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Silver pill-shaped UFO filmed near Greensboro


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I am not sure how to convey that this is not a hoax to you. I am not obsessed with balloons. I am just saying that the terrestrial explaination is balloon. There is no other terrestrial explaination that I know of. If you think it is a balloon or a hoax I cannot convince you otherwise because my skills as a photographer are too poor according to you. I am not sure why I am continuing to respond to this, but get this, I am genuine, I understand that I could have captured more frames and explained why I did not, and I also understand the actual difficulty in capturing such an object. I beg anyone who thinks they can do better, to do better, myself included.

If people are judging my photography skills based on this video I am confident that those who actually know a thing or two about photography would understand the difficulty in capturing objects like this, and actually might commend me on the fact that I did capture sharp frames at roughly 10 megapixels. Who knows what videographers or editors would think, but there are a couple sharp frames at around 10 megapixels. It is so sharp that the object captured could only be 1.5 feet long at roughly a mile away. Not even sure why I am responding to you, but just to be clear, yes it is a low blow to attack my photography skills based on these images. Go ahead and look at my Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/bretpics and attack me there as well if you are such a critic of photography skills.

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You know why you keep replying,

My intentions was not to make you feel attacked, You asked for opinions when you get them you do not like them, i just do not believe its non-terrestrial, i dont have enough to go on.

I have no idea if you are a great photographer or not nor do i know how hard it is to make a video like this,  and it doesnt matter.

you are mistaken that i base my opinion of your skills on this one video,  i judged this video on its own and its not great imho, if you believe its great, your best work i respect that, i have no clue what said object is but im not using your video as proof of anything balloon or otherwise and i dont see why that upsets you.

 

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4 hours ago, spacebret said:

no it is not on me to prove what the object is because I have said from the start that I don’t know what that is

yes it is on you... i'm pretty sure it's something normal & would feel no need to question it & post it in a forum for opinions...

you obviously feel it's not normal so what do you feel is <not normal> regarding this very distant out of focus thingy in the sky?

it's a simple question my friend

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The main reasons why I think it might not be a balloon are the tone changes on the ends from a silver/nickel tone to a brass/gold tone in an extremely short period of time without changing orientation much. Also the flashing that was very bright to my naked eye that seems to in at least these few frames, go in a sequence. Also discovering that the distance of the object must be at least a mile away and potentially hundreds of miles away or farther. 

There is some context in the shot, namely a tree branch that goes into and out of focus. It can be deduced that the focus hunts towards the far end of the focus range and back. This combined with me actually seeing it in the sky makes it very easy to deduce that it is indeed far away, at least a mile away. When focusing on objects that far away with the same settings the depth of field becomes huge and once it hits the hyperfocal distance it is effectively infinite depth of field from ~5,900 feet with those camera settings. The numbers posted in the video make assumptions on the distance that I think are significant, and then show the size of the object if it is that far away. This math is done with the aide of online calculators that use the field of view to calculate the size of the frame based on specific focus distances.

Not sure why being a believer makes my view tainted or any less relevant. I made the claim in an interview that this entire experience did not sway me one way or another on the topic of aliens and the paranormal. If I saw which Mylar balloon it is clearly, then I would be keen to say it is that. So far even the Mylar balloon theory can not pinpoint which one and that is because there is not enough clear footage of it. I think it is fair for people to claim it is balloon. I am not going to dismiss this personally as a balloon and may never be able to because of all the factors involved, especially that there is just not enough data to prove it to me.

I never claimed to know what this object is. I am not sure, and this is different from a video of Bigfoot where the claim is that it must be Bigfoot. Sorry I was slow to respond to why I think it might not be a balloon. Had no idea I was stepping into the lions den of skeptics when I made an account. I know that I will never be able convince someone who will not entertain the idea that it is something otherworldly. Honestly was just trying to get people to see that I did an update and came to some conclusions on the possible distance and size of the object. It does not rule out balloon. It also does not rule out something much bigger.

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Too much words about a vid of: nothing. 

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9 hours ago, onlookerofmayhem said:

DUTcQh0XUAA65HR.jpg

I'm not claiming it's a balloon for sure, but the low quality of the footage doesn't show anything to suggest it's not. 

Of course it's possibly something else, but what in the video shows anything unusual? 

A balloon is a valid conclusion given the scant amount of info we have to go on.

The "tether" also points to it being a balloon. 

The lights are explainable by the sunlight glinting off a silver Mylar balloon. 

Apparently there was a skeptics convention where they let of a string of inflatable letters spelling out: 'ALIEN SPACECRAFT'

it seems this 'A' & spacebret's 'I' were the only letters to survive the storm

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Spacebret, kudos to you for turning up and politely (mostly!) responding, despite some rather unkind comments from me and others!  I take your replies on board about the manual focus issue - I was going by reviews on line which seemed to indicate the MF was OK.  Having had a camera with fly-by-wire about ten years ago I can relate, as it sucked - but I would have hoped they had improved by now, especially from panasonic/leica.  Shame on them.

I don't have time right now to revisit the imagery, but I will say I still think there's a big problem with making judgements about the shape of the 'thing' given the level of zoom.  In future, *never* use digital zoom in-camera - it creates false detail that will be further falsely emphasised by any sharpening or contrast - and often that sharpening is built-in and unavoidable.

Magnifying images for proper analysis should always be done 'in post', in other words, using software that has known and testable algorithms on single frames from the footage.  To do it properly also requires several frames for averaging (so it cannot be done on your footage..)

I may be back later when I have more time, but really, it's all been said.

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Bret,

Yes, i am an across the board a pseudo skeptic  meaning i would very much like to be shown proof of extraordinary claims,  i am open minded both to the extraordinary and prosaic.

i am not talented enough to properly sugarcoat my honest replies to the point it is always "nice" And that sucks both ways because im not out to be mean. I am here to share opinions with others, and many times we disagree and it might even be mean but i do not take it personally, i hope others take my opinions the same way.

I also get the impression from things you say like "stepping into a lions den " that you feel like a victim, that you do interviews, you enjoy the attention and you make a remark about not being able to convince a person who won't entertain that the object is otherworldly, says to me no matter how much you say otherwise that you do not believe its ( lets get past balloon ) prosaic and you do believe it is otherwordly.

Actually this is in a way a lot like a video of a blobsquatch, just you as the carmerman are not insiting directly it "is" a bigfoot but you are denouncing with disdain anyone who says its not, if you do not want all opinions dont ask for them.

Since i do not have the expertise in photography others here do i will leave the tech to them but we all do know that a camera doesnt lie it does its best to get the image and sometimes guesses wrong, lots of ufo pics are not the shape of the object but rather what the camera has made it and artifacts made by the camera and even like you admit no way to determine distance from the camera one mile or 100s that is a big difference, and we cannot draw a conclusion from unknown.

So remember i never said what i firmly believe the object to be i just believe it to be prosaic and have not yet heard any evidence to even have me consider otherwordly which brings in questions like just what is otherworldly to you the one trying to convince me of it.

 

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the13bats,

I appreciate you giving me your stance. When I say lions den of skeptics I mean that it caught me off guard. For some reason in my head I thought this forum would be a little bit more weird and less tilted toward the skeptical perspective. Not trying to say I am a victim. I have never participated in a forum like this, and did no research on the forum prior to joining, just saw my name popping up and people talking about what I did, and I wanted to add to it.

Nearly everything said by you and others makes much more sense when viewed as coming from various forms of skeptic. If that is the case, then the burden of proving it is something other than prosaic is in fact squarely on me if I posit that it possibly could not be.

Unfortunately given all the properties of a Mylar balloon in the sky, there is not enough evidence to prove it is not Mylar balloon. I was hoping to find a way to rule it out, but at this time I cannot. One single cloud in the shot could have helped rule out hundreds of miles away and narrowed the scope of what it could be. Also unfortunately there is not a money shot of which Mylar balloon it could be. The tether is close to sealing the deal, but just does not seal the deal for me. For the skeptic there is also nothing that proves that it is otherworldly. Maybe this is a huge waste of hot air, time and attention to even consider that this could be something else. I am truly blown away by the response, from skeptics, believers and all others in between.

If there was a skeptics convention that day or night before anywhere west of me, where balloons were released, then that would likely tilt me enough to be mostly sure of what it is. Time stamped photos of that would be hard evidence in my mind.

Philosophically I am a bit of a skeptic as well, just in the sense that I am skeptical of the physical existence of reality being all or even much more than a tiny aspect of the whole of reality. Cheers!

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@spacebret

could it be an alien craft?

could it be black-ops?

could it be an unknown natural aerial phenom?

i say YES it could be to any of those= the reason i say this is because: 'I_DO_NOT_KNOW' ...you also do not know what the object is, as you've stated...

do you agree it could be a balloon, or what one might class as normal (normal as in known to us all) ?

if your answer is yes then really it's the end of the discussion because i've no real proof/ evidence of what it is & neither do you..

if it makes you feel good to believe it could be weird & wonderful then who am i to say you can't...

but to keep throwing the 'skeptic' word around in a derogatory way, relative to what you feel isn't a good start because there's some highly intelligent individuals in this place..

you believe it could be otherworldly... i believe it's not= why would it be? Cheers & respect, Sir;)

Edited by Dejarma
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Bret, i have a lot of hobby interests, and when i first got online way back when i had win95 and paid for time by the minute my first search was "bigfoot" lol,

Im 54, so i grew up getting my info from books and shows, i wasnt savvy to myths and embellishment getting online was a wake up call across the board 90% of things i believed were now in the trash can, and forums taught me quickly its not personal, no thin skin allowed, actually this forum is nice compared to many.

I am a skeptic but i dont really like the camp it places me in so i made up pseudoskeptic because im not a joe nickells where i will scoff everything as being prosiac because somethings are not but i am often misunderstood on that, just because i do believe things can be unexplained that doesnt mean i believe an unknown object like in your video must be a spacecraft with aliens aboard but fact is there are true believers out there who have seen your video and to them it does mean just that, zero proof required, i need proof belief isnt science.

There isnt anything wrong with you believing your object isnt prosiac and is otherwordly but in turn when you place it out there and ask for opinions get ready to be asked to prove why your believe the way you do and yes, that is a burden that goes along with putting it out there, if you do not desire that then dont say you believe its otherworldly stay neutral at least in what you say out loud. Also keep in mind the net has 1000s of videos like yours, its only unique of itself.

I have more of an occams razor type brain, so whats more likely your video shows an alien craft or prosiac , for me its at this moment prosiac.

If that was true that big letter were released i too would enjoy seeing links of that pix etc,

Edited by the13bats
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2 minutes ago, the13bats said:

Im 54, so i grew up getting my info from books and shows, i wasnt savvy to myths and embellishment getting online was a wake up call across the board 90% of things i believed were now in the trash can,

hey bats- that's EXACTLY what happened to me! i was once a staunch believer in alien visitation until i got online-- only then did i start to realize what was really going on with this enigma.

nice one mate;)

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I remember way back how depressing it was to learn some of the truths that i did, then i just started to get a chuckle at myself and about it.

 

Back to the OT curious did anyone else see this object,

i remember years back seeing a car lot advertising blimp/balloon break free,

It looked about like this but odd silver green color,

images(35).jpg.ef66e672f16cd0849346ed7b0c51eb45.jpg

My first thought was damn, how cool to have it carry a bunch of leds at night, but then as i watched it flying away i did wonder how many would be sure ET was here....

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I found this looking at rotor kites, might fit in here,

No, not suggesting the unknown video object is a kite.

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20 hours ago, ChrLzs said:

I don't have time right now to revisit the imagery, but I will say I still think there's a big problem with making judgements about the shape of the 'thing' given the level of zoom.  In future, *never* use digital zoom in-camera - it creates false detail that will be further falsely emphasised by any sharpening or contrast - and often that sharpening is built-in and unavoidable.

Hey ChrLzs,

I assume you are talking about the in camera teleconverter crop. The GH5 is ~20 mp and the crop just punches in to ~10 mp or the equivalent of true 4K pixel readout. The crop does not degrade image quality and effectively allows any lens to also have an extra 40% punch in without compromise. Tests have been done to see if there is any quality loss, and there really is no apparent quality loss. It is a pretty incredible feature of the GH5.

The upscaling is from the editing software zooming in at ~900% and then rendering the video in 4K. As far as analyzing a true 4K image of a frame from the video, it is possible. Maybe I can toy around with it in Lightroom.

Cheers!

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I'll have to take your word for it, spacebret, but if that is what you and panasonic call 'undegraded' image quality.... then we have very different standards of what real detail looks like...  Maybe it was out of focus, maybe a bit of motion blur/camera shake/zoom blur.. but it isn't even remotely sharp.  Just to repeat, this, from a link given earlier:
BFD02449-D567-4007-ADAF-AFFEEF1BEA6E.jpe

that is what is being claimed as 'sharp'....  

 

Within a few weeks, my rather busy life permitting, I'll be demonstrating what 'sharpness' looks like, along with examples of a known object, eg a passenger jet at various distances, all taken on my camera equipment (which is older and just 16Mp), over on this thread:

Bystanders please feel free to join in.

 

Oh, and btw, there is absolutely zero basis for those distance/size calculations above, and frankly, clouds would not have helped, as they would almost certainly be behind the object.  You might want to spend a bit more time learning photogrammetry (although it's a very complex topic) - thing is, if you get even one tiny assumption wrong... well, it will turn out like this one did, where an 'analyst' worked out that what was clearly a nearby bug in the video, was in fact far away and traveling at 8-9,000 mph:

 

Anyways, this is going nowhere.  I'm not spending any further time on it (except I'll come back to correct any added mis-analysis that may arise...)

Edited by ChrLzs
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Bret, to further clarify myself and perhaps i see the issue with your offence of my bashing your skills in photograph if you find that to be a good image.

Like ChrLzs posted and pointed out above that still isnt sharp at all, if it were a bigfoot pic it would be a low end blobsquatch,

While it shows "something" its of basically  no scientific value too fuzzy, so sure i would say disparaging comments about it, i wasnt wanting to offend but that was my opinion on it.

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it really doesn't matter about cameras. distance etc-- it's all irrelevant.

broad daylight yet it seems this is the only report.. those close to it could see what it was & felt no need to report something strange in the sky.. same as all the other videos of this nature..

simple basic logic & common sense imo...

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The object is roughly 1/100th the width of the frame or about 38 pixels long in the frame. That is why it looks out of focus. Also, this is not a raw image with raw metadata. This is a still frame from an 8bit movie file. Stills from movie files will have compression compared to GH5 12bit raw files. Less information, less detail and compression artifacts compared raw.

Maybe I should have tried to take a raw photo? I did, it was out of focus and showed nothing. 

I never said this is my best work. I clearly said multiple times I had no idea that I captured anything. Honestly this is some of the worst footage I have ever acquired. I put it out there because I am curious what it is. The fact that it generated so much discussion blows my mind. Attack the quality all you want because that does not bother me one bit, but inferring my skills as a photographer from this footage is a low blow. I will not address that point again. It is frivolous to keep arguing about that. I do not speak for Panasonic, and truly do not think Panasonic or Leica would want to be associated with what is obviously awful footage with such a terrible representation of the GH5 autofocus and horrendously small subject size in the frame. It is very fair to say there is not enough detail to tell what the heck it is. That is very fair.

The numbers above do have a basis in reality. Reasons why I can assume the object is likely a mile away or more:

1. I saw the flashing with my naked eye as something in the sky. Not nearby.

2. During focus hunting, the lens seeks all the way to the far end and back to the near end very fast. With nothing in the frame, it will literally “breathe” back and forth multiple times depending on settings. Some settings seem to make it only “breathe” once when you hold down the back focus button. Based on point 1. and the fact that the focus hunts past a tree branch in the frame, the object can be assumed to be near the far end of the focus range.

3. Because the settings I used for f-stop and focal length are known, I can look at a calculator online that tells me the hyperfocal or infinity focus distance of the lens on my camera. That number is 5,950 feet. A little over a mile away.

4. I make an assumption in one set of numbers that the object is 1.5 feet long and it puts the object at roughly a mile away. This should be the only point that matters on this list for people who think it must be a balloon. Could it be a smaller balloon? Maybe, but party balloons seem to range in size from about that size to a few times that size.

I think you all are an okay bunch. Very thorough, and I am sure you are having a fun time weeding through the mess of paranormal footage on the net. Cheers!

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Lol, a bit angry and condescending now and yeah,  we are an okay bunch, before you get too puffed up with all the discussion it received normally the camerman isnt here trying to sell it as otherworldly, this is very entertaining for me.

I believe you wanted your video and in turn yourself to be hailed and praised and it didnt happen not because this okay bunch has any personal vendetta against you but because many of us are bored and tired of blobsquatches being presented as proof of something otherwordly when there is zero evidence to support that grandious claim, like i said the net is full 1000s upon 1000s of videos like yours, and this is all i have to gauge your skills by.

And no, there still is no way with the sources we have to definitely know the size of your object is, 1 to 5 feet sounds about right since no one else reported seeing it, which could be a balloon, kite, etc  a hoax or you fell for some prosiac object.

Unless we have some epic new development im done.

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2 hours ago, spacebret said:

The object is roughly 1/100th the width of the frame or about 38 pixels long in the frame. That is why it looks out of focus.

Umm, NO.

Quote

3. Because the settings I used for f-stop and focal length are known, I can look at a calculator online that tells me the hyperfocal or infinity focus distance of the lens on my camera. That number is 5,950 feet. A little over a mile away.

NO, NO, NO!!!!  Absolutely horrendously wrong.  

I'll be back later when I have time, but those and several other things you have written, spacebret, are simply incorrect.  You do not know this topic well enough and frankly you need to stop making claims..

I'll go through the entire post and explain later, but to be honest, I don't have time to correct so much misinformation...

Edited by ChrLzs
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If you are referring to the fact that when a lens focuses at the hyperfocal distance, subjects half the distance will retain some sharpness, you are correct in saying that I am wrong in saying it must be at least a mile away or so. The object could also be at half the distance of the hyperfocal distance. This is still more than half a mile away. I felt like this point is mute and adds too much information to the actual point I am trying to make about the object. If it is at or near the hyperfocal distance, then the judging of the distance becomes impossible, and only context in the frame of other objects of known distance passing in front of or behind will provide more clues as to how far away it is.

The other point about the object length being roughly 1/100th the width of the frame, or roughly 38 pixels, and why it looks out of focus, I am curious as to why I am wrong there. I already stated that this is a still from an 8bit movie file with compression compared to a raw photo. Scale in the frame plus compression will easily explain why there is not more detail to work with.

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Sorry, but you sound exactly like you are googling as you go, and no, those 'corrections' of yours aren't right either.  Why would you introduce fancy sounding (but incorrectly applied) equations, and then complain that they don't make a useful point?  This hyperfocal stuff is worthless (not usefully applicable) here.  

Just ... stop.

 

I'm out.  If anyone else needs help with this please ask - but maybe start another thread..

Edited by ChrLzs
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Okay? I am very confused. These terms I am using are not made up on the fly. If you say that I am wrong and provide zero reason as to why besides your word, I am at a loss because I sincerely cannot figure out how I am wrong. Please. I understand you have limited time, but if you tell me I am horrendously wrong, I am genuinely curious as to how because I am one who would love to know how and why such that I may learn something.

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OK, I'll come back in a day or three - I just don't have time to be teaching people what can and can't be done right now.  I will go back and address all the stuff you said in post 119, but that's about it.  In the meantime, have a think about what you have claimed - namely to be able to work out distances (although I see you are now backpedaling on that..) from a very blurred frame - and then give us an example of how you have done this successfully and verifiably before.  Eg, using a commercial passenger jet?  No?  I thought not.

Yes, there are ways to work out a RANGE of distances that might apply, but they require a number of assumptions (and one piece of information I'm pretty sure you don't have) and it will be a RANGE, not a single distance like your 5950 feet above - stating it with such accuracy is a good indication that you have not done this sort of thing before.

 

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