Researchers,Go Digital or Not!

By Paul H.

 

For over 150 years, photography has been a chemical process. Images are captured on photographic film. This is made up of layers of light-sensitive silver halide emulsion coated on a flexible base. Film is exposed to light in a camera. This creates a latent image, which is made visible by immersion in a solution of chemicals called a 'developer'. Prints are made by projecting the image from the film on sensitised paper and processing the material in a series of chemical baths. Much of the processing of both film and paper must take place in darkened rooms to avoid extraneous light reaching the sensitised emulsions.

Digital photography has changed all this. There is no need for film, chemicals or dark rooms. Images are captured with arrays of photo sensors and are processed by computer software. Prints are made by firing tiny jets of coloured ink or dyes at paper.

It has become fairly common to describe film photography as 'analog', to differentiate it from digital photography. In the sense being used here, analog refers to a signal where the output is proportional to the input. A light meter is a good example of an analog instrument. Light falling on a photocell generates an electrical current which moves a needle across a scale. The brighter the light, the greater the movement.

As a researcher,you hear stories from different areas that sometime while out researching,their digital equipment will fail in some sort of way,batteries go dead,it doesn’t take the picture or just maybe the camcorder doesn’t want to record that special moment.

So now you are getting irate,now you find yourself wanting to throw this equipment into the nearest creek because you know it is getting time to replace it but you really don’t want too.Then you think,heck! it worked just fine before I came out here and after you get back home,it works fine now,so what is going on!.

Does this big hairy guy have the ability to shut down digital equipment? Does he have the capability to alter the performance of said equipment,maybe we will never know for sure.

Incidents

I have had this happen to me personally on two occasions in the past couple of weeks,I recently made a visit to Beaver Creek State Park and about six of us went on a hike and along the hike I was doing wood knocks and a series of woops,two of the the researchers in our group responded with a woop and out of nowhere from across the creek was another woop that was heard.I proceeded with panning that area with my Sony AVCHD HDR-XR160 camera and  on my screen it was recording but nothing was on the hard drive,I proceeded to do this two more times with no success.We left that area and proceeded deeper in and low and behold,my Sony worked just fine,I cannot explain this,nor can I come up with an explanation.

One week later at another research area that I will not give an exact location,my wife heard what sounded like limbs breaking in the immediate area,I grabbed my Sony XR160 and headed in,once I got to the area in question,again my camera failed to record but worked just fine ever since.

This same area, a fellow researcher that that I investigate with went to that same area with a full battery in his camcorder had a similar issue except his recording time went from 163 minutes to 8 minutes immediately and this is after what he described as something growled at him from a distance.

I am wondering if researchers looking for this elusive creature should have a analog camera for backup just in case,I will leave that up to you,I personally think that it wouldn’t be a bad idea and is also worth a shot because you never know what might happen or even come across while you least expect it!.

 

 

By Paul H.
Ohio Bigfoot Hunters