PELLING NEW SCAN SHOWS
MICRO WRITING
This post completely debunks the erroneous claims made by Nick Pelling. Nick put forward a 'New Scan' from Marcel Varallo which was claimed to be of higher resolution and better quality with the strong inference that there would be no micro writing to be found.
As you will see in the presentation below, the Nick Pelling 'New Scan' contains micro writing:
As you will see in the presentation below, the Nick Pelling 'New Scan' contains micro writing:
In recent years, the availability of better cameras and lighting have made the process of revealing concealed writing far easier. In Nick's defence, these things were not so readily available even in 2017.
I invite all interested to test the process and will happily post a description of the method which really couldn't be easier.
THE PHOTOGRAPHY PROCESS:
ReplyDeleteThe process for taking closeup/macro images of the Somerton Man Code Page and areas within it is straight forward.
Items Needed:
1. A reasonable quality camera, I have a Lumix, it should have a macro lens fitted and flash.
2. Alternatively a Recent Smart Phone, I use a Galaxy S9 +, with flash and a macro lens attachment. I have a Neumann Macro lens for this purpose.
3. You could use Infra red lighting either separately or in conjunction with the camera flash. The camera needs to be IR capable, the Samsung is, the Lumix is also IR sensitive. I should stress that if you could afford one, a full IR capable camera and set up is always preferred but the cost can be prohibitive.
4. A decent Inkjet printer, Laser printers use heat to transfer the melted plastic toners and you will not get a finely detailed output, sometimes the laser heat pad leaves a very small diamond shaped pattern on the print out. The Inkjet printer should be set to high quality printing and to high resolution paper.
5. I currently use bleed proof paper, it impedes the fresh ink from running and giving what appears to be a smooth appearance but in reality all that's happening is ink run smooth might look good but it is the fine detail that matters especially at the sizes we are looking at. You can buy bleed proofpaper in books of 50 X A4 sheets from a good art supply shop.
6. Personally, I have a dark room set up but that is not necessary for this project. A tripod or Smart Phone tripod and the selected camera is all that's really needed. Hand held shots can suffer from movement, however slight, they can affect the outcome for macro taken images.
You will need to take your shots from various angles around the target object, sometimes you can take 15 or 20 shots before you get the sharpest image.
Be prepared to adjust the camera angle, normally around 45 degrees. If you are using external lighting, similarly you may need to adjust the angle of the lighting. Avoid any obvious shadows.
. It's best to save the images in RAW format on your camera if possible.
. Before transfer to your PC, set up a dated folder for storage and within that folder prepare three sub folders.
. Use a suitable photo editing tool to review your images, save and store them into a subfolder named ‘Select’ or similar, unsuitable images should not be stored and be immediately deleted.
. When you save your reviewed images give them a suffix to the file name. You may need to adjust contrast or levels or to sharpen the image to get the best result.
. Once adjusted, save the edited image into a second folder named Production again with another suffix to note its new status.
. The final sub folder, if needed, should be named Publish. Images in this sub folder are organised by date and name ready to either be included in a blog or published elsewhere.
Whatever you do, if you have made changes however small to an image, always save it as a different file name to the one you originally used.Use the .png format or other lossless file type where possible.
This method has worked for me and others may have different views, take your time and do some research about image processing/management and select the one that works best for you.
If you have any questions please don't hesitate to contact me. I'll do my best to provide the answer or point you in the right direction.