Something for conspiricy theorists...

[pchall]

I ran into this interesting thread at Crapwagon.com about the possibility and likelihood that the IRL and Artemis Images are digitally enhancing the crowds in Homestead pr shots.

http://www.crapwagon.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=56042#post56042

Considering the quality of the photoshop work some of the members there turn out on a reqular basis, I'd give their thoughts some credence.

[racer2c]

Originally posted by pchall
I ran into this interesting thread at Crapwagon.com about the possibility and likelihood that the IRL and Artemis Images are digitally enhancing the crowds in Homestead pr shots.

http://www.crapwagon.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=56042#post56042

Considering the quality of the photoshop work some of the members there turn out on a reqular basis, I'd give their thoughts some credence.

The photo that Formula409 ousted shows a very thin crowd whereas the Artemis Images picture (basically the same shot) shows a dense crowd. Very suspicious indeed. I guess it was a mass bathroom break?

And there are those who don't believe my prediction of Andretti getting the call for the 87th.

Wouldn't it be funny if the fall of Tony stems from false PR?

[mnkywrch]

Um, aren't most photos for the web set to a low DPI so they download in the same day?

I have the high res of the photos in question. If they photo shopped it, they missed spots.

racer2c, I'll send you the access info.

[Napoleon]

Does Artemis use digital cameras or regular cameras and then convert them?

On regular cameras though a creative use of (if memory serves) the f-stop and the other adjustment used to bring the shot into focus change the field of depth of the focus of the shot. In other words if they are using as the focus point the guys on the wall they could, by altering the f-stop and other adjustment cause the crowd to be in focus or slightly, or very, blurred (kind of a soft focus effect). They maybe intentionally blurring the crowd so it appears like its more people.

I am not aware of a similar way you can use digital.

[mnkywrch]

I know Ron McQueeney shoots both digital and 'regular'.

I want to say most everyone else shoots 'regular'.

[pchall]

Originally posted by Napoleon
I am not aware of a similar way you can use digital.

All the techniques being speculated upon in that thread are post production and on the computer. It doesn't matter if the original image was captured on film or digitally.

[RichK]

I'm astonished at the Artemis shots on crapwagon.com. I saw the stands a few times from the in-car cameras, and they were not even close to that full.

I usually don't post regarding attendance & ratings, but this is pretty amazing.

[pchall]

That thread is getting even more interesting. There are now some shots taken by a fan being linked from Univision.com.


The shots of the crowd taken from in the stands is very informative.

[JoeBob]

I love a good conspiracy theory, but I think they just took advantage of angles to make things look better than they were. cart.com has some pictures of last year's Chicago race that make the stands look full as well.

As for the Univision shots, the ones that show the empty grandstands weren't taken during the race. If it they were, Tony Kanaan's crew wouldn't be standing around doing nothing when he car was in the pits.

Now, if somebody has the race on tape and has a video capture card, I'd think somebody could freeze frame one of the shots of the Turn 2 camera doing its "pan as fast as you can so nobody can get a good look at the grandstands" shot. That shot did show the entire stands, from a pretty much head-on perspective. But, you'd have to watch it frame by frame to get any sort of idea, and even then it'll probably look like a big blur.

[pchall]

Originally posted by JoeBob


As for the Univision shots, the ones that show the empty grandstands weren't taken during the race. If it they were, Tony Kanaan's crew wouldn't be standing around doing nothing when he car was in the pits.



That is very obvious.

The "informative" shots I mentioned were the ones clearly taken from IN the stands during the race.

They show the density of the crowd as seen from the fan photographer's assigned seat.

[DaveL]

Doing a number on a picture in Paint or Photoshop won't make a difference when potential sponsors show up and see the "crowds" in person.

[racer2c]

The last thing I want to do is defend that series, but I do remember coming home from the last ChampCar Nazareth race and seeing the head on shots. My mouth fell open. From the stands it looked like a 3/4 full house.
Pictures and angles can be deceiving. Also the time that they were taken. One shot could be at the end where some had left, or at the beginning where some hadn't made it to their seats.

I have yet to see any definitive shot of an empty grandstand during the race. It looks as if their were 20K, which is what they said was there.

Thanks for the hook up 'wrench.

[Napoleon]

Originally posted by racer2c
The last thing I want to do is defend that series, but I do remember coming home from the last ChampCar Nazareth race and seeing the head on shots. My mouth fell open. From the stands it looked like a 3/4 full house.
Pictures and angles can be deceiving. Also the time that they were taken. One shot could be at the end where some had left, or at the beginning where some hadn't made it to their seats.


I agree with this part of your post, and for that reason I believe that the media estimates, regardless of the series, is always significantly on the high side, and I think the estimates at Homestead are at least double what really attended, maybe 3 or 4 times. You cannot tell me that a week before they had sold 2500 seats and essentially had a walk up 7 times that number. Also every one of the seats in the sections that were open would have to be full. I doubt that is the case.

What happens is that with people spreading out and taking up empty seats, therefore tending to do away with glaring gaps, angles of pictures which are anything other then straight on or straight from above, and if you have a picture that has any significant portion of the attendees standing, then any crowd that is a fairly small fraction of the available seats appears to take up a significant amount of the available seats.

I am convinced as a result from closely comparing pictures from certain events to estimates and from my own experiences at the track that the only way you can tell, other then having an actual count of the people there, is to have the following 3 things 1) either a direct head on shot or direct overhead shot of a particular part of the crowd so that you can actually make out individual people 2) a picture in general of what stands have people with enough resolution to at least be able to estimate of how full each is relative to the other stands. So for example if you designate what appears to be the most densely packed stand as 100% then you would be able to guess that other stands are 40 to 60 % of the 100%, or say 25% to 35% of the 100%. 3) you need a total capacity for the facility and a seating chart. Last year I recall I managed to get these for 2 IRL events and the numbers of people actually there compared to the media numbers were astounding.

All I did was take the pictures where you can tell the relevant density and assign numbers, then take the pictures where actual body counts could be made (and in both instances they were in what was obviously the most densely populated section) and do a sampling of how many people were in each section. In both cases I took people in the back row who because they were all standing and it was very easy to count them because they were silhouetted against the sky and it was easy to tell were the row breaks at the top (also note it was obvious that there were more people in the back row then elsewhere which would tend to give the benefit of the doubt to a higher count) and assume that every row in the section had that many people. Using the density estimates and the seating chart you only then needed to do the math. It ended up working out that an event with a claimed attendance of something like 25k actually worked out to something like 7500 with available data.

It wasn’t even close between the media/public release count and what you could actually estimate.

Of course I posted my results on TF or Spud nut and was proptly declaired a heritic.

[JLMannin]

I think it is a long standing fact that the tracks that host IRL events "sprinkle" the tickets out across the open sections of grandstand when they are sold. Thus when doing high speen pans and shots at angles far away from 90 degrees, the stands look more full. Somewhere in forumland, is was discussed that at an IRL event, ushers were herding people towards the start-finish line near the race to make the stands look fuller. I have no idea if this is true or not.

It sounds kind of far fetched, but who knows when spin meisters get involved.

[Napoleon]

Something occured to me. Since any sanctioning body could require the track owner to reveal to it the attendance at any event, doesn't it tell you something that the IRL is using media reports instead of the more accurate numbers they could get from the promoter?

That tells me they know the media estimates are high.

[JLMannin]

I wonder if a history of favorable media reports on IRL attendance results in a hard-card, or the IRL equivalent. ;)