Discuss photo: Light 4

oh i get it now... what is that? can't explain it... what's the history of the place?

The series looks like moths caught in the IR with a fairly slow shutter speed to me.

I just wrote up a long post and the form expired, so I lost it all.

Previous owners wife died (natural causes) in the house about 15 year ago. I've lived here about 7 and other then an occasional strange noise that I don't pay much attention to, I've had maybe 1 or 2 unusual experiences.

The camera is in an enclosed area. Weather has been dry (no water on lens) and I hardly ever get moths in this room.

I have motion detection on between 2330 and 0600, and these are captured consistently between 0100 and 0330, and I'm not a big fan of coincidence.

I've done tests with people walking by and there is hardly any light trail, which tells me the shutter speed isn't that slow.

I also think this is probably some usual thing that causes this type of anomaly, but insect trails tend to be thin and not that bright. Also, some of these have such unusual patterns that I just had to get other's opinions.

aren't bugs to small for motion detector to go on?

Lucas wrote:


Good point, but I do have at least one shot where it looks like a typical capture of a bug flying by and leaving a streak. At least I'm assuming this, due to similar shots I found doing some research.

I enabled motion compensation on the camera so it should ignore most light changes, to rule that out. I'll monitor it for a few days and see if there are any changes.

"aren't bugs to small for motion detector to go on?"

It really depends on how sensitive the detector is and more importantly how close the insect is to the detector. I don't know about this particular one, but most actually measure temperature changes with IR Thermal and the sensitivity setting determines how much of a change is required to trigger the device.

A bug close enough to the detector would block off the thermal reading from say the windows that it is pointed at thus resulting in a trigger.

This of course also applies to the light trail. The closer to the lens the brighter and wider the trail. The other pictures are harder to pin down but on this one I see wings.

Is it the only explanation? Of course not. But the simplest answer tends to be the one most people will point to in any review of data.

It definitely looks like a moth in a slow shutter speed.

It does look like a moth, but here's a thought. The light looks like it's on the other end of the room and is fairly large. Is it really possible that the motion detection is so sensitive that it caught a moth at that distance and the result was at that size? I would think the moth would have to be pretty close to the lens to even set off the motion detection and if it was that close, wouldn't it take up more of the frame? Also, if something was directly in front of the camera, wouldn't we see some DOF effect?

To me it doesn't look like it is too far away it could be 1-3 foot, about where that white container thingy is to the right of the frame. Its apparent the shutter speed must be 1-2 seconds. I have picked up fibers, that appear to go from a back half of a room to the middle, and look like a light rod... but if I go and take another photo a step in, its visible its a fiber. ( Slower shutter speeds take out the some of the blurring you would see with DOF effects) I also know some IR cameras will take several clicks ( up to 5) in a 1-2, when movement is detected, and compress them on one frame for movement, it depends on the cameras setting.. and unfortunately there is not any EXIF data to see ISO speed, filters shutter speed ect.