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.

Depth of field is really hard to determine in any one shot particular with IR in low light as the camera has less data (light spectrurm) to work with. That is why people think the orbs they are capturing are across the room instead of an inch from the camera.

Also keep in mind that any motion activated camera has a measurable delay. Whatever type of sensor calculation is made (whether it is thermal or percent of image change) and then the shutter is snapped. I know from having my trap camera trigger on bats that often they are well out of frame before the camera takes the shot. An insect that triggers it would easily have time to flutter inches to feet further away from the camera.

For that matter something paranormal could have very well triggered the camera but all that was captured in frame was an innocent passing insect or two.

But here is how I look at things like this in my own data. Which is more likely? That I was lucky enough to capture the rare recorded parnormal event on camera or that a bug was at the right place at the right time.

It's interesting how people perceive things differently. To me it looks like it's close to the grill on the other end of the room. I was also surprised to see that it doesn't provide EXIF data.

Wes, I like your "rule of thumb" for this. That being said, I'm not trying to capture anything paranormal, I simply became very intrigued when I started seeing these shots. On one hand, it would be very cool to actually capture something like that, on the other hand, I'm not sure how excited I would be at the thoughts of it being in my home.

Isn't there some way to be able to tell or at least create more of a controlled environment, so that you would have a way of knowing what the more likely scenario is?

Simple...gather more data with different equipment.

Since your camera is catching still shots and still shots are the easiest thing for all of us to misinterpret (one moment in time...no moment by moment comparison) set up a night vision camcorder in the area.

Video is much easier to "debunk". Other than people not understanding that the IR emitter is close to the lens and will create orbs just like a flash camera they make recogizing things like lens flare and insects ("look it flutters") much easier.

Beg, borrow or steal a Sony Night Shot...set it up at the time of night these anomalies seem to be occuring the most...hit record and see what happens. If available use a supplemental IR light as the one's built into the cameras sorta suck.

Even a regular camcorder would work for this purpose. If the motion detect camera captures something but the camcorder doesn't that means it was something reflecting the IR and not emitting its own light.

Attachment1: Light is at bottom right
Attachment2: Light is at the top, a bit left of center

So I changed the camera angle a little a few days ago, just to rule that out and got nothing for a few days. In fact, I hardly had any motion detection go off. Last night however, it again caught something. Of course, it's probably bugs flying around, but I gotta say, the time that these occur is very consistent. Why am I never getting these shots at midnight or 4 am. They are always between around 1 and 3:30am.

Also on a side note. Look at pic1 as compared to the pic in the OP in this thread. We were talking about how to me it looks like that one is towards the back of the room, and to iburyem it looked like it was in the foreground. Now looking at pic1 here, it is obvious in this shot that it's in the foreground and in contrast to the other, makes it look like it is in the back of the room.

I'm looking for a way to setup a recording so I can get a vid. Hopefully this will answer some questions once and for all.