
Welcome to this week’s Video Evidence Pitfalls post, dear friends! Today we’re dealing with the reliability of colors in CCTV footage (and with any kind of digital images in general). Colors are an essential part of human perception, but can often be misleading in surveillance footage. Keep reading to find out why!
Issue: Colors Are Often Unreliable in CCTV Footage
As part of an ATM fraud robbery investigation, you are reviewing footage from two cameras in the same area. This is the image of the suspect as he walks away from the ATM.
He’s suspected of having visited another ATM of a bank nearby. So you review the footage of that camera as well, but… you don’t find anyone with a blue jacket and beanie hat. After syncing the clocks and checking frame by frame, you realize that it could be him:
But you also realize you will have a hard time convincing anyone about it. Why are the colors completely different?
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