Helpful comments by Colin Berry remind me that I need to mention Mario Latendresse’s absolutely fantastic Shroud Scope again. I last mentioned it in September of 2011. Here is some descriptive material from the help page (BTW it seems to work now with the latest release of Internet Explorer 9 (9.0.6) although performance seems much better with Chrome and with Firefox):
The Shroud Scope has been successfully tested on the following browsers: Firefox, Chrome, Safari. Sorry, the Shroud Scope currently does not work on Internet Explorer (IE).
This Web page describes the functionality of the Shroud Scope, a Web interface to display high definition photographs of the Shroud of Turin, zoom-in and -out these photographs, activate overlays and do length measurements over them.
The Shroud Scope has currently two different photographs: the 1931 Enrie photograph (shown in negative) and the 2002 Durante photograph (shown in positive). Both photographs have two versions: vertical and horizontal. At the highest zoom-in level, the Durante photograph offers a resolution of 0.17 mm per pixel (a pixel is a dot on your screen). As far as we know, this is the highest resolution photograph of the Turin Shroud publicly available on the Web.
The initial Shroud Scope Web page contains several widgets, panels, and icons as seen on the following screen snapshot.
In the following paragraphs we give brief descriptions of them but more details are available in the subsections below.
The Switch Panel widget is the blue panel that appears on the right side, near the top, of the Web page. If it is closed, click the plus icon to open it. It displays two lists: Base Layer and Overlays. The list of base layers is above the list of overlays. Each base layer is a photograph of the Shroud of Turin. Only one base layer can be active at a time whereas several overlays can be active at the same time. Select the desired base layer and overlays by clicking their title or their radio button in the Switch Panel.
The Ladder widget is the blue widget in the form of a ladder with over 10 steps displayed on the left of the Web page. It is used for zooming-in and -out the current active photograph (aka base layer). You can click on any ladder step to go directly to a specific zoom level. You can also use the plus icon to zoom-in or the minus icon to zoom-out. The first zoom level, the lowest, displays a 3%-scale image of the original image used at the highest zoom level. It is very small and should fit almost any computer monitor size. The second zoom level displays a 5%-scale version, the third zoom level is a 10%-scale version, the fourth zoom level is a 20%-scale version, and so on by increment of 10% up to the highest zoom level at 100%. At that zoom-level, it is the highest definition that can be displayed.
The colorful rounded-square icons on the right of the Web page can be used to activate different tools. There are three tools: panning, measure, and permalink. These tools are described on this Web page below. To activate a tool icon, simply click it. An active icon that has a reddish hue means that it is active and that the state of the Shroud Scope has changed. For example, if the measure tool is active, no panning can be done, and vice versa. A tool remains active until you click another tool. When you first visit the Shroud Scope Web page, the panning icon is active. The panning icon enables you to move (or pan) the entire photograph on the Web page.
The Base Layers
A base layer is essentially the main Shroud photograph shown on the Web page. Currently, two images are available, displayed horizontally or vertically, that is four base layers are provided: Enrie Negative Horizontal, Enrie Negative Vertical, Durante 2002 Horizontal, and Durante 2002 Vertical. More base layers are planned for the future. The Durante 2002 photograph has the highest definition. As far as we know, this is the highest definition photograph available on the Web, worldwide. (emphasis mine)
And BTW, take some time to browse the entire site at www.Sindonology.org. There is some excellent material there.
What a superb resource. i wish I’d known about Shroud Scope 6 months ago, instead of 16 hours!
There is at least one glitch that needs pointing out. The overlay that delineates major bloodstains on the face in close-up does not correspond with the bloodstains, notably that reversed 3 aka epsilon on the forehead (at least on my Firefox browser).
But it’s the profound question mark that these HD close-up images places over so much received wisdom that interests this science bod with far too much time on his hands. Like why are the so-called bloodstains virtually indistinguishable from other image areas, inasmuch as the imprint is largely confined to the crowns of the weave, with virtually none in the intervening furrows. OK, so blood is viscous, but one would have expected at least some to penetrate between parallel threads? Or is it only singed or otherwise denatured blood that is imaged, which would contradict Rogers’ claim (which I have always regarded as highly dubious) namely that the bloodstains show no evidence of heat-damage (based on a curious, some might say idiosyncratic measure of hydroxyproline context). (The meat industry uses HP content as a test for heated meat, i.e. muscle tissue, which is rich in HP mainly on account of its connective content, but there is virtually no HP in blood, the little that is present being a degradation product of collagen and other connective tissue proteins).
I now find myself wondering about the key claim that the blood was transferred to the fabric before the image. How reliable is the evidence on which that view is founded? I see from an oft-cited 2004 Rogers paper that he bases his blood-first view on a simple spot test in which he applied proteolytic enzymes to the blood stains, and found that removing the stain revealed/uncovered/exposed no image under the stain. That does not strike me as conclusive evidence for anything, certainly not for a major claim re the bloodstains. I shall obviously have to dig deeper, but if in the meantime anyone knows of better evidence than a single spot test with protein-digesting enzyme, then I’d be grateful for a link. Thanks.
Thanks Dan. I took a snippet (enough to arouse the curiosity) of your explanation with links to your blog and to Mario’s great work in our multimedia library (http://shroudnm.com/library.html).
Does this look like a bloodstain to you?
That reversed 3 on the forehead in close-up
I don’t know Colin, what does a 2000 year old blood stain look like, on 2000 year old linen? ;-)
If it’s blood and I believe it is, sure, it looks like a blood stain. What makes you think it isn’t?
R
Sadly i don’t have any 2000 year old blood to hand just at the moment, Ron. But I do have some approx. 2 month old blood (mine) that I spotted onto linen a while ago that is now mellowing nicely (now more brown than red in colour). There is a pronounced series of parallel ribs on the top side of my linen, but unlike the Shroud, my blood has not confined itself to the crowns of those ribs (why should it?) and is instead distributed fairly evenly between ribs and intervening furrows – exactly as one might expect a liquid to do.
Everyone is agreed (I think) that the Shroud image is mainly on the most superficial part of the linen, i.e. the crowns, with different explanations being offered (I say it is due to scorching by direct contact; Rogers explained it in terms of impurities that concentrate on the highest points through capillarity and evaporation, where they then react with his volatile body-decomposition amines). Why should blood concentrate on the crowns of ribs, given it has particulate red blood cells, and given its tendency to clot quite quickly?
Are you thinking what I am thinking? Probably not, but then you are not a sceptical scientist. In fact you said earlier you are glad you were not a scientist (while prepared it seems to believe SOME scientists who say those spots are blood, even though in some cases their comments were hedged around with caveats).
I think it highly improbable that a series of dark parallel lines on linen, distinguishable from other image areas only in intensity, represents blood. It is no more blood than those parts of the image that we interpret as “hair”, which also images along the ribs with no sign of any independent strand-like appearance. In other words, we “see” hair, we see “blood” at the macroscopic level, but there is nothing at the microscopic level to suggest that real blood, or real hair ever came into contact with the linen.
BEWARE! What is presented on SST as “2002 Durante Shroud Face Photograph” is actually nothing but a detailed view of the 2002 Durante overall Shroud photograph. Many significant tiny details are lost. Anyway Mario is doing a great job with his website.
First of all Colin; Did you have the Misses, whip and torture you first? Or maybe if you were suffering from Jondice, before you drew blood? Otherwise, your blood on linen experiment is basically worthless…Thats just to start….Two; I don’t know how you can say the blood is only on the crowns of the threads, it seems and looks to me like much of the blood in the image you linked too above is in the furrows, maybe some on the crowns, but mostly in the furrows. I think it would be expected that over the centuries alot of the blood traces on the crowns could have been lost due to the innumerable times it has been folded, or rolled up and unfurled. Don’t you think?
R
There is a simple way of deciding who is right, and who is wrong about ridges and furrows, Ron, which is to zoom in on a part of the face where there is “blood” overlaid (or underlaid as we are informed) on some other anatomical feature of the image that is not blood. You could do a lot worse than take a closer look at Dan’s chosen graphic, where you can see a candidate site – i.e. where there is a bloodstain on the subject’s right brow ridge (“eyebrow”) just below the reversed ‘3’..
Now why don’t you do what I have done, Ron, and zoom in on that region, using Mario’s brilliant Shroud Scope, and look at what happens where “blood” meets “eyebrow”.
No, I shan’t give you the answer, Ron. Better that you find these things out for yourself.
Dan, can you supply Colin with photomicrographs of the blood areas from the 1978 STURP investigation of the Shroud? It seems that he is not aware that those exist and I believe would give him more information about the blood than is available thru the Shroud Scope tool.
Have you had a chance to look at those bloodstains under Mario’s Shroud Scope yet Ron? As I said in my previous comment, there is no substitute for seeing things with your own eyes, unfettered – at least initially – by others’ interpretation.
To make things easy for you ,I have just posted two close-ups of bloodstains on the face of the Man in the Shroud, each before and after a little enhancement.
http://shroudofturinwithoutallthehype.wordpress.com/2012/06/11/lets-take-a-closer-look-at-the-bloodstains-on-the-shroud-of-turin-correction-the-images-that-are-interpreted-as-bloodstains-6/
Take another look at the image in relation to the weave. Do you still think there is anything different between the image of a “bloodstain” and that of other facial features (notably skin and hair)? Remember – it is received wisdom that the faint sepia image of the face and other bodily features, including hair, resides primarily on the crowns of fibres, rather than furrows between fibres. So if you still claim the image is as much in the furrows as in the ridges then it is not me you challenge, but received wisdom…
Didn’t look at it yet Colin, no time, but I never claimed the image is in the furrows but that the blood seem to be in the furrows and not so much on the crowns. Sorry gotta go, off to work.