ExposureBlog

Today I received a call from an environmental investigator who needed one simple thing: a time-lapse video of a site.  Which, of course, meant that he will need a device for taking time-lapse videos.  I told him, no prob, I’ll find one and get back to you.  Well, as it turns out, that chipper little sign-off was WAY premature.  Turns out time-lapse ain’t that easy.  After a bit of digging I found that there’s a lot of experts out there ready to tell you HOW to take time-lapse vids. . .just find (intermittant recording) on the menu and you’re good to go.  Okay. Except none (and I mean NONE) of the Google-found sites list videocameras that include that little thing.  I’ve gone thru a passel of videocameras over the years and NONE of the few I have left incorporate anything remotely resembling   So, after some more searching I discover that Sony made a vid camera that incorporates .  I checked the stats via Google and it’s a great camera.  Then I saw the DATES of the reviews: 2004. In the tech world, three years is like a century.  Sure enough, when I went to the Sony site, the330 was no longer being made.  Can’t buy it.  And no one was selling one on ebay.  Maybe the 330 fell apart not long after purchase.  Regardless, you can’t get there via Sony. 

So, then I went to a site that produced a software that would let you use your Canon EON camera to take time-lapse vids.  Didn’t cost much—about $49.00 USD—and the site offered some pretty good examples.  The upside was enormous take the snaps with your digital SLR, then convert the 350 or so megabytes to a vid.  Nice. 

Then the disclaimer:  The software mfgrs kindly pointed out that the EOS cameras (like the Rebel XT) have a shutter life of only 50,000 shots. . .and a couple of days time with this software and eight or nine hours of timelapse video could exceed that by many, many shots.  Great time-lapse vids, but at a great cost: your camera’s expensive shutter. So, back to the Sony site. . .where they wanted me to “register” before they would tell me anything about their cameras.  I checked my logbook and found that I already had 593 accounts–each with it’s individual password.  So, no.  Time lapse is down for the count.  Tomorrow I’ll call my friend and tell him that I’m not gonna be able to offer much advice on this, and of course, he’ll think I never bothered to even check it out.

As someone who has explained my opinions to lots of juries, I know that juries are probably the most important part of any case.  A few years ago I was one of the designated expert witnesses (for the Plaintiff) in a case where the evidence was stacked so high that everyone—even the bailiff and probably the judge thought the Plaintiff would win.  Day after day the evidence piled up, and the Defense seemed unable to respond or refute it.   For two weeks it looked like the perfect storm for the Defendant, a chemical company that, according to testimony required some of its employees to sniff vials containing a toxic chemical. 

You read that right. 

Toward the end of the trial, the defense lawyer had a glazed look on his face.  Then the jury went into their little room to decide.  As I said, everyone thought the Plaintiff would win.

But it didn’t happen.

It didn’t happen because two jurors thought differently, and managed to convince the rest of the jury that the defendant should prevail.  And apparently the reasons didn’t have anything to do with evidence or how each side presented the case.

It’s no wonder then that attorneys pay serious attention to the local culture forming the background of the jury pool.  Criminal defense lawyers sometimes visit a community weeks or months before the trial, shopping at the stores and barbershops, even getting to know some locals by name.  Others might pay a jury consultant to analyze the area—evaluating such things as socio-economics, education, ethnicity , culture regions, politics or even the predominant religion.

As a former sociologist, I believe it’s useful to understand a community.  But I’m not sure that an in-depth cultural analysis is always worth the effort and expense. In the chemical exposure case, I was told that the juror convinced the others because he thought if the company lost the case, it would close and put everyone out of work.   Attitudes like that usually don’t show up on a map.