The Zfilm, The copies and The Geraldo

[Mark Tyler]

On 3/10/2022 at 9:00 PM, Sandy Larsen said:

Z310 - No motion blur is present on any object

That's not quite right.  Z310 is much more blurry than Z312 (note the sun visors and windshield especially):

Here are some other Z-film frames for comparison:

https://sites.google.com/site/lightboxzframes/

[Sandy Larsen]

On 3/11/2022 at 6:54 AM, Sean Coleman said:

Could Z310 be blurless due to Zap not panning right with his camera due to the limo slowing/stopping- so for a few frames his camera is almost stationary, bringing all subject matter into focus?

 

Yay! Finally someone with common sense asking a common sense question on this topic.

Sean, Z310 is exactly what we would see if the limo had either stopped or slowed down significantly. In the latter case, there would still be motion blur, but there would be so little that it couldn't be distinguished from the defocus blur that is on every object in every frame.

Jeremy thinks that I need to show how those who altered the film did so in a way that would result in the motion blur disappearing. (Just like what you just did, BTW!) But that is just plain nonsense. All I needed to show is how the deblurring could not have occurred naturally. Which I did when I showed that whatever removed the blur needed to have been able to detect which areas of the film had motion blur and which didn't. And then it needed to be able to somehow remove the motion blur in those areas and leave behind what would have been there had there been no motion blur. By showing that, I proved that human intervention was involved. In other words, alteration occurred.

I believe that what I said in the prior paragraph is just common sense. If I am right then Jeremy seems to be lacking in commons sense. If I am wrong, then I am overestimating the ability of fairly intelligent people to follow my reasoning or to reason it thorough themselves.

Another possibility that has entered my mind is that Jeremy has an anti-alterationist ideology that prevents him from following reasoning that leads to what he can't believe.

 

[Mark Tyler]

6 hours ago, Mark Tyler said:

That's not quite right.  Z310 is much more blurry than Z312 (note the sun visors and windshield especially):

Here are some other Z-film frames for comparison:

https://sites.google.com/site/lightboxzframes/

Mmm, that's irritating the links died for some reason.  Anyway, here are those frames again:

[Sandy Larsen]

6 hours ago, Mark Tyler said:

On 3/10/2022 at 2:00 PM, Sandy Larsen said:

No motion blur is present on any object

That's not quite right.  Z310 is much more blurry than Z312 (note the sun visors and windshield especially):

 

Yes, Mark, you are right. I just went through frames Z300 through Z325 and found that  the limousine is quite focused in Z304, Z312, and Z323.

The reason I said what I did (what you quoted above) is because John Costella noted that there are no focused frames in the copy of the Zapruder film that he has, but that he knows the film in the Archives is focused because he has seen a few frames from other copies of it that ARE focused.

It's possible that what he meant was that the frames he saw were ones where EVERYTHING in them are focused, not just the limo. He may have said that and I misunderstood him.

Anyway, this revelation doesn't affect the validity of my proof. It just means that the small amount of blur we see on the limo -- assuming there is no foul play that could have resulted in it -- must be due to Zapruder not tracking the limo perfectly in most frames, rather than being due to defocus occurring when copying the film. This actually makes a lot of sense.

I need to go and edit my proof to account for this new revelation.

 

[Mark Tyler]

34 minutes ago, Sandy Larsen said:

Anyway, this revelation doesn't affect the validity of my proof. It just means that the small amount of blur we see on the limo -- assuming there is no foul play that could have resulted in it -- must be due to Zapruder not tracking the limo perfectly in most frames, rather than being due to defocus occurring when copying the film. This actually makes a lot of sense.

I think you are right, Zapruder really did struggle to track the limo (especially Z290-Z320 due to the deceleration).  Where we see similar blurring in the background and foreground such as Z310, it's probably where Zapruder is panning slower than the car, so nothing is correctly focused.

However, as you say, if there is a frame with perfectly sharp foreground and background then that would be very hard to explain given what we see elsewhere in the film.

[Sandy Larsen]

15 hours ago, Mark Knight said:

[Sean Coleman] just MAY have found the "Rosetta Stone" of film alteration. Some of the witnesses said that the limo slowed/stopped PRIOR to the fatal headshot. If the limo slowed/stopped at approximately Z-310, that would confirm what the witnesses claimed. But since the extant Z-film appears to show no slowing/stop of the limo, that would mean that frame removal may have occurred around this point if the witnesses are correct.

I'm not saying that is or isn't the case. I'm saying that would make sense IF it occurred. Would the SS allow the record to show the limo slowed or stopped 3 frames PRIOR to the fatal headshot? That would make Greer appear to be at fault, to some degree or another, in JFK's murder. [No that doesn't make him a knowledgeable accomplice.]

It's something worth considering. Chris Davidson, does this pass a plausibility test?

 

Yeah, very good Mark.

But just remember that Z303 also shows lack of motion blur. So that needs to be accounted for.

It's possible that the alterationists made composite frames from other frames, for whatever reasons, and didn't bother making sure they had appropriate motion blur. And then inserted these frames where they needed them.

 

[Sandy Larsen]

5 minutes ago, Mark Tyler said:

However, as you say, if there is a frame with perfectly sharp foreground and background then that would be very hard to explain given what we see elsewhere in the film.

 

Yes, very hard to explain indeed. In fact, in the place where I read John Costella talking about this proof of alteration, he doesn't even use a frame from his copy of Zapruder for his proof. He uses a frame that was published in Life magazine, Z232, for his proof.

http://johncostella.com/jfk/intro/life2.jpg

Notice how the two bystanders standing on the lawn are in sharp focus, as is the limo, and that there is absolutely no discernible motion blur on either. This is impossible given that the limo is moving.

BTW, it is interesting to note that the two people on the lawn never look at Kennedy.

Here is the place Costella talks about motion blur in the Z film:

http://johncostella.com/jfk/intro/blur.html

 

[Jeremy Bojczuk]

Sandy Larsen writes:

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Jeremy thinks that I need to show how those who altered the film did so in a way that would result in the motion blur disappearing.

Sandy seems to be begging the question with his phrase, "those who altered the film". Again with the dogmatic pronouncements! If he still thinks he has proved, rather then merely claimed, that anyone "altered the film", Sandy needs to show that there are no straightforward explanations for his pet anomaly.

One possible straightforward explanation is that what we see is due to the normal functioning of Zapruder's camera, as Sean has suggested. Another is that what we see is due to the copying process, which is where many previous claims of alteration have come unstuck. Since it is next to impossible to identify all the factors that might have affected digital copies of digital copies of physical copies of a particular 8mm film taken with a particular camera and lens, Sandy has a big task on his hands.

Quote

I showed that whatever removed the blur

Whether blur has been deliberately removed is the thing Sandy needs to demonstrate.

Quote

It's possible that the alterationists made composite frames from other frames, for whatever reasons, and didn't bother making sure they had appropriate motion blur. And then inserted these frames where they needed them.

Well, is it possible? Sandy needs to demonstrate this, not merely assume it. Those "whatever reasons" need to be identified, and the more precisely the better:

• Why should anyone have "made composite frames from other frames"?
• Which "other frames" did they make "composite frames from"?
• How exactly did they make these "composite frames"? Did they use the same finger-snapping, hey-presto method that they used to fake the Moorman photograph?
• If they had the ability, equipment and time to do this, why "didn't [they] bother making sure they had appropriate motion blur"?
• Why would anyone have wanted to insert these hypothetical frames "where they needed them"?
• How did they manage to insert these hypothetical frames without leaving physical traces on the film that's in the National Archives, the one that was in Zapruder's camera during the assassination?
• How were they able to do all of this, with the time and materials available?
• And who were 'they' anyway?
• Why would 'they' have been even the slightest bit concerned about what the Zapruder film showed?
• If 'they' were trying to make the film compatible with the lone-gunman theory, how exactly did 'they' end up creating the single item of physical evidence that most strongly contradicts the lone-gunman idea?
• Who was in charge of this incompetent operation? The Keystone Cops? Laurel and Hardy?

It's like Phil Willis's extra-long leg, which, according to John Butler, was painted in by persons unknown, for reasons unknown. Why would anyone have wanted to paint an extra-long leg onto a spectator in a few frames of the Zapruder film? In his zeal to spot the killer anomaly that proves alteration, John doesn't seem to have asked himself that basic question.

Sandy too needs to provide plausible answers to some basic questions, and tell us what the purpose of his proposed alterations was, and how in practice they might have been achieved. He could start with an even more fundamental question: why should the conspirators, whoever they were, have cared what the Zapruder film showed?

As far as I can tell, Sandy's pet anomaly was first identified back in the 1990s. At least a quarter of a century has gone by, and still no-one has come up with plausible answers to any of these questions. Until someone does, it's just an anomaly without an explanation. 

Quote

Jeremy has an anti-alterationist ideology

Ideology is the wrong word. I'm quite happy to accept that a particular item of evidence has been altered, if the claim is credible. Altering witness statements, for example, would have been easy to do, and there are plausible reasons why it might have been done.

Home movies and photographs, on the other hand, are much more difficult to alter than witnesses' statements. Nevertheless, I'm open to the possibility (though not yet convinced) that the backyard photographs, for example, are not genuine. This claim would be credible for three reasons:

• There probably would have been sufficient time to alter or fabricate them.
• There's a plausible reason for doing so.
• They form a small, self-contained group. It would have been relatively straightforward to eliminate any contradictions between them, thereby minimising the risk of exposure.

But those three reasons do not apply to the Dealey Plaza films and photos. As we have seen with Sandy's pet anomaly, no-one has yet demonstrated that there was sufficient time to perform their preferred alterations, or what plausible reason there was for performing them. There isn't even any agreement about what alterations might have been made: some people claim that frames were removed from the Zapruder film, while Sandy at least has the originality to claim that frames were inserted.

More importantly, these films and photos do not form a small, self-contained group, a fact which would have dramatically increased the difficulty of making convincing alterations. Aspects of the assassination were captured in many dozens of home movies, news films and photographs. Alterations to one image would almost always require that alterations were made to others, as we have seen with the long-debunked claim that the car stopped: if one of the Zapruder, Muchmore and Nix films was altered, so must the other two, and probably the Bronson film and Moorman photograph also (and most of the witnesses must have been mistaken as well, but that's another topic).

We know that there was no plan to identify or track down those spectators who brought cameras to Dealey Plaza. Spectators dispersed far and wide, taking their cameras and films with them. Some images came to light months or years after the assassination; others may still be sitting in a box in someone's attic. No-one has yet explained how any conspirators could have overcome the risk of alterations being exposed by images that might have turned up in the future.

Until someone deals with all of these problems and comes up with a credible argument to support their claim, there's no good reason to suppose that the Zapruder film, or the Moorman photograph, or the Altgens photographs, or any of the other Dealey Plaza images, were altered.

That isn't a matter of ideology. It's simply the principle that claims need to be supported by sufficient evidence. The more far-fetched the claim, the stronger the evidence needs to be.

[Sandy Larsen]

52 minutes ago, Jeremy Bojczuk said:

Sandy seems to be begging the question with his phrase, "those who altered the film". Again with the dogmatic pronouncements! If he still thinks he has proved, rather then merely claimed, that anyone "altered the film", Sandy needs to show that there are no straightforward explanations for his pet anomaly.

 

Of course human intervention was involved in the removal of motion blur in frame Z310. What else in 1963 was capable of identifying every case of motion blur in the photo, removing it, and replacing it with what would have been there had there been no motion blur?

(Even today it would be quite a feat to design a computer algorithm that could do what I just described.)

I'm not saying that a human did all those things. I'm saying that it would require a human if those things were done. Clearly humans did some Z film altering that so happened to result in a frame that looks like those things were done.

There is no way a natural process could have removed the motion blur. Claiming that would be like claiming that thousands of dice thrown in the air could come up all sixes

Jeremy is clearly out of his league here. Though I don't think one needs to be a physicist to see that my argument is sound.

BTW I earned a masters degree in electrical engineering and specialized in digital signal processing. In one of my classes we learned how to model optical blurring with the convolution of an image with a "point spread function."  Convolution is a mathematical operation that is used in performing convolution, cross-correlation, and auto-correlation.

A blurry image can be deblurred by convolving the image with the inverse of the point spread function. You can get results like this:

 

 

There will always be some artifacts in the deblurred image due to edge effects. The larger the photo relative to the subject, the less severe the artifacts will be.

 

[Sandy Larsen]

2 hours ago, Jeremy Bojczuk said:

Sandy needs to show that there are no straightforward explanations for his pet anomaly.

 

How can I show something that does not exist?

If there is an explanation that doesn't require human intervention, my critics will have to show it to me. I'm confidant that they cannot and never will.

 

2 hours ago, Jeremy Bojczuk said:

One possible straightforward explanation is that what we see is due to the normal functioning of Zapruder's camera, as Sean has suggested.

 

I will give my house to anybody who can show how a simple, non-computerized camera can remove motion blur in a photograph or frame that consists of both stationary and moving objects. It cannot be done.

Now, motion blur can be reduced by increasing shutter speed... along with using a faster film or opening up the aperture in order to prevent under exposure. But motion blur will still be there. The problem is that a camera is incapable of doing those things for individual frames in a film.

 

2 hours ago, Jeremy Bojczuk said:

As far as I can tell, Sandy's pet anomaly was first identified back in the 1990s. At least a quarter of a century has gone by, and still no-one has come up with plausible answers to any of these questions.

 

That's because the only plausible answer is that humans have monkeyed around with the film.

And since Jeremy will not accept that fact, he will always wander around in the dark thinking something supernatural happened to the film. Though he won't recognize it as supernatural because he doesn't understand optics.

 

[Jonathan Cohen]

49 minutes ago, Sandy Larsen said:

That's because the only plausible answer is that humans have monkeyed around with the film.

Please explain how "humans" monkeying around with individual frames of film that are the size of a fingernail could somehow, with technology available in 1963, selectively alter motion blur from frame to frame. How was it done? Further, please explain how alterations of this type would in any way be possible given that the Zapruder film in the National Archives is the in-camera original.

[Sandy Larsen]

22 minutes ago, Jonathan Cohen said:

Please explain how "humans" monkeying around with individual frames of film that are the size of a fingernail could somehow, with technology available in 1963, selectively alter motion blur from frame to frame. How was it done?

 

I dunno... I guess they employed midgets with itsy-bitsy artist's brushes and magnifying glasses....

Or maybe Dick Van Dyke could tell you how:            (Hint: sodium vapor process)

 

 

But one thing's for sure... it required an intelligent being, the only ones I know exist being humans.

I just loved this scene in Mary Poppins.  Noot!  Noot!

 

22 minutes ago, Jonathan Cohen said:

Please explain how "humans" monkeying around with individual frames of film .... selectively alter motion blur from frame to frame. How was it done?

 

Very carefully.  😋

But more likely, what I said in my prior post is what happened:

I'm not saying that a human did all those [motion blur removal] things. I'm saying that it would require a human if those things were done. [But instead,] Clearly humans did some Z film altering that so happened to result in a frame that looks like those things were done.

 

22 minutes ago, Jonathan Cohen said:

Further, please explain how alterations of this type would in any way be possible given that the Zapruder film in the National Archives is the in-camera original.

 

If it is true that the original Z film was placed in the Archives before the point in time when it was altered, then it must have later been removed and replaced with an early copy of the public domain copy.

 

[Jonathan Cohen]

53 minutes ago, Sandy Larsen said:

I dunno... I guess they employed midgets with itsy-bitsy artist's brushes and magnifying glasses....

So as I suspected, you have no actual explanation for how any of your alleged alterations could have been accomplished with 1963 technology -- just your standard "this looks wrong to me! So it must be fake!"

[Sandy Larsen]

1 hour ago, Jonathan Cohen said:

So as I suspected, you have no actual explanation for how any of your alleged alterations could have been accomplished with 1963 technology -- just your standard "this looks wrong to me! So it must be fake!"

 

Spin it any way you want. I have shown that the motion blur has spontaneously disappeared and that it could not have occurred naturally because it would have required some thought. If you don't believe a human being did it, then you must believe it occurred supernaturally.

(BTW, I CAN of course think of many possible ways a human could have done it. But without having at least a theory as to why they would want to mess with that particular frame, there is no point in my doing so.)

 

Edited March 14, 2022 by Sandy Larsen

[Jonathan Cohen]

17 minutes ago, Sandy Larsen said:

I have shown that the motion blur has spontaneously disappeared and that it could not have occurred naturally because it would have required some thought.

You have certainly shown no such thing. In fact, the alterations you are alleging to have taken place are impossible given technology available in 1963.