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Today I've been 'challenged' by Mr. Lawson about the Verrazano bridge issue. Lawson wrote, on his Youtube channel:
Anthony Lawson wrote:By the way are you still touting your absurd video about the moving bridge? Have you worked out why that optical illusion could have occurred, by looking up some information on the visual distortions caused by long lens photography, and a very simple-to-understand phenomenon known as motion parallax? Or do you still think some inept graphics operators made a mistake and caused the bridge to move in that sequence?"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYSGv5HNPxQ
I have invited Mr. Lawson to come here and defend his theory. ( Needless to say, Lawson's theory is that the imagery aired by the TV NETWORKS on 9/11 was absolutely real, legit and authentic. )
THE VERRAZANO BRIDGE ISSUE
To the left: The Verrazano bridge as aired on 9/11 on ABC TV (and later on the History Channel)
To the right: The Verazzano bridge as depicted in a private pre-9/11 aerial video.
It has been argued that this ridiculously big aspect of the Verrazano seen on LIVE TV on 9/11 could be easily explained by a well-known optical phenomena called 'lens distorsion' - or by parallax-related issues. Sure enough, when using a powerful telephoto zoom lens, objects in the backdrop
will appear larger than with a 'shorter' lens (such as a standard 50mm or a 24mm wide angle lens) - no question about that. The question is - BY HOW MUCH? And is it conceivable that the 2 shots above were shot with totally different lenses? In the above comparison, the Verrazano bridge
in the ABC shot appears roughly 3.3 times larger/wider than in the
private pre-9/11 shot -
yet the foregrounds of the 2 shots are framed in almost identical fashion.
Here is now a sequence from the 9/11 LIVE TV broadcasts, showing the bridge drifting in the backdrop. It has been argued this could be explained by the TV helicopter camera's zoom out motion/and sideways drift of the chopper which supposedly carried the TV cameraman :
The problem is: at the end of this sequence, the zoom-out motion stops. Yet, the bridge continues to drift sideways at brisk rate - while the 'helicopter' appears to be almost stationary (see foreground buildings).
Furthermore, please consider these facts:
- The distance of the Verrazano bridge from the WTC is/was almost
12km.
- The height of its pillars is
211m - roughly half the height of the WTC towers -
417m.
Now, imagine for a minute that the bridge pillars were
as tall as the towers themselves. Here is what it would look like:
The challenge is open for anyone wishing to take it:
Choose two equally tall buildings (A -in foreground ; and B - in backdrop) placed 12kilometers apart. Use whichever existing lens you wish - and choose to stand at whichever distance you wish (from A) with your camera. See if you can get B to look as tall as we see it in the image above.
Good luck!