NORTHLAND FARMHOUSE - OUR EQUIPMENT


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An investigator's observation skills, common sense, and research abilities are at the heart of any investigation. But its the evidence gathered using equipment that makes up much of the final product of an investigation. Witness statements, investigator experiences, and the background of a potentially haunted site are extremely important...but people want to see or hear evidence. The equipment we used on this investigation is shown and described below.

  FUJIFILM A340. This is a fairly basic 4.0 megapixel Digital Camera. Here are some of the technical details:

The camera is capable of resolutions as high as 2,272 x 1,704 pixels and has a Fujinon 3x, 38-114mm (35mm equivalent) lens with 1.7x digital zoom. It has automatic exposure control, plus four preset "scene" modes, adjustable white balance with seven settings, and sensitivity equivalent to ISO 100. It features apertures from f/2.8 to f/9.5, shutter speeds from 1/2,000 to two seconds, and built-in flash with six modes.

  FUJIFILM FINEPIX 3800. This 3.2 megapixel digital camera films 10 frames a second in video mode with sound (stored as MPEG 320x240 pixels). Here are some of the technical details:

The camera is capable of 3.34 Megapixel CCD (3.24 million effective pixels) with RGB filter, has precision retractable Fujinon 6X optical zoom lens (F2.8/F4.8/F8.8), AVI video recording with sound, and sensitivity equivalent to ISO 100. It has shutter speeds of 1/2 to 1/1,500 sec. (combined with a mechanical shutter.)

  SONY CCD-TRV66 HI 8 VIDEO CAMERA. This camera has a lot of nice features. There's a 20x optical/360x digital zoom and a digital photo mode, plus SteadyShot image stabilization, and Sony's exclusive Hi8T XR Extended Resolution system to extend the luminance bandwidth for greater image detail and clarity. The camera includes IR Night Shot technology at two different settings so that you have some choice about how it looks depending on the level of darkness, etc. Dave Berg helped us import the analog images into digital images so that we could share them on the website.

  POLAROID DISPOSABLE CAMERA. Cheap, easy to use, and disposable. These disposable cameras are easy to stick in your pocket and pull out at a moments notice. The camera we used had 27 exposures and 400 speed film. We developed our pictures directly to a CDR computer disk, and tucked away the negatives in case we needed to review them later.

  MICRO CASSETTE RECORDER. Two speed recorder. Automatic voice activated recording. Digital tape counter. Four button cassette deck with pause. Small contoured design. Headphone jack.


If you're curious about what sort of camera was used to capture any of our photos in these investigation reports, just look at the name of the photo in its properties window. Those with "fuji" in their name were taken with the FujiFilm A340. Those with "finepix" in there name were taken with the FujiFilm Finepix 3800. And those with "standard" in their name were taken with the disposable camera shown above. Any photos with "investigation" in their name or a date-stamp in the bottom right corner are captured from a digital export of our analog video.

Due to our hurry in getting the investigation planned and executed prior to the demolition of the house, we were unable to purchace an electromagnetic field detector (EMF) in time. We have now acquired one, and it will be available for all future investigations.

-Mark Stinson

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