Simple proof that the Zapruder film has been altered.

[Bob Ness]

1 hour ago, Sandy Larsen said:

Even though Team Ness didn't contribute anything worth repeating.

There is no "Team Ness" Sandy. I'm not necessarily disagreeing or saying you're wrong either. I'm saying your assumptions about the TWO possible blurring scenarios is flawed. That's all.

In order to make the argument you're making I'd suggest you shore up your assumptions because you want them to be bullet proof unless you are authoritative enough to bypass basic questions. I've been in this field for many decades and trust me there's more ways to screw up an image both intentionally and unintentionally than you can imagine. And I know you can imagine a lot hahaha.

[Sandy Larsen]

On 3/24/2022 at 11:04 AM, Bob Ness said:

There is no "Team Ness" Sandy. I'm not necessarily disagreeing or saying you're wrong either. I'm saying your assumptions about the TWO possible blurring scenarios is flawed. That's all.

In order to make the argument you're making I'd suggest you shore up your assumptions because you want them to be bullet proof unless you are authoritative enough to bypass basic questions. I've been in this field for many decades and trust me there's more ways to screw up an image both intentionally and unintentionally than you can imagine. And I know you can imagine a lot hahaha.

 

Bob,

First, just so you know, the only reason I referred to you as "Team Ness" was so I could tie you into my cheerleading comment/joke about Jonathan Cohen. There have been many threads where I was without question right about something  and one of my critics would respond with some lame argument only to be followed by a bunch of congratulatory back-slapping by his peers. It often happened that none of my critics even understood what my evidence or my line of reasoning was, and just as often didn't even understand the argument made by my critic... they just wanted to high five their "team" members. I consider that behavior to be intellectually dishonest. I can't say so on the forum and so I deal with it by making a joke.

Now here is the problem I have with your comment. You say that there is a flaw in my assumption about there being are two types of photographic blurring. You don't say that there might be.... you say that there is. What this means is that you must know what my flaw is. Because if you don't know, how can you honestly say that there is a flaw?

Isn't my reasoning on this sound? I believe it is.

Well if you know what the flaw is, why don't you just tell me?

Now I'm quite certain that there is only defocus blur and motion blur. At least as far as major blurring goes. I know that each of these can be broken down into subtypes, especially motion blur. I don't examine every subtype I'm aware of in my proof because either it is insignificant, or it doesn't apply. I don't mention them because I try to keep my proofs simple and there's little point mentioning things that don't make a difference. I am not writing a book.

I got what you said abut sprocket slippage, and yes that is one of the blurring types I considered. It is a type of motion blur. I ignored it for my proof for two reasons: First, I figured that that if slippage were occurring, there would probably be some unusual appearance or artifacts that would give it away. And second, I couldn't see how it could possible for sprocket slippage to add blur only to a specific group of objects in a way that would make it look like motion blur. So I considered it to be irrelevant.

The bottom line is that if there is a flaw in my reasoning, somebody has to point it out to me. I don't know what I don't know. It isn't helpful to simply say there is a flaw. And one shouldn't say there is a flaw without actually knowing there is.

 

Edited March 25, 2022 by Sandy Larsen

[W. Tracy Parnell]

3 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

But I removed it so there would be no confusion or hard feelings.

Thank you-very decent of you.

[Pat Speer]

This has probably been discussed, but I'll throw it out there in case it has not. 

Zapruder was panning along with a moving object while filming. As a result

1) The stationary objects in the background would be blurry in comparison to the objects of his focus, namely the limo and its occupants. This blur would increase moreover as the limo came abreast of him. It's like watching a train rush past. You can see everything real clear as it comes towards you but the background becomes a blur as it nears and you turn your head to follow the train's progression.

2) This, of course, assumes he was panning at the exact speed of the limo. The street on which the limo was traveling was curved, and the limo did not travel at a consistent speed. As a result, it would not just be the background that gets blurry, but the limo itself when Zapruder's panning rate exceeded or lagged behind the speed of the limo.

3) This latter event leads to another strange circumstance. Should Zapruder's panning rate have lagged behind the speed of the limo at certain spots of the film, the background could very well have been in focus while the limo would look blurry.

As a consequence, in any film of a moving object in which the cameraman is panning along with the object, there could be frames in which the background is blurrier than the object being filmed, and there could be frames in which the object being filmed is blurrier than the background. 

 

Edited March 25, 2022 by Pat Speer

[Greg Doudna]

On 3/12/2022 at 4:30 PM, Sandy Larsen said:

I  trust that John Costella didn't do anything that would add or remove motion blur. I am confident that if you get a pair of Z310/Z311 frames from any copy of the Z film, it will show the motion blur exactly as we see in John Costella's copies.

Sandy, in light of your saying blur has been added at Z311 in a frame you are showing that is from the Costella edition, and David Healy referring above to Costella enhancing his copy's frames including with motion blur, and Costella himself saying he wrote software to add motion blur and has a whole discussion telling of his adding motion blur to photos, and Costella says he enhanced the frames of his copy of Zapruder . . . what is the basis for your trust and confidence that Costella did not add that motion blur at Z311?   

Edited March 25, 2022 by Greg Doudna

[Chris Bristow]

2 hours ago, Greg Doudna said:

Sandy, in light of your saying blur has been added at Z311 in a frame you are showing that is from the Costella edition, and David Healy referring above to Costella enhancing his copy's frames including with motion blur, and Costella himself saying he wrote software to add motion blur and has a whole discussion telling of his adding motion blur to photos, and Costella says he enhanced the frames of his copy of Zapruder . . . what is the basis for your trust and confidence that Costella did not add that motion blur at Z311?   

If the copy of Z311 you are looking at from Costella shows added blur, and it is known that Costella was enhancing and was expert at adding blur, and if you do not know differently from having checked an earlier or non-Costella copy, why go to conclude an extraordinary explanation that there was alteration in the original Zapruder instead of considering a mundane explanation that the anomaly could be from secondarily added enhancement done by Costella?

Looking at the Groden copy and the MPI copy I don't see any difference at least in the frames I have compared. For this thread I have used the Groden copies and other than not being pincushion corrected they seem to be the same.

[Greg Doudna]

4 hours ago, Chris Bristow said:

Looking at the Groden copy and the MPI copy I don't see any difference at least in the frames I have compared. For this thread I have used the Groden copies and other than not being pincushion corrected they seem to be the same.

OK thanks. I withdraw the question to Sandy.

[Sandy Larsen]

On 3/24/2022 at 3:14 PM, Pat Speer said:

This has probably been discussed, but I'll throw it out there in case it has not. 

Zapruder was panning along with a moving object while filming. As a result

1) The stationary objects in the background would be blurry in comparison to the objects of his focus, namely the limo and its occupants. This blur would increase moreover as the limo came abreast of him. It's like watching a train rush past. You can see everything real clear as it comes towards you but the background becomes a blur as it nears and you turn your head to follow the train's progression.

2) This, of course, assumes he was panning at the exact speed of the limo. The street on which the limo was traveling was curved, and the limo did not travel at a consistent speed. As a result, it would not just be the background that gets blurry, but the limo itself when Zapruder's panning rate exceeded or lagged behind the speed of the limo.

3) This latter event leads to another strange circumstance. Should Zapruder's panning rate have lagged behind the speed of the limo at certain spots of the film, the background could very well have been in focus while the limo would look blurry.

As a consequence, in any film of a moving object in which the cameraman is panning along with the object, there could be frames in which the background is blurrier than the object being filmed, and there could be frames in which the object being filmed is blurrier than the background. 

 

 

Pat,

The concepts you describe are correct and well understood by some commenting here. And in fact the concepts you describe are at the heart of the proof.

 

[Sandy Larsen]

18 hours ago, Greg Doudna said:

...Costella himself saying he wrote software to add motion blur and has a whole discussion telling of his adding motion blur to photos, ...

 

Greg,

Costella did intentionally add motion blur to one specific frame than I am aware of, and he did so for the express purpose of demonstrating what the motion blur should look like in Zapruder. Here is the frame he (later) added motion blur to:

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

(The forum software would not allow me to embed image, so you'll have to click the link to see it.)

This is frame Z232. Notice how sharp everything is... almost no motion blur on anything, which is impossible if there was no substantial human intervention to remove it.

Costella got this frame from Life Magazine, and according to him it wasn't Life Magazine who removed the motion blur. He says he knows that because later, better copies of the Z film became available that also show the lack of motion blur. (I don't know why he didn't use Z232 from one of those copies. Maybe he's referring to the copy in the Archives.)

BTW that Z232 frame is one of Costella's simple proofs that the Z film has been altered.

Now I will tell you what Costella meant when he said he added motion blur to a frame. His goal was to take that blur-free Z232 frame and show what it SHOULD have looked like according to simple physics. He did this by using a computer program to add the appropriate motion blur.

In the following frame, Costella added motion blur only to the moving objects in order to show what the frame would look like if Zapruder held the camera still... in order to follow only stationary objects:

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

In the next frame, Costella added motion blur only to the stationary objects... in order to show what the frame would look like if Zapruder perfectly followed the limo:

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

Finally, in the next frame Costella added motion blur half to the stationary objects and half to the moving objects... in order to show what the frame would look like if Zapruder followed the limo at half speed:

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

 

The last blurred image is close to what we see in Z310 of this proof.

 

Edited March 26, 2022 by Sandy Larsen

[Sandy Larsen]

 

DVP just posted the above 1964 video. It includes a portion of the Z film (beginning at about 8:00), which makes the video interesting because the Z clip can be compared with the publicly released Z-film to see if any changes have been made since 1964. Unfortunately the clip has been overexposed in this video, thus making comparisons impossible in a number of important frames.

I don't have what is needed to view the film frame by frame, but by using the YouTube pause button I was able to find and copy a few frames that definitely indicate alteration by humans.

Before anybody leaps out of their chair in excitement, I want to point out that I can't think of any reason why anybody would want to make the alterations I found. But they are nonetheless alterations that required human intervention.

I will post what I found shortly.

 

[Sandy Larsen]

Here is Z300 from the public Z film:

 

Here is the same frame from the Secret Service film:

 

Note it's a double exposure. Normally I would blame this on mechanical failure of one of the photographic devices. However, look closely and you will see that there is no double exposure of the limo. Hmm... odd.

Here is Z275 from the public Z film:

 

Here is the same frame from the Secret Service film:

 

Again we have double exposure. Probably double exposure of the whole frame, as would be normal. But, again, no double exposure of the limo!

Remember earlier in this thread when I pointed out "selective motion blur" in the extant Z film, and noted that this is not a natural phenomenon? Well, similarly, what we see here is "selective double exposure," which is also not a natural phenomenon. Someone had to have decided to double expose parts of the frame but not other parts. And then someone had to have determined a method for doing so. (Making a double exposure is trivial. But doing so on just some elements of the subject being photographed is not.)

 

[Jonathan Cohen]

3 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

Well, similarly, what we see here is "selective double exposure," which is also not a natural phenomenon. Someone had to have decided to double expose parts of the frame but not other parts. And then someone had to have determined a method for doing so. (Making a double exposure is trivial. But doing so on just some elements of the subject being photographed is not.)

As usual, you instantly turn conspiratorial without even stopping for a second to consider mundane, alternative explanations. Do you have any idea what the provenance of this copy of the film is? Clearly it is of poor quality. How do you know these anomalies you claim to see aren't artifacts of a multi-generational copying process?

[Sandy Larsen]

[deleted]

Edited July 7, 2022 by Sandy Larsen

[Sandy Larsen]

1 hour ago, Jonathan Cohen said:

How do you know these anomalies you claim to see aren't artifacts of a multi-generational copying process?

 

Because (multi-generational) copying of images generally does not result in double exposures or anything that looks like a double exposure. The exception is if someone copies image(s) twice on the same target film.

However, in the later case, ALL objects on the source image will be transferred to the target film in both exposures. There is no such thing as natural "SELECTIVE double exposure."

Here's an example of a double exposure from two different source images:

 

Here's an example of a double exposure from a single source image:

(Pretend that the limo also has a double image.)

 

The only artifacts that can result from (multi-generational) copying of images are blurriness, random noise, extremes in brightness or contrast, color changes, quantization, and aliasing.

 

 

Edited July 7, 2022 by Sandy Larsen

[Paul Cummings]

14 minutes ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

Because (multi-generational) copying of images generally does not result in double exposures or anything that looks like a double exposure. The exception is if someone copies image(s) twice on the same target film.

However, in the later case, ALL objects on the source image will be transferred to the target film in both exposures. There is no such thing as natural "SELECTIVE double exposure."

Here's an example of a double exposure from two different source images:

 

Here's an example of a double exposure from a single source image:

(Pretend that the limo also has a double image.)

 

The only artifacts that can result from (multi-generational) copying of images are blurriness, random noise, extremes in brightness or contrast, color changes, quantization, and aliasing.

 

 

Need an expert to help you out Sandy. Maybe Jim D can get Oliver Stone to help. lol