JFK Assassination Forum

There are a number of forum members who have certain expertise when it comes to image analysis.
I am completely out of my comfort zone with that sort of thing, so I need a helping hand trying to understand how the image below was created.



The identification of Lovelady in the above image has been described as "conclusive" and "definitive".
Even though the known testimonial evidence relating to this identification, when taken as a whole, completely refutes this identification (as I've been arguing on a different thread).
It has boiled down to so-called researchers simply ignoring the evidence because  how can the "testimonial evidence affect what we can see with our own eyes?"
After all, just look at the level of detail in the shirt. It is clearly Lovelady's shirt because it is so distinctive and we can clearly see the pattern of it.

At some point in the debate on the other thread I posted this crop from the Gerda Dunkel footage:



I was struck by the lack of detail on 'Lovelady's' shirt.
There didn't seem to be even the faintest trace of it.
I knew Kamp had used Photoshop to sharpen the images but when I tried it I got nothing.

So I had a look on the Prayer Man website where other forum members kept pointing me towards to see if I could get a better understanding. In the part about the image Kamp writes:

"For starters, take a look at the Gerda Dunckel gifs below and check Lovelady’s shirt in the very first few frames and also check out the large still I snagged from PBS Breaking The News, click to enlarge, yes that shirt is checkered, compare it to other garments of a lighter colour or the polka dot coat which do not smudge due to  motion and quality loss. Then look at Shelly, with his black suit and his facial and hair features."

I've already posted the Dunkel image and there is no checkered image there so he must be referring to the PBS image posted on the website, from which I got this image (all I did was blow the image up and crop it from the original image):



Now, with all the best will in the world, I'm not seeing the checkered pattern that Kamp is insisting is there.
I can see four pieces of rectangular, what I would call, photographic 'noise' impinging on the right side of' Lovelady' as we look at him and there is a similar effect bleeding over between the two men. But no checkered pattern.
If any of our resident images can make a comment on my assessment of this I would be grateful.

So, we then come to the image that the amazing level of detail on Lovelady's shirt appears to be taken from. As Kamp explains:

This...Scan of a Couch film still at first looks very harsh and doesn’t overall have much information, but it does happen to show a lot regarding our illustrious duo. This print comes from the Richard E. Sprague Collection from the National Archives.




And this is where my complete lack of expertise kicks in.
In the above image we can now clearly see that there is a defined pattern on Lovelady's shirt.
There is a square of a lighter shade around the two men. I don't know if it was like that when Kemp originally got the image or if this is a result of his work on the image. If it is I would really like to see the original image
But here's the thing I'm not getting. To my eye, the Sprague image (from which we get the "definitive" Lovelady) lacks an incredible amount of detail compared to this large crop PBS image:




Note in PBS image, the pattern of the first floor 'windows',the concrete lattice in front of the windows, and then notice the complete lack of it in the Sprague image. Just compare the two images in general and we acn see that the PBS image is a far more detailed, yet the close-up of Lovelady in that image does not have any hint of the incredible shirt pattern in the inferior Sprague image.
Can anyone help me understand this?

LATER EDIT:
If anyone has, or can point me to, the Couch film that has the amazing level of detail please could you post it because every version I've come across so far is not anywhere near close the definition required

   Just look at those "Bag Ladies" standing on the very corner of the Island as the Elm St sidewalk wraps around the corner. There is only a fine sliver of the Island between that Traffic Signal Pole and the Elm St Extension. Fedora Man was standing close to the Traffic Signal Pole on the Wiegman Film. What we see through the legs of Fedora Man is the actual surface street of the Elm St Extension. And why are we able to see the surface street behind him? Because the "getaway" car is Not parked on the Elm St Extension. Not Yet! 

This sounds suspiciously like you are attempting to "read Oswald's mind." Again and again, you don't realize that you do exactly what you accuse others of doing - but it's "different" when you do it because you are, in your own mind anyway, the arbiter of all truth.

I'm speculating and I don't pretend to know this for a fact. It's really not important which sights he used. Either would likely aim high at such a short range and not surprising, the bullet struck the bottom of the window frame instead of passing through the open window. Maybe he did adjust for the short range and just fired a poor shot. It's not important to know why his shot went high. We just know that it did and likely saved Walker's life.

There's nothing wrong with speculating about things we don't have definitive evidence for as long as we recognize our speculations aren't evidence. Your problem is you use your speculations as excuses to dismiss the conclusive evidence that Oswald was the assassin. Sure, there's all that forensic evidence that Oswald was the assassin, but you try to cast doubt on that evidence because Oswald made different decisions than you think he should have made such as using his mail order rifle instead of buying an untraceable one locally. You use Oswald's attempt to reconcile with Marina as being inconsistent with someone planning to kill JFK. You disregard the fact he broke his routine by coming to Irving on a Thursday instead of the weekend and that he brought the bag he made at the TSBD with him to smuggle the rifle into the TSBD. I believe that is known as Malice Aforethought which is evidence of premeditation. Maybe he would have abandoned his plan to kill JFK if Marina had agreed to reconcile. We'll never know that. What we have ample evidence of is that he did smuggle his rifle into the TSBD the next morning and used it to kill JFK. None of your speculations about Oswald's mindset does anything to negate that eevidene.

For such a short ranged shot, I doubt Oswald would have used the scope.

This sounds suspiciously like you are attempting to "read Oswald's mind." Again and again, you don't realize that you do exactly what you accuse others of doing - but it's "different" when you do it because you are, in your own mind anyway, the arbiter of all truth.

So you are saying that your spidey sense that Connally was referring to the turn at z164 as the turn to look at JFK even though he makes no attempt to look at JFK

Just how did you determine he was not trying to look at JFK when he turned.

even though Mary Woodward said that was before the first shot (along with a few dozen others).  You aren’t relying on the zfilm. You are relying on your spidey senses.  I prefer evidence.

I don't give a crap what Mary Woodward said unless you can establish what she said is correct. I'm not relying on my senses. I am relying on JBC's senses which are corrobrorated by the Z-film. I think JBC would know if he heard a shot before he felt the shot that hit him in the back.

You also have a strange view of what constitutes corroboration. Any independent evidence can provide corroboration.

The fact that it seems strange to you doesn't concern me in the least.

We don't have to read his mind. A mere two days after completing his preparations for the attempt on Walker, and while living in the most gun-happy, gun-friendly state in America, he chose to buy a cheap rifle by mail from a dealer in Illinois using his own post office box and an alias when he could have easily bought a better rifle that would have been completely untraceable right there in Dallas. This is what he did, regardless of why. The law allows a judge or jury to draw reasonable inferences from the evidence. There is a clear disconnect that, together with other evidence, might lead to reasonable inferences that there was no such preparation, or Oswald didn't order the rifle, or Oswald had no intent to shoot at Walker.

The evidence is clear. Oswald ordered the rifle and received it at his PO Box. He had taken pictures of Walker's residence in preparation for the attempt on his life. The fact he didn't do the things you would have done in his circumstance isn't terribly relevant.

This is likewise true with history. Historians are entitled to draw reasonable inferences, and sometimes their reasonable inferences are quite different. You seem to want to think that the LN narrative itself is a fact, when it simply isn't.

Yes it is. The assassination only happened one way and all the credible evidence points to Oswald and no one else. The fact you are having trouble figuring it out doesn't change that fact.

It's a plausible account of what occurred, but it isn't sacrosanct and it isn't without problem areas. I have highlighted some of the aspects that nag at me, not in an effort to read Oswald's mind but to try to make sense of what he did in the context of the LN narrative - or any other narrative that might more plausibly explain what he did.

In 62 years no one has come up with a plausible alternative to what the WC presented to us that explains the evidence. The typical path the CTs go down is to try to explain away that evidence. If you insist that there is a plausible alternative, you could demonstrate that by presenting one. You won't because you can't.

Ditto with his choice to assemble his rifle and set up the sniper's nest on the 6th floor of the building where he was employed, having no way to control who might be on that floor and having little chance of escaping without being seen, captured or killed, when he could have exited the building with his "curtain rods" and set up in a location far less risky. Again, we are talking about what he did, not why. One reasonable inference might be "He didn't do that. He wasn't on the sixth floor." - which happens to be exactly what he claimed.

How is that remotely reasonable when his rifle, with his palmprint, and fibers matching his shirt was found on the 6th floor. The shells that were found in the sniper's nest could only have been fired by that rifle. Oswald's fingerprints were found on the boxes in the sniper's nest oriented just as they would be if he was facing down Elm St. and a bag large enough to hold the disassembled rifle that had his palm and fingerprints on the bottom. Give us a plausible scenario that takes into account all that evidence that doesn't have Oswald firing the shots from the sniper's nest. I'm not even asking you to prove your scenario. Just pressent us with another way it COULD have happened.

I'm not saying by any means that the only reasonable inferences favor some conspiracy theory. I'm simply saying that when we look at the evidence of what Oswald did, much of it seems somewhat problematical for the LN narrative.

Your half assed attempt to read Oswald's mind doesn't trump the wealth of forensic evidence that he was the assassin.