JFK assassination film hoax
The sign mistake
When you look at Zapruder’s
film, a large road sign blocks the view of the President when he first gets
shot:
Zapruder’s movie camera was
state-of-the-art, but it was not perfect. The lens slightly distorted each
frame by pulling out the corners, called a “pincushion” effect. On the film,
lines that should be straight end up being bent.
Almost all of the frames of
the Zapruder film correctly show this pincushion effect.
It is possible to use a computer
to remove the pincushion effect. An example is shown below:
When scientists removed the
pincushion effect from the film, the road sign gave them a surprise: it bent
and twisted as it traveled across the bottom of the film!
A real sign would not do
this. When the pincushion effect is removed, a real sign would just sit there,
and line up with the background.
The easiest way to see the
bending and twisting of the sign is to flip between two frames of the film: one
showing the sign at the lower left of the frame, the other showing it at the
lower right. We can line up the backgrounds of the two frames:
The pincushion effect makes
the vertical edges of the sign bend in opposite directions for these two
positions:
If these frames were
genuine, the sign would not flip and flop like this at all.
The changing directions can
be seen more clearly if we draw some lines on the images:
The blue lines are lined up
with the white wall in the background: the last set of square holes, and the
corner of the wall. The orange lines are lined up with the road sign: down the
middle of the pole, and just to the right of the edge of the sign.
If the camera was moved
between filming these two frames, the sign could shift left and right, or up
and down, compared to the background. In other words, the orange lines could
shift sideways compared to the blue lines. But the angles cannot change, like they do here. It violates the laws of
physics. It is a forgery.
The road sign is another
mistake made by the forgers. They pasted a perfectly rectangular sign into the
film frames, without realizing that they should have included the pincushion
effect. By the time the mistake was realized, it was too late: frames had already
been published showing the rectangular sign.
The sign mistake ◄ You are here!