Do Cellphones Advance Cryptid Photography?
Posted by: Loren Coleman on March 22nd, 2007
Remember what people said when little cameras showed up on mobile telephones? The notion was that with so many digital cameras out there on cellphones, there would be more chances to capture cryptids photograhically and visually, thus adding a new level of technology to the quest. Okay, for all those folks that wanted to have more cryptid photo images taken by cellphones, here, above, is what you get!
As I walked out the door I thought “hang on a minute”. It looked like a cat but it was a lot bigger. It was definitely a cat. It walked like one and had its big black tail in the air. I’ve heard stories before of people from Airsprung seeing it. It was really amazing and quite exciting. It’s not something you see every day.Matthew Finch
assistant branch manager
West Wilts Wholesale Electrical
Finch was talking to the Wiltshire Times about the black panther he photographed at Trowbridge, United Kingdom, with his mobile phone on at 7:30 am, yesterday, Wednesday, March 21, 2007. He was shocked to see the animal in a field behind Airsprung Beds in Canal Road as he left for work. He watched it. He snapped a photo with his cell, saw it stalk off, and then called his girlfriend.
The media reported that Finch said “the black panther” was the size of a Labrador.
No disrespect for Mr. Finch, at all, but this breaking incident calls forth the inquiry: What can cryptozoology learn from cellphone photos of cryptids?
We have had blobsquatch photos. Now do we have blobpanthers? blobfelines? blobcats?
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
Blobcat is, I believe, the correct term.
Cell phone pictures deserve the same amount of scrutiny as those taken with a camcorder or camera. We need forensic evidence to determine the identify of the Cryptid as something new to science.
If nothing else, the ability to take a picture (no matter how bad it comes out) makes people more likely to come forward and report their sighting. The fact that we can’t make much of an analysis from the poor quality of the photograph itself is not necessarily a bad thing as it means we have a location to investigate. This witness, for example, is sure he saw a “black panther” and has come forward with his photo. Now what needs to be done is get down to the location and look for pawprints, hair, faeces etc. Yeah, mobile phone technology hasn’t really delivered what we hoped for but it’s made folk more likely to tell us their experiences.
Unless that is the biggest tree in Trowbridge (or anywhere else in the UK for that matter) in the background, I don’t think the proportions work correctly to support the description that this animal was the size of a labrador. I live on 300 acres of farm land and happen to have a black cat as a pet. I know from personal experience that distances can play tricks on your eyes. I once looked out the window and saw what I thought was a very large black cat. On the spur I judged it at the size of a coyote. Being a fan of cryptozoology I grabbed my camera and ran to take pictures. When it started running towards me i got a terrible feeling in the pit of stomach. This only lasted a few milliseconds though until i realized that it was my own Dupree running to greet me! Boy did I feel stupid! When creatures are out in the open with nothing to reference them for a size comparison size can often be misjudged honestly by the eye, let alone a very pathetic cellphone camera, leading to many false reports.
West Wilts! Airsprung! I LOVE the English.
That looks small for a kittycat. Squirrel?
Cameraphones increase the likelihood of a good photo in only one way: more people have cameras with them most of the time now.
No other positive impacts that have any relevance.
Blue Steel wins the prize for Best New Cryptid Term.
Bravo! Please accept your prize…a copy of this photo….
Sadisticgreen: no way I’m going anywhere to collect anything based on that photo. I can get enough kitty and squirrel poo on my block.
Labrador my butt. My eyes aren’t that bad yet.
Dwa is right, Blobcat names it.
That Blobcat doen’t even look especially big to me from the original photo and I am not even bothering to calculate a scale for it from the photo. Some people simply have no experience visually measuring things.
There is a way to find out if the creature in the image is small, medium or large…
Have a number of people go out, and find out exactly where the critter was sitting (this should be do-able, by using the present image as a guide of where it was shot, and the landmarks)…and then we would be able to learn if that is 15 feet away from the camera, or 35 feet, or 55 feet or whatever the distance is. Also, superimposition (just like in Jeff Meldrum’s book of the Patterson-Gimlin film) of this image over the anticipated research image of the same area with researchers standing at the site of where the alleged cat is, and one can find out the largeness of things. And the distance of things.
I would like to think that cell phone imagery, or the short video clips one can get from those, might have some value beyond “There is something there.”
I am still ruminating over that one “Top 2006 Story” of the lake creature that was videotaped and shown on some morning show. Loren, can you provide a larger story about that? Or a link to the original story? Or a follow-up to that story? What type of equipment was used to shoot that lake critter? Any follow-up as to what happened after the video was shot? Etc.
Thanks in advance.
Blobcat! Good one! Are those related to the Canadian Blynx?
Cell phone photos can be like any other photos. I have seen some very good ones and some very bad ones. I think each needs to be judged on its own merits and not thrown into the garbage just because it is a cell phone photo. The photo you show was obviously take at a great distance while I have some beautiful ones my grandson took so, let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Judy Green: I don’t think anyone is saying that cameraphones are junk (heck, some might be) so much as that most people most of the time tend to shoot junk photos.
Like, um, this one.
Using a cameraphone will have all the attendant difficulties of using any other camera: distance, lighting, emotional and physical state of the photographer, etc.
As I said above, more people having cameras on them most of the time does at least very marginally increase the odds of someone getting a decent shot. Now all they have to do is, at the moment of truth, remember they have a camera…
The way to look at the range of the creature in the photo is to look at the trees in the background.
I have a good idea that a baseball diamond would fit well in that clearing and if the cat is on the pitcher’s mound, it is no larger than an ordinary cat.
Hehehehehehehehe! 😀
Ahem. That was in response to what I think we can all anticipate regarding submission of mobile phone (as they’re called here in Australia) photos.
As per Mr Coleman, all respect to Mr Finch and the photo warrants serious consideration. All the same, I agree with bpl – that tree is something out of a tolkien novel then!
On the plus side, the location should be easily visited by anyone wanting to investigate the claim. It shouldn’t take too long to get a feel for how big the animal is likely to be.
You’d have to think, too, with the increasing popularity of cryptozoology amongst mainstream media, that you’re *bound* to get pranksters firing off a few quick shots using thier mobiles. Nothing like flooding the market with cheap imitations to devalue the genuine submissions.
Again – it’s unfortunate this comment is being made in response to one specific person’s photo; it’s not intended that way; rather, as a response to Loren’s question about the future of cell phone photos in the cryptozoology world.
Chris.
Holy c……
I also saw a cat today
It really was amazing and quite exciting.
I also think I saw a dog… but I’m not really sure.
Anything that gets more cameras out there into the hands of more people will eventually be a boon for cryptozoology. There will be chaff to sort from the wheat, of course – probably much more chaff than wheat – but cell phones are becoming as ubiquitous as wallets; most people have one. Now that they include cameras and even GPS locator systems and internet capability, they will become a way to communicate information about cryptids much more rapidly and directly than ever before.
It will be up to those who are serious about cryptozoology to determine which cell phone photos are fake and which are genuine, but hasn’t that always been the case? At least with a cameraphone, someone who sees a cryptid will now have a way to document it and get that informtion to others who can thoroughly examine it.
Now if they only came with a mandatory how-to course in photography … 🙂
Well, my personal thought is that cell phone cameras certainly can’t hurt cryptozoology but I do have some concerns. First off is the relatively low quality of cell phone cameras in general. I think there is the potential for a lot of blobsquatches. Second is that my own cell phone camera is not nearly as easy to get out, point, and click as my digital camera. I say that even though I live in Japan and, quite frankly, the cell phones here are a lot more advanced than what you find back home. Trust me on that. I can go to a vending machine and buy a drink with my phone, and some of the phones here would blow your mind with the types of features they have, yet it still is not as easy to take pics with as a real camera. I think the quality and ease of use will only improve, though. In the end, I feel more people out there with a camera at hand when they might not be carrying a standard camera around is going to bring in some interesting cryptozoological photos.
Yes mystery_man, but that will improve as the phones improve,though I agree that photos shot with a “real” camera are much better and more to be preferred.
I think the “black panther” in this picture is little more than perhaps a slightly overweight housecat. Blobcat would actually be an apt name for a house cat.
I tend to forget that my cell -has- a camera.
That looks like a healthy black tomcat to me. Nice tree in the background, though.
Right Kittenz, I said that. I think the ease of use and quality will definately improve.
ok, clearly this photo is nonsense. Its a cat. But at least it keeps us all smiling.
The encouraging thing is that this is actually a reasonable quality photo, by which i mean the definition and focus is pretty good. When I read the headline, I thought we were going to be treated to some blurry pixellated mess of the kind i get on my camera phone. But the technology is oviously improving all the time, and many camera phones are now as good as a standard digital camera. As such, they can only be a good thing.
We need to consider that if there was a bigfoot standing where the kitten is then we have something fairly serious and worthwhile to look at.
And guys, you need to remember this is england. We have wiped out almost everything bigger than a squirrel. And it rains a lot. And we eat a lot of boiled vegtables. And this guy lives in Trowbridge. For us cats sitting in fields are pretty exciting.
Well, things-in-the-woods, don’t get too discouraged.
That could be one exciting cat, if science ever catches up to it.
Or England could wind up showing us the absolute extremes in genetic mutation among users of cellphones. Does anyone really know how boiled vegetables and cell towers interact? We could start seeing cats identified as all sorts of things. My eyes are now so ON that little island.
And there’s always Loch Ness. Not too far a drive for all that.
Well, now that you guys mentioned it, it could be one exciting STONE for all we can tell in this photo.
I’m one of those prehistoric photographers who still use film. It’s hard to argue with a negative. Sure, even a neg can be faked by a pro, but in this digital world why bother? Far easier to photoshop in whatever you want and it is my opinion that digital has hurt the integrity of photography. (I argue this with my colleagues at work all the time). Sad to say, but the ease with which digital can be faked has cast a certain suspicion over all cryptid (or UFO, or ghostly) pictures.
That aside, the image produced by cell phone cameras is a very low resolution that makes enlargment even to a 4X6 size iffy in some cases. They’re fine if a big cat or a bigfoot happens to pose a few yards away, but beyond that….After all, they are supposed to be phones not cameras! Perhaps their best use in cryptozoology would be as a last resort sort of thing where you see something but don’t have another camera with you. And they would, I suppose, at least be a record that you saw something and maybe could create interest in further investigation.
On the other hand, digital cameras routinely double the focal length so a 75mm lens, for example would become a 150mm, and thus they have a better image resolution at greater distances with the proper lenses, of course. I expect that those who prefer digital will soon be able to get very interesting photos from 300 or 400 yards away, or more. Now if we can just figure a way to spot the fakes!
We probably all need to familiarize ourselves with the tell-tale signs like those that have recently been mentioned: shaky camera, cutting away from the image, in and out of focus, etc. Those apply to moving images. In still photos a good rule of thumb is the old addage: if it looks too good to be true, it probably is. Just my ten cents worth 🙂
OK, forget anything I said about cell cameras possibly being of marginal use to crypto. What I’ll call Rillo’s Rules effectively preclude that. 😀
If “tell-tale signs” really do include “shaky camera, cutting away from the image, in and out of focus” then you can rule out anything taken by an amateur suddenly encountering a cryptid as real. Because the footage WILL be: shaky, cutting away from the image and in and out of focus. Look at the Manitoba footage if you don’t believe me. That’s what happens; you’re caught off guard, you grabshoot, you’re on superextreme zoom, the car hits a dip….oh, and because you’re off guard it’s your 13-year-old at the controls…
And I can guarantee you that when a good still image of a real live sas shows up, it WILL be “too good to be true.”
Because, you see, we blew our chance to get this right the first time. The P/G footage was TGTBT. If that pic is of a known animal we’d know which one. Clearzabell. But we got this irrational idea in our heads that this was a guy in an ape suit – an idea that has never had a shred of evidence produced to back it. The only way that is NOT a sasquatch is if it is (1) some other cryptid and wouldn’t that be a coup or (2) a guy in an ape suit. And 40 years now and no evidence of a suit, and no video, hoax or otherwise, has come forward that is even a fraction as good. Why? The logical reason: P & G were on the only truly extended hunt ever for the sas, in remote country where many sightings had occurred recently, on horseback for mobility, camera eternally at the ready. So THAT becomes a reason it’s fake! “Oh, he was looking for one.” YES! That’s why the shot is so GOOD…
…but it’s useless now. We brainwashed ourselves, blew our chance, and no photo evidence of a cryptid will ever be believed. It’ll always be TGTBT.
We’re sad, we are.
I think there is always going to be a little suspicion with cryptid photos no matter what the quality. If they are blurry, they are called fake. If they are too clear, fake. There is a sense of of people being a bit jaded by the poor quality of photos and hoaxes over the years which i feel makes them a bit over critical at times of photos that would be acceptable if they were of anything other than a cryptid. I am not totally free from guilt in that department. At this point, I have to agree with DWA’s sentiments. Photos of known animals can be blurry yet still be accepted as real, wheras cryptid photos are taken with a grain of salt no matter how good they may be and in fact ironically being too good will cause almost as much suspicion as blurry ones I’m afraid.
Rillo777- You sure do know your cameras. I know very little about photography, but agree with you that it is losing some of its integrity with the advent of digital technology as well as ever improving phtoshop trickery. A photo sure doesn’t prove as much as it used to.