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Author Topic: 1938 Aerial Photos  (Read 386409 times)

Kevin Weeks

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Re: 1938 Aerial Photos
« Reply #240 on: August 05, 2013, 05:43:08 AM »

you can't put up low resolution JPEGs of the new images we haven't seen??

As I have tried to explain, we only have permission to use the photos for TIGHAR research.  What does that mean?  Who is a TIGHAR researcher?  Any member of the general public who signs on to the forum?  That renders the restriction meaningless.  A TIGHAR researcher is a TIGHAR member who has jpi[oined TIGHAR at the TIGHAResearcher level.

Posting the aerial photos for everyone as lo-res jpegs would not only violate the spirit of our agreement with the RNZAF but would not result in useful observations.

Ric, I do not mean to argue the point, but the museum had no problem sending me low resolution versions of all of the images directly. I received an email from Mr. O'Sullivan very early this morning. This is the email that was sent to me along with 41 images of the island.



Good morning Kevin

Yes, electronic reproductions are available for purchase.

 

I’m having them scanned at the moment. The resulting file will be 48bit, RGB, Tiff, at 5000px on long edge at 3000 dpi, with a resulting file size of approximately 1.5GB. They will optical scans with no interpolation. The price is $14 +GST per frame. There are 47 frames in total on the roll, so I’ll let you work out the total figure.

 

I have attached my order form which I’ll require to be completed and returned before I send any files. I’ve also attached some contact sheets for you to select individual frames. These were done before the frame numbers had been given so please just mark on the file somehow and return that to me.

 

Matthew O’Sullivan

Keeper of Photographs

 

 

Research Team         

phone: [+64 3] 343 9521 (general enquiries)
           [+64 3] 343 9537 (photographic enquiries)
fax:      [+64 3] 343 9549
45 Harvard Ave
Wigram 8042
Private Bag   4739
Christchurch 8140
New Zealand
www.airforcemuseum.co.nz

AIR FORCE MUSEUM OF NEW ZEALAND
P  Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail

Regards

The Info Team

Air Force Museum of New Zealand



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Ric Gillespie

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Re: 1938 Aerial Photos
« Reply #241 on: August 05, 2013, 05:56:50 AM »

Ric, I do not mean to argue the point, but the museum had no problem sending me low resolution versions of all of the images directly. I received an email from Mr. O'Sullivan very early this morning. This is the email that was sent to me along with 41 images of the island.

I too have an email from Matt O'Sullivan. 

"The photos are for your (TIGHAR) research only. If they are used in any type of publication, including film, the credit "RNZAF Official" must be used, not necessarily on screen but definitely in the credits. No you can't sell copies, any enquiries to that end should be referred back to the Museum."

I would urge anyone who wants to see the photos but does not want to become a TIGHAResearcher to contact Matt.  Looks like the electronic reproductions he's offering might be a nice income stream for the museum.
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Tim Collins

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Re: 1938 Aerial Photos
« Reply #242 on: August 05, 2013, 07:20:13 AM »

...
I would urge anyone who wants to see the photos but does not want to become a TIGHAResearcher to contact Matt.  Looks like the electronic reproductions he's offering might be a nice income stream for the museum.

Somehow I think getting the contact sheets for free is the whole point of the exercise.
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Kevin Weeks

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Re: 1938 Aerial Photos
« Reply #243 on: August 05, 2013, 07:40:32 AM »

...
I would urge anyone who wants to see the photos but does not want to become a TIGHAResearcher to contact Matt.  Looks like the electronic reproductions he's offering might be a nice income stream for the museum.

Somehow I think getting the contact sheets for free is the whole point of the exercise.

exactly, I don't have the capabilities to do anything with the high resolution images, I just wanted to know WHAT new photos had been found. I understand your reasoning behind only making the high resolution images available to "research level supporters" but not showing what was found to everyone seems to go against past findings of tighar.... especially when the low res versions appear to freely distributed...
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Irvine John Donald

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Re: 1938 Aerial Photos
« Reply #244 on: August 05, 2013, 08:18:48 AM »

I think that it was very kind of the Museum to first, seek out TIGHAR and if it had a desire to acquire the images for research. Secondly for providing the ability for TIGHAR to copy them at no cost. (yes there was a cost to Tighar to go and acquire them).

I also think its good for the Museum, who now see an opportunity to raise some, probably, much needed funds, to make their property available to the public.

The museum had no problem providing the low res shots to anyone who asked but it costs real money to make the scans or hi res copies.  Even getting a 1.5 gb scan of one image isn't just attaching it to an email.  Real work and computer server and internet time is involved.  I am sure if you fly out to New Zealand and offer to do all the scanning or photography then you too would be allowed to have a copy.  But the fact is the rights to the images are still owned by the Museum.  They want to raise money and for that reason you would likely still have conditions on your right to distribute your copies.

Thats all that the Museum has done here.  They essentially said to TIGHAR that they could come and make photographic copies for free but were restricted in distribution.  That was very generous of the Museum and Ric is living up to that commitment. 

The museum sees an opportunity to recover the costs of reproduction and distribution as well as probably to make a few bucks profit.  You can see that in the email from Matt O'Sllivan as reproduced in the earlier post from Kevin Weeks. 

Photography is art and is copyrightable.  Just like music, books and movies.  I sell some of my better photos and give some away.  Its my right but even in the stuff I give away I express that they can only be distributed to others where there is no personal or commercial gain.  After all, I own the photos and the rights. I want control of my work. 

Look at software.  Ever read that agreement it comes with?  It essentially says you do not own the software but are merely allowed to use a copy.  You cannot distribute it as though you own it.  Even freeware has this control.

Ric and TIGHAR are just living up to the commitment made to the museum as they should. Clearly the Museum can distribute whatever they want and its clear they have decided to distribute the low res copies.  Good for them.  That's marketing 101.  Give people a taste for free then up sell.  But Ric hasn't got that right.

The above is my opinion and is not intended to offend, just help to clarify.

BTW.  The Low Res shots are good only for showing you the composure of the shot.  Aerial shots are not close ups so the detail is in the hi res.  The scanned images at 48bit should be amazing.  I think it might be worth the $600 plus dollars for the whole set.
Respectfully Submitted;

Irv
 
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Kevin Weeks

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Re: 1938 Aerial Photos
« Reply #245 on: August 05, 2013, 08:59:34 AM »

irvine, if you noticed, I did not post the images that were sent to me. I was making a reasonable assumption that since the museum is freely distributing the sheets, that if asked they may give permission to display them on the forum.

It's a representation of what you would get from being a research level supporter or advertising for the museum's available prints....


I hope I'm not being perceived as promoting some sort of copyright infringement??
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Monty Fowler

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Re: 1938 Aerial Photos
« Reply #246 on: August 05, 2013, 10:13:37 AM »

Here's the thing - or my thing, anyway. Crowd sourcing or whatever you choose to call it, can be a wonderful tool and has yielded valuable clues for TIGHAR. Such as the Conroy Anomaly.

But, as Clint Eastwood used to say, "A man's got to know his limitations." TIGHAR has wisely, I think, recognized its limitations in this case and is using the few, scarce resources it has to try and extract the maximum amount of information in the minimum amount of time. Nobody who is doing this is getting paid. Neither is anyone hiding anything, or distorting anything, etc. It cost TIGHAR more than $3,000 to go to NZ to get this information. Was it worth it? Time - and patience - will tell. I know enough to never bet against TIGHAR.

LTM, who will let others do the manipulating,
Monty Fowler, TIGHAR No. 2189 CER
Ex-TIGHAR member No. 2189 E C R SP, 1998-2016
 
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Kevin Weeks

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Re: 1938 Aerial Photos
« Reply #247 on: August 05, 2013, 12:13:12 PM »

irvine, if you noticed, I did not post the images that were sent to me. I was making a reasonable assumption that since the museum is freely distributing the sheets, that if asked they may give permission to display them on the forum.

It's a representation of what you would get from being a research level supporter or advertising for the museum's available prints....


I hope I'm not being perceived as promoting some sort of copyright infringement??

For one, I don't perceive you as 'promoting' copyright infringement, but in this case we're dealing with a less-than typical research condition where the 'open forum' is concerned.  Because of good faith, TIGHAR needs to honor the agreement about 'research use only' and in this case, to carefully define what a 'researcher' is, hence Ric's statement above -

Quote
Posting the aerial photos for everyone as lo-res jpegs would not only violate the spirit of our agreement with the RNZAF but would not result in useful observations.

That is TIGHAR's working positon in this case.  We don't have the typical 'put 'em up and let 'em have at it' condition in this case, i.e. whereby all forum watchers can dive in and sleuth through the visuals.  What TIGHAR has done is define researcher as one at the 'Researcher' membership level, for starters, then as those among the research-level members who have the interest and equipment to fly-speck the hi-res versions of these photos for possible clues to an Earhart presence.

I enjoy being part of the Photo Research Group and don't want to appear snotty about it, please.  But to Ric's point - the low-res images are not going to provide much for real assessment, and an appropriate arrangement has been made that satisfies both the museum's proprietary interest as well as TIGHAR's need for serious study of the material, IMO.  It does not make sense to post low res images here to create a less-favorable search condition - and possibly offend the spirit of the agreement with the Museum.

If a member is able to freely get the low-res images from the museum gratis, more power to them, go for it.  TIGHAR just sees posting here as a violation of the trust built with the museum, I think.  But your ability to do any meaningful search will be very limited with the low-res images, hence TIGHAR's second concern: what is the point in supporting a less-enabled search via low-res images?

If studying these images for clues is your desire, why not seek to join the official photo group?

Like I said, I'm not looking to do research with them. I don't have capabilities to do so. I just wanted to know what were the newly discovered photos? that's it. take a peak, see how thorough the picture taking was.


It just seems a departure from the tighar norm where the maximum amount of data is shown. I'm hoping the current lawsuit isn't changing tighar's stance on data sharing. Yes I know there is an agreement! I'm talking the low res, "these are what we went to get detailed images of". As far as I know the museum was not asked if that could be shown, please correct me if I'm wrong on that.
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Charlie Chisholm

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Re: 1938 Aerial Photos
« Reply #248 on: August 05, 2013, 05:31:36 PM »

Am I the only one that see's a bit of underhandedness on Kevin's part?

The response from Matt indicates he thought he was going to sell images to Kevin, and he only sent the contact sheets so Kevin could pick out the ones he wanted copies of, for a price.

And yet Kevin now says he did all that to just to get the contact sheets for free.

So it sounds like Kevin "played" Matt, telling him he wanted to purchase copies, all the while just trying to get the contact sheets for free.

Seems a little shady - am I missing something?
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Joshua Doremire

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Re: 1938 Aerial Photos
« Reply #249 on: August 05, 2013, 11:12:25 PM »

Am I the only one that see's a bit of underhandedness on Kevin's part?

The response from Matt indicates he thought he was going to sell images to Kevin, and he only sent the contact sheets so Kevin could pick out the ones he wanted copies of, for a price.

And yet Kevin now says he did all that to just to get the contact sheets for free.

So it sounds like Kevin "played" Matt, telling him he wanted to purchase copies, all the while just trying to get the contact sheets for free.

Seems a little shady - am I missing something?

After looking at the condition of the negatives I wouldn't lose sleep over it. IMO they will need the higher resolution and several images to do much. As a perk the museum gets some free advertising by making it known the images are available for a price.

I have faith in TIGHAR that any 'smoking guns' would have been news before they returned from the trip. Further I imagine any interesting finds would be made known to the public by TIGHAR. Look at the sonar anomaly for an example.

So even if you don't have the means I imagine the results will be published eventually. They are NOT kidding about needing a (expensive even used) workstation class PC as a single image is 200+MB compared to your average Facebook picture of 1-10MB.
TIGHAR # 4274R
 
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Charlie Chisholm

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Re: 1938 Aerial Photos
« Reply #250 on: August 06, 2013, 02:02:11 AM »

After looking at the condition of the negatives I wouldn't lose sleep over it. IMO they will need the higher resolution and several images to do much. As a perk the museum gets some free advertising by making it known the images are available for a price.

Yes, I'm a Researcher and I have the higher resolution images, and even in those, things don't automatically pop out. That plane was flying pretty high - these are not closeups.

The advantage of several images of the same area, of course, is you can eliminate photo flaws - if something appears in more than one shot in the same place, it's not a photo flaw. Just a couple months ago we were fantasizing about Earhart and Noonan building the "Arrow" signal for aerial searchers, but it doesn't appear in any of the new images - it was a ghost. Such is the danger in working with just one image.

It dawned on me while looking at the hi-res photos, that it would be nice if it were possible to overlay the official map grid on each image, so as to more easily identify the locations of anomalies, but since these are all obliques at an unknown (precisely) altitude and angle, that would be one heck of a math job.

I don't normally question people's ethics, but it just didn't seem straightforward to me. I'm probably just missing something, and 'taint my business anyway. I just pictured a bunch of other people doing the same thing just to get the free contact sheets and overwhelming Matt, none of them intending to ever actually purchase copies. But it might be in Matt's interest to make the contact sheets available online somewhere just so people would be encouraged to purchase copies. The contact sheets would be really low-res and useful only for choosing which pics to order.

It would help the museum if they did sell some copies. Like people could buy just one or two or three shots and not spend a lot, and still have pretty good copies. They are lower res, but they are big enough to work with. Good enough for the casual poker-arounder. Then if they want to get more serious, the Researcher package is the same cost as just a handful of pictures, and you get all 47 images in hi-res plus all the other advantages of being a Tighar Researcher. Sounds like a win-win to me.

 
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Charlie Chisholm

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Re: 1938 Aerial Photos
« Reply #251 on: August 06, 2013, 02:13:52 AM »

Plus the museum pictures could be handled on a standard computer, nothing high-end needed...
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Kevin Weeks

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Re: 1938 Aerial Photos
« Reply #252 on: August 06, 2013, 05:45:25 AM »

Am I the only one that see's a bit of underhandedness on Kevin's part?

The response from Matt indicates he thought he was going to sell images to Kevin, and he only sent the contact sheets so Kevin could pick out the ones he wanted copies of, for a price.

And yet Kevin now says he did all that to just to get the contact sheets for free.

So it sounds like Kevin "played" Matt, telling him he wanted to purchase copies, all the while just trying to get the contact sheets for free.

Seems a little shady - am I missing something?


I did no such thing. this is a copy of the email that I sent to the museum. I purposely left tighar out of my communications. I did not expect or ask for prints to be sent. I was expecting to be sent a price per print/set that is all. When he emailed me the low resolution prints I was curious as to the copyright stance the museum would take on these images since they sent them out without even asking. But thank you Charlie for questioning my ethics.



I would like to direct this email to Matthew O'Sullivan who I have read in the news located a new set of prints of Gardner Island. I was wondering if it would be possible to obtain copies of these prints for personal research??

Thank you for your time

Kevin Weeks
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Martin X. Moleski, SJ

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Re: 1938 Aerial Photos
« Reply #253 on: August 06, 2013, 06:07:19 AM »

When he emailed me the low resolution prints I was curious as to the copyright stance the museum would take on these images since they sent them out without even asking.

The way to resolve that question is to ask the museum what its stance is.

It is certain that the museum has not ceded its rights to you simply by sending you the contact prints.
LTM,

           Marty
           TIGHAR #2359A
 
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Kevin Weeks

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Re: 1938 Aerial Photos
« Reply #254 on: August 06, 2013, 06:23:52 AM »

The way to resolve that question is to ask the museum what its stance is.

It is certain that the museum has not ceded its rights to you simply by sending you the contact prints.

I agree with you on both points. I have not asked the museum because I don't feel it is my place to ask. this is not my forum. Would Ric post them if it was OK'd by the museum?? He has already very firmly stated his position against the low res images for whatever reason.

I have not stated anywhere here that they did. I merely stated that because they send out the low resolution copies they may allow them to be displayed on the forum if asked first, with proper citations. Please note that I did not post the pictures nor have I shared them. I only shared exactly what it took to acquire them.
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