Desormeux questions photo finish system

[JohnGalt1]

I know I've bet horses that looked to me a dead heat--where I could not see a sliver between them, but my horse either won or lost.

And I've seen photo finishes that looked like dead heats where a horse was named a winner where I did not have a bet. That looked too close to me to separate.

I don't mind winning by a nostril hair, But I don't want to lose by one either. Shouldn't that almost too close to call result in a dead heat?

No one loses. Not the track, not the betters.

[dilanesp]

Originally Posted by no breathalyzer

999/1000 i don't question it but then there is this http://www.paceadvantage.com/forum/s...d.php?t=125762
also one time over 10 yrs ago i remember a time at Hawthorne in a harness race where they had the nerve to show the win photo to show the 2nd and 3rd place finishers instead of where they finished across the wire... to this day i know they ****ed that up as the 3rd place horse got second by a neck.. but since it was harness and were maybe 90 people there no one gave a shit

I don't understand this comment. The win photo and the place photo are the same photo, just farther down the film strip. The camera is not capable of showing any horse's position at any point other than on the wire.

[VeryOldMan]

Originally Posted by PaceAdvantage

All anyone needs to know is that the photo you see IS the finish. That's it...plain and simple.

What you see is exactly what it looked like the instant the first horse hits the finish line.

If the photo finish camera is on the line (and we have to assume that it is), then there can be no other possible image produced.

The "line" you see on the photo is immaterial to the finish, since the photo IS the finish. It is artificially placed on the image to help the fan and the judges separate what is there in the image in a close race. It doesn't change the photo. With or without the line (ie, you can zoom in really close with a digital photo), you can tell who won. The line isn't necessary...it is just a visual aid.

I'm not sure how much clearer you can make it - you've posted this point for a long time and it informed me since I first saw it. The finish line camera is positioned along the actual finish line and is triggered by whatever horse first crosses it. Period. Any lines drawn are optional - work back and figure out what caused the high speed camera to trigger.

[chenoa]

Originally Posted by HuggingTheRail

That's correct - sometimes it just takes a bit longer because some of them are harder to wake up

Woodbine T-Bred comes to mind, their photos take a helluva long time!!!
What's the deal with that?

[whisperlunch]

At Each track the actual finish line is hard to distinguish. When heads are bobbing where is the line -in the middle of mirror? Is it before mirror? I'd like to be able to know where it is with naked eye. Gulfstream turf course I have no idea where the finish is. I can't believe how good Aussie racing is with showing the finish in slow mo seconds after they cross. Why can't our tracks ? I remember Laurel tried graphics on the dirt to show finish line but the line was 10 yards thick and you couldn't tell. It was a disaster.

[menifee]

I guess I was mistaken about Aussie racing based on CJ's comment. The difference is the video equipment. On our video equipment, they don't interpose the line. They should do that as they do in Japan and Aus. It would silence the conspiracy theorists and give a much clearer picture to those watching the race. Now you have no idea where the finish line is.

[johnhannibalsmith]

What they should really do that would take literally no effort whatsoever is just let video broadcast the feed from the photo equipment as the horses are being placed real-time. If anything would silence a lot of this, it would be a simple education by observation, and there isn't any real downside. Nobody is going to be more scrutinizing or critical than they are now; I'd guess it would yield only empathy and some confidence in the whole system. And for those tracks that make a habit of the control room telling a camera to follow a horse over another that were involved in a photo and the cameraman seems to be right 99% of the time - pretty good chance it would involve little more than just airing what is already set up and happening.

[Fager Fan]

Originally Posted by HalvOnHorseracing

The guy assumed that they took a picture as soon as the first horse hit the finish line. That picture would have contained the four horses because they were all within a length and a quarter of the winner. Then our guy assumed they drew a line for the winner and a separate line for the show horse using that one snap shot instead of taking a second picture when the 3rd/4th place horses crossed the line. In other words, in the snap shot he assumed only the winner had actually reached the finish line. i tried to explain to him that you had a continuous stream of film rolling by, and a very small aperture at the finish line and as each horse entered the aperture it printed on the film. So the snap shot he thought he saw was actually where each horse was when he hit the finish line. As I said, the concept just blew his mind.

What I was explaining was exactly how it was done back then. If you looked at the continuous roll of film you would see all the horses strung out, but the pictures of each respective horse were as they were passing the finish line.

Does that make sense now?

You said it was the same photo but with 2 diff lines.

[Fager Fan]

I haven't read previous threads so excuse the questions that you all will say have been discussed ad nauseum.

It makes sense if the photo is a narrow aperture as you said, the very inch that the first horse crosses the line. But the photo shows far more than that. It captures the full length of the horse. A narrow nose can't change within the time span of a horse length?

[foregoforever]

With all due respect to everyone on this thread, if you're asking questions about the placement of the line, you don't understand how the system works.

Google "photo finish camera" ...

https://www.google.com/search?q=phot...utf-8&oe=utf-8

... and start reading.

If you prefer watching to reading, this video from Woodbine is a good start:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ut0nKdLCAEo

[dilanesp]

Originally Posted by Fager Fan

I haven't read previous threads so excuse the questions that you all will say have been discussed ad nauseum.

It makes sense if the photo is a narrow aperture as you said, the very inch that the first horse crosses the line. But the photo shows far more than that. It captures the full length of the horse. A narrow nose can't change within the time span of a horse length?

1 more time. Let's use film, though digital works the same.

The camera is fixed and points directly at the finish.

The film moves through the camera in the direction and speed of the horses.

So when each horse's nose hits the line you see it.

Yes you also see horses' bodies. But that part of the image isn't snapped at the same time as the noses. Rather, you see each part of the body the way it looks when it crosses the line. Everything depicted in the photo looks exactly the way it looked when it crosses the line. And you don't see anything to either side of the line. If there is a banner that says "NBC Sports" to the left of the line, you can't see it in the photo.

[Fager Fan]

Ok, I'm getting it. Thanks for the video link. That explains the sliver photo that in my mind I was said was needed. The sliver photos are then put together to make the larger photos.

Can someone explain why the photo of the Distaff showed the nose tips distorted?

[foregoforever]

Originally Posted by Fager Fan

Can someone explain why the photo of the Distaff showed the nose tips distorted?

I don't recall that photo being all that distorted, but it is possible.

Consider a case where two horses hit the wire together, and one horse is traveling twice as fast as the other. Knowing how the system works, you'll realize that the "photo" will show the body of the slower horse as twice the length of that of the faster horse. This is because the body of the slower horse spent twice the time in front of the camera slit as the faster horse.

Now consider a galloping horse. As the horse approaches full extension, his nose is moving farther from his midsection. Then when his body compresses for the next stride, his nose is moving closer to his midsection.

What this means is that even through the horse is moving at a constant speed, the tip of his nose isn't. It's going slightly faster when he's extending, slightly slower when he's compressing. You see this as the head-bob action when two horses are running together and their strides are out of sync with each other.

If a horse hits the wire while he's extending, his nose will be in the slit for slightly less time and it will appear slightly compressed on the "photo". If he's compressing at the wire, his nose will be in the slit a bit longer and be slightly extended in the photo.

The camera software is set up to render a final photo that shows the horses in roughly correct proportions, but variations in speed across the line will show up as these sorts of minor distortions.

In that Google search from my earlier post, take a look at the articles about distortions that show up in photos from cycling events. In particular, the spokes on the bike wheels are often curved for the same reason.

While these distortions are amusing artifacts from the camera system, they are just that. They don't affect the results, since the finish is defined as the when the tip of the nose, or the bike wheel, hits the line.

[HalvOnHorseracing]

Originally Posted by Fager Fan

You said it was the same photo but with 2 diff lines.

Yes, and I'm still saying it. They posted the exact same photo, one with a line at the win, one with a line at the show.

And as has been said over and over, there is only one continuous strip that shows each horse as it crosses the finish line.

[EasyGoer89]

The judges at Santa Anita needed 14 mins to place the winning horse in the first race of the meet? Seems to me this was the fake suspense I was talking about in post 34 here. There's zero chance it took that long to put up the results unless they were dragging out the suspense, there's no logical way to argue otherwise. Your point was that 13 minutes into the photo they still didn't know who won and then in the 14 th minute they finally 'saw' that the 6 win the race?

This suspense dragging thing happens all the time at Santa Anita, do other tracks do it? Not sure, but this is proof SA does it.