Examples of some
of our Technical Equipment we use
Photography on an investigation
Photography during investigation is
essential as it enables the capture of what happened on the night and
also, if we’re lucky, can capture some interesting anomalies, such as
‘orbs’ and shadows. Simple “point-and-shoot” cameras that you can buy
in any good shop are useful as they are usually conveniently pocket
sized and easy to operate by all members of the team, but we also employ
‘bridge’ cameras as they offer increased flexibility over how we use
them.
Bridge cameras are a halfway house
between a point-and-shoot camera and a full Digital Single Lens Reflex
camera (DSLR) which would enable different lenses to be swapped on and
off for different purposes. As the team is entirely self-funded, a DSLR
is an expensive bit of kit that we hope to acquire in the near future.
In the meantime, the bridge cameras we use offer most of the features of
a DSLR but at a considerably reduced cost.
The bridge cameras we use are a Fuji
S6500fd and a INSERT MARK’S MODEL NUMBER. These cameras have a full
manual mode, meaning we can choose a low ISO setting for reduced ‘noise’
in the picture. This ensures that the pictures we take are not grainy,
meaning that anomalies are easier to distinguish when zoomed in to look
at than they would otherwise be with a high ISO (i.e. more sensitive but
more grainy) setting.
The cameras also have a built in
flash. This is useful for capturing ‘orbs’ and other light anomalies
for later review when we have finished the investigation and are
undertaking post-investigation analysis and follow up work. (It should
be noted that most orbs can be put down to dust or insects, and only
very few can not be explained by conventional means, even though they
are very impressive sometimes!)
Use of a tripod and the full manual
mode on the camera means we can employ long exposure times to capture
dark areas of an investigation without using a flash. This is sometimes
essential when the mediums and psychics are working as often they are
too sensitive to bright lights for a flash to be used.
We do however sometimes employ
‘light painting’, where we use a torch to ‘paint’ the area we are
photographing with light, meaning that we can highlight an area or
capture a scene that is extremely dark that would otherwise not be
achievable within the restrictions of exposure times on a bridge
camera. (Generally bridge cameras only offer exposure times up to 30
seconds, whereas a full DSLR will usually have a ‘bulb’ mode that means
you can hold the shutter open for as long as you require.) It should be
noted that light painting is less successful at capturing anomalies than
a flash is but it does enable an accurate record to be made of a
location where it is dark and the flash is not strong enough to
illuminate the entire scene that we are trying to capture, such as a
large room or garden.
‘Bracketing’, where a series of
photographs (usually 3) are taken in quick succession at slightly
different exposure levels, also proves useful on an investigation. If
an object or anomaly is captured in one photograph, the previous and/or
following frame(s) can then be compared during post-investigation work
to see if it is also in those frames. If it is then it is likely to be
a physical object that is easily explainable. If it is not then it is
worth looking at further.
When operating in near pitch
darkness, infrared light can be used by the digital video recorders to
illuminate the scene. Humans cannot see IR light so they will still see
only darkness, but the video cameras are able to pick it up and use it
as they would normal light. This sort of lighting is that which most
people are familiar with on ghost investigation programmes, in that it
gives a green glow to the filmed proceedings.
Infrared (IR) still photography
using the cameras mentioned above is, however, an area of investigation
that proves difficult with the technology available to us on the general
market. Most digital cameras have filters in them that block the
majority of infrared and ultraviolet light (that we can’t see as humans)
to ensure that the pictures captured by the camera are an accurate
reflection of what we were seeing at the time. They do however let some
IR light through, but not much, which the cameras usually record as a
purple-grey light.
This can be exploited by using the
IR lighting on the video cameras and their IR light attachments to
illuminate a pitch dark scene and then taking a photograph. It should
be noted, though, that the IR lights on most video cameras and IR light
attachments are not that strong. This means that capturing a good
photograph in pitch dark conditions is tricky because the only options
are a long exposure (which means that when people move around they
become blurs on the photograph) or a high ISO setting (which means that
you get a very noisy/grainy photograph, which can lead to difficulties
when determining what an anomaly that has been captured actually is).
It can produce some good results though, and it is an area that we hope
to work on over time.
Overall, photography on an
investigation requires some skill and also some luck – what we hope to
find rarely happens on demand, therefore we are to a certain extent in
the hands of what we are looking for!
