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The Zapruder camera


Pat Speer

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A friend of mine just gave me an old Bell and Howell Zoomatic camera. It was his family's camera and hasn't worked for decades. It is non-functioning. It appears to be the same model and make as zap's. Is there anything we can learn from this camera?

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one thing could be to set it as Zapruder had it and film a fine regular grid and use that to see the 'pin or barrel' distortions. I'd like to see something like that in order to see which area of the zap frames can be regarded as 'true'.

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one thing could be to set it as Zapruder had it and film a fine regular grid and use that to see the 'pin or barrel' distortions. I'd like to see something like that in order to see which area of the zap frames can be regarded as 'true'.

These are things other highly qualified researchers have already determined,

notably Dr. Costella, who is a specialist in lens effects.

If you are good at interpolations from raw data, you may determine this by

checking the STRAIGHTNESS of the concrete wall at the top of early frames.

The amount of curvature of the top of the wall indicates the ARC of the

pincushion distortion. This curvature may be interpolated over the entire

frame by the proper mathematics.

Do it yourself if you do not trust Costella. His newest version was fine tuned

to correct minor variations of a pixel or two. He had the advantage of comparison

with a panorama I shot using a tripod and fine ELeitz lens.

Jack

Edited by Jack White
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