc. Note any visual features or changes in appearance or direction the object may take. If it passes a Star that you are aware of, name the Star or constellation it passes in front of. Basically any useful information that can later by used in analysis or identification. If the object is lost behind a tree or cloud, say so on the video audio. This establishes why the object suddenly ‘went out’.

Time and Date - These are important details to record at the time of a sighting. You can leave the time and date display on at all times if you wish. This establishes a date of the event and time duration of the sighting. Durations between any strobing or flashing features from the object can be accurately calculated. All this information can assist identification and analysis of your footage at a later date.

At night, it is best to turn on the time and date display and record this for a few seconds then turn them off. After you film an event, then immediately turn the time and date display back on and record another few seconds. This will establish sighting details. Not having the time and date displaying while filming an object at night, gives you a full dark screen when previewing the event without the brightness from the time – date display, yet you still have it recorded for identification purposes.

(Source: http://www.aliendave.com/UFOspotting_recording.html)

(Original article: http://members.ceinternet.com.au/stingray/seeufos.htm)

How To Video A UFO/UAP

I was looking up reviews on Video Cameras all morning. It’s a real jungle and worst since they started selling the HD cameras, which is in my opinion useless. I had in mind to get a camera I could use to film at night, and also something good enough to make semi-professional movies. Hard to find anything that does what you need for under 2k-3k…

If any of you readers have played around with Camcorders in the past for filming UFOs and other Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon, I would love to hear your feedback on that, and what type of gear you use.

In these days of computer animation and digital imagery, it is a simple task for a computer whiz kid to create a UFO hoax on computer and transfer it to video tape. The hoaxer can then claim that they saw what was on the tape and that they just happened to have their camcorder handy at the time. So if we record a UFO on a camcorder, what can we do to convince the experts that our footage is original and not tampered with? Ivanhoe Chaput is the president of CC Design & Development Inc. based in the USA and as such has a great deal of knowledge on the subject of camcorders. He gave some advice on this subject in a Citizens Against UFO Secrecy (CAUS) e-mail update and has kindly allowed us to reproduce that update here. In addition to the update I asked him some further questions on the subject of videoing dimly lit objects and he has answered these questions admirably. I had tried to get answers to these questions from other UFO imaging “experts” but was fobbed off with excuses so I would like to thank Ivanhoe for this article.

Bill Bimson

Some things that you can do to assist video analysts determine a fabricated or hoaxed video against the real thing are:

1. Zooming in and out. Zooming increases and decreases both size of image and perspective. Features (objects) that are videotaped move in a proportionate ratio of size/distance. When one zooms, an analyst can extrapolate relative distances of objects, hence eliminating close-up models and reducing the possibility of computer model insertions. So, when videotaping, make sure you do some zooming.

2. Camera movements such as panning, both up and down to include other relative objects that are much closer than the UFO. When a camera is panned to other objects, especially ones that are close up, the camera’s autofocus feature will change the lens to focus on the closer object. This also helps to determine that an object, such as a UFO was in fact at a certain distance. It is also difficult for a computer image to “pace” the autofocus characteristics exactly. In other words, it would be difficult to fake a UFO where the camera was first focused at infinity with the UFO in focus, then focus on a close-up object and then back. The time lag in the autofocus feature will bring the UFO in focus along with other distant objects. So, when videotaping, make sure you pan to close up objects then back to the UFO.

3. Briefly move your camera behind some object that will occlude your UFO, then pan back to the UFO. If the UFO you are taping has clear blue sky as a background and nothing in the foreground, it won’t fly as “proof beyond a reasonable doubt” footage. If someone passes in front of your camera, or you duck back behind some tree branches, your car, or even slowly pass your own hand in front of the lens (provided your hand is far enough away from the lens to get some focus on it, and the camera can discern a clear edge of your hand) this will be hard to fake and will add more credibility to your video.

So, when videotaping, make sure that you temporarily put some other object between your camera and the UFO, especially if that object can provide a crisp edge to occlude the UFO. The best is to briefly obscure only a portion of the UFO.

4. Move with your camera. A camera in real, or quick motion is also hard to fake with most computers. If you can, walk with your camera while taping and the UFO is close, the background movement will give away its relative distance. If it is far away, it will appear to move with you. Some most convincing video and stills have been taken in moving cars.

So, while taping, try to take a few or several steps. (Watch out for cliffs, rotating machinery and that stubborn old bald headed man I sometimes see on the television that said “There has never been a good picture taken of a UFO”!

Ivanhoe Chaput.

I asked Ivanhoe about what lux rating you should specify when purchasing a camcorder for the purpose of videoing a UFO at night time. He replied:

The lux rating of a video camera may be important to low level light on terra firma, i.e. taping your kids blowing out birthday cake candles in a dimly lit kitchen, but when it comes to small dots against a black sky, many complexities make good images almost impossible. Almost every video camera sold today has the ability to capture even low magnitude stars. This is not the problem with taping UFO’s against a low lux background.

For some information, lux = 50 x the lens f number squared, divided by exposure time in seconds x ISO (film speed). This doesn’t mean much for video cameras, they follow a different set of rules since the “film speed” is dynamic. However, for the sake of a camera’s capability, if you shot at f8, your exposure was 1/3 second and your ISO film speed was 64, you would have a lux capability of 150. Or the object you are photographing should have this approximate lux value.

Lux = 50 x 8² = 150

^{1/3 x 64}

If however you are in a low light situation and you set your camera at a 1 second exposure time, your lens has a f1.4 aperture and you are shooting wide open (f1.4) and your film speed is 200, you will be able to capture an object of a lux value of 0.49.

Lux = 50 x 1.4² = 0.49

1 x 200

Change your film speed to 400 and you can capture an object with a value of 0.245 lux.

A video camera may have a low lux rating, but this does not give any indication as to its picture image quality especially at low light levels. A lux rating of .5 means that you can take pictures under moonlight.

To get the best out of the average video camera one should set the focus on manual and at infinity. The reason one should do this is that most objects that represent a small spot of light that is visible enough to catch a person’s peripheral vision will most likely saturate the pixels on the CCD chip due to the surrounding black that the camera is trying to set the exposure for. This usually causes pixel bleed (a long subject that involves glass coatings and so on). What this means is that adjacent pixels will be lit and the object will only appear as a slightly larger white dot with fuzzy edges.

Most video cameras have what is called an exposure lock. If one has the time during a sighting, and there is a street light or some other light in the vicinity, one should point the camera at this light, zoom in until the light fills about 50% of the viewfinder and lock the exposure. Afterward, pan back to the UFO. It will be much dimmer, but may produce a much better outline and may bring out unseen features of the object. Do zoom in and out.

On the other hand, if the object is quite dim, simply set the focus on manual and at infinity. This is the best you will be able to do. If you do not set the focus at infinity, you will experience blooming as the camera searches for some feature to focus onto. This is what is seen on many UFO tapings where the object seems to get unrealistically large and round or take the shape of an internal camera aperture. It can also bring out dirt or smudge features on the surface of the lens itself. Blooming is obvious to an expert.

To answer your question, a rating of .3 lux is very good. Even a 3 lux camera will provide an adequate image. It is not so much the low light gathering capability of the camera as the overall quality of the camera used. This includes the CCD chip, the lens, the way the camera has been preset for infinity focus at the factory and so on. It is true that the higher lux rated cameras will produce more grainy images at lower light levels, however, we have to shoot with what we happen to have at the time don’t we now?

I hope this has shed some light on the lux of things. I would be very interested in getting a copy of the article. This has been fun.

Best regards,
Ivanhoe Chaput
President
CC Design Development Inc.
3545-A Lomita Blvd.
Torrance, CA 90505 USA

(Source: http://www.mara.org.uk/how_to_video_a_ufo.htm)