[bitbuilder]

While I don't disagree with your point, whenever this point comes up I do feel the need to point out that getting a clear, high resolution photo of a (relatively) small moving object in the sky is actually a really hard problem for photography, especially at night.

If you've ever tried taking a photo of a particularly pretty moon with your phone, you'll know what I'm talking about. The striking orange harvest moon that seems to dominate the night sky suddenly becomes a little smear of light when you look at the photo on your phone.

Most phones or other cameras that people casually carry around have a relatively wide angle lens and accompanying FOV. That means anything at a distance will end up looking even further in the distance (ie, smaller) once you take the shot.

So to get a nice, clear picture of a distant object in the sky you're going to need a telephoto lens. That's fine, and there are plenty of people out there casually carrying around a telephoto. Except now you have a new problem: you need to track the moving object through your telephoto. Not impossible, of course, but not easy for typical person who happens to see a strange object in the sky while they have their camera with them.

Also, if the object is moving, you'll need a fast shutter speed. And if you increase your shutter speed you're going to have to increase your ISO as well. If you're seeing this strange object at night, that means you're likely pushing your ISO into a range where your photo starts to get pretty grainy.

All of these aren't insurmountable problems, people that shoot flying birds and planes do it all the time. But it takes a combination of equipment and photography skills that aren't exactly common. So now we're looking at a venn diagram of "people who see something strange in the sky" and "people who have the equipment and skills to get a good photo" to calculate our odds of having a really great photo of a UFO by now.

All that said, the point is still valid ("why don't we have more photos now?"). But at the same time, it's not as easy of a problem as many seem to think.

[behnamoh]

Thanks for mentioning these points. Another explanation could be that _if_ these UFO's are in fact extraterrestrials with a technology advanced enough to travel to our planet, then it's plausible to assume that they also adapt their techniques based on our technological capabilities. In other words, if they are real and they know we have more advanced cameras compared to 100 years ago, chances are they are not going to reveal themselves to us as much as before, or they do that in situations where environment noise does not provide a high-res picture of them (like in the sea).

[natch]

[Edit: I realize you may have been talking about 2020. Or maybe just talking about photography in general. Since both incidents are being talked about in the larger thread, and the idea of photography applies to both of them I wrote something riffing off photography that addresses the previous (2014, tic tac) incident… hope that doesn't bug you too much ;-)].

So, my comment here is about 2014 and the tic tac incident, not the swarm-of-drones incident from last year.

If they really did have reports for the two days leading up to the tic tac incident I have to think they would have tasked an aircraft with top notch (beyond any handheld camera) photographic capabilities to investigating such an alarming intrusion.

Or, they are really stupid.

Or, the radar hits in the preceding two days were just phantom hits and possibly assessed as such at the time, with jets sent up to look just as a "why not" kind of thing since they were already in the area for training.

My bet is with the last possibility, because I find it hard to think so badly of the Navy people. And the hits were just phantom / ghost hits in a new system. Which means: not alien / Russian / etc. craft.

And the actual object actually seen by the pilots was some chunks of ice falling from outer space, some of which made whitecaps and another of which was seen flitting erratically and thus moving in ways that no known aircraft is capable of. It "came up to meet" Dave Fraver AS HE WAS GOING DOWN yeah no surprise there, and, as the sonic boom from his jet slammed into the snowy ice, it, again no surprise, disintegrated and disappeared, because sonic boom, which disintegration he interpreted as out-of-this-world acceleration. OK, maybe the other Navy people are with it, but Dave may have been experiencing some effects of the G forces or something. He seems like a nice guy.

The other pilot who spoke about this described the movement of the object in a way that exactly matches what I said, a falling slab of snowy ice. Her words: "Like when you drop your cell phone in the kitchen and it bounces around."

Again this entire comment is talking about the tic tac incident, from 2014, not the summer of 2020 incident.

[nradov]

Samsung phones now have a specialized camera mode for taking pictures of the moon.

https://www.gsmarena.com/myth_debunked_samsungs_100x_zoom_do...