Pine Valley and Topos

[DMoriarty]

Jim,

At the slight dogleg just past the beginning of the fairway, the ground drops over 50 feet in less than 100 yards.  Where does that happen in this photo?

I am pretty sure Bryan has said a number of times that he does not think the third green is visible in the Brown photo, but is actually off to the left of the left  edge.   Bryan?
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Bryan,  My last post reminded me that I have an old Brownie 2A, basic box variety introduced in 1907, the kind in heavy use around this time.   So I dug it out and did some quick measures. The negative size was 2 1/2" x 4 1/2." The distance from the lens to the film (focal length) looks like it about 4 5/8"  inches.

Using the formula for calculating "angle of view" (thanks Wikipedia) and 118 mm as my focal length, I come up with a horizontal viewing angle of about 52 degrees and vertical viewing angle of only around 30 degrees.    I know you disagree, but that looks about right to me.  .   Assuming it is . . .

Looking at your ground level google earth capture above (the one from the green) the center line looks like at about the left edge of the 4th fairway, and your ridge point along this line is at about 400 yards, is it not?    If so, then we can calculate the horizontal viewing distance to each side extending perpendicular at this point to the center line.   My trigonometry might be a little rusty, but I come up with about 195 yards each way, or 390 yards diagonal viewing width total.   If so, then the viewing angle from the green and a photo taken with that camera would look something like this, wouldn't it?



If this was the camera from the tee and it was pointed directly at the left edge of the fairway, then the 2nd green and 3rd tee would most definitely have be in the photo, and not even near the left edge, much less off it.  And if this was the camera, your assumed diagonal angle of vision is much too narrow.  This is one thing I have been trying to explain. 

Now before you or someone else simply says to swing the angle to the right, so as to cut off the 3rd tee, I don't think that works either.  If you swing the camera angle right, you effectively move the 4th fairway well to the left, and this would bring the steep part of the ravine much more into view, but we cannot really see any steep part of the ravine in the photo, can we?  This is issue I have been trying to point out to you guys. 

[DMoriarty]

Incidentally,  I don't even think the problem is resolved if we use your new 40 degree angle of view option.   Using the same centerline as same 400 yd distance as above, I come up with this a horizontal viewing distance of about 291 yards. 

[JESII]

Jim,

At the slight dogleg just past the beginning of the fairway, the ground drops over 50 feet in less than 100 yards.  Where does that happen in this photo?

From the 4.25" to 2"!

I can see it. I hate to pull a Patrick, but if you've been there you would see it too. At least I kept the green paint to myself...

[JESII]

David,

Just out of curiosity, why did you do that trigonometry from the 6th green? Mikes the only one pushing that hard, are you endorsing his suggestion???

[JESII]

From the corner of the dogleg the view of the slope you're looking for is more face on so it's probably tougher to detect...not sure.

[DMoriarty]

Jim,  I believe you when you tell me what you see.  Even I see what could possibly be a steeper portion on the right side of the photo, but I don't know that it all lines up for me when I consider the old photo.

I used the perspective from the green because I think Bryan said above that he preferred that one from the green based on horizon heights.   But if you are feeling left out, here is the same thing from the corner of the dogleg.  First from above, with the elevation plot for the middle running from the 6th fairway to a point 400 yards away.   The other line yellow line is an approximate horizon line from that angle.



And from "eye level" on the 6th fairway . . .



Note the drop from left to right along the horizon line.   It goes from 160+ feet alt. to 115 feet, and where the line ends is apparently still 25 feet above the lake.   I don't a 45 foot drop on the old photo, and it doesn't look like there is a 60 foot drop to lake level, does it? 

For what it is worth, this is the most believable perspective if this is indeed taken from the 6th hole, but there are still a number of things I don't get. 

I understand it may be tougher to detect, but a lot of the real slope into the ravine looks 1) steep, and 2) not uniform.  I don't think it matches, even by the way you are describing it.   I guess what I am saying is that I am trying to take your word for what you say about PV, but not necessarily about your interpretation of the old photo.

[Bryan Izatt]

David,

Sorry you took umbrage at my comments on the water tower hypothesis, but it doesn't do t be too sensitive in these debates.  In answer to your questions:

While you call my assumptions (identified as such) flights of fancy, you seem to be making quite a few of your own. Perhaps you can answer a few questions about them?

- Did Brown and or Shelly have a contemporaneous source for the captions?  If so, then how come you are second guessing Brown as to the presence of the 3rd tee in the photo?  I don't know where they got the caption from.  They are different from each other.  Did the person who took the photo know where the hole features we've been debating were going to be exactly in the picture?  Do I believe that they got the captions totally wrong and the picture is not of that general area of the course?  No.

- Obviously a bit of the course was "just being cleared" but how do you know the whole course was "just being cleared" at the time the photo was taken?  PV was built in stages.  Was the entire property cleared or was it cleared in stages?  I don't know and I assume you don't either.  You assume correctly.  What is your point?

- I assume you agree that there was a tower built at some point.  If so, when did they build the tower?  Do you suppose they had a need for a water tower by the time they started seeding?  I do not know when they built the water tower.  Do you believe that they built it prior to clearing the section in the picture?  Contemporaneously?
  
-How do you know the photo was taken when the course was just being

We don't know when the picture was taken, do we?  Does the land in the picture look like it was cleared some time ago to you?

- Thank you for posting the log image.  Now that you have done so, I trust you can see the difference in perspective from photographing logs from the same level and photographing from above them? If the photo was taken from standing at the level of the logs, then the lens was a wide angle, which you don't seem to think at all.

I guess that depends whether you think the wide angle was vertical or horizontal.  And, no i didn't use a Brownie to take the picture.
 

You're amazing.  That's in a positive sense.  Who would have thunk you had a Kodak Brownie that you could measure.  The brownie 2A used 116 film which measure 2.5 x 4.25" ( http://www.brownie-camera.com/film.shtml ), so your angle should be 49*, not 52*.  However, I would debate that the 49* is the horizontal view.  The long dimension (4.25") mounts vertically in the camera.  So, assuming that the camera man (woman) held the camera in the natural upright position, the vertical angle was 49* and the horizontal angle was 30*.  Perhaps that is why it looks like the camera is looking down on the logs in the foreground.  

On the image where you plotted your field of view from the middle of the green, no part of the bottom of the ravine is in view.  That doesn't seem to fit the picture to me.  Jim and I see the ravine angling away to the right; it seems clear that we are looking across at least the upper end of it.  

Vis-a-vis the ravine slopes etc, take another look at the 1898 USGS topo map.  The ravine/stream bed slopes gently down from 130 feet at the head end of the stream to 100 feet near the RR.  It seems certain that the ravine in 1912/13 did not have the contours that it has now, or even those on the stick routing topo.  There must have been some reasonable earth moving to create the current 40 yard wide pond, or even the pond as seen on the stick routing topo.  In 1898, at the upper end the ravine, near the 6th fairway and green, the ravine is only 15 to 25  feet deep relative to the 6th fairway.  That looks consistent with the picture if we are looking across the upper end.



So, as another possibility, I'd suggest that we are looking across from the elbow of the 6th fairway with a field of view of 30*.  Here is the field of view and then the GE ground level view.  The 4th fairway ridge is in orange and the far horizon ( a mile or so away across the tracks) is in blue.  You'll have to imagine 30 foot trees on the far ridge, since GE GLV doesn't show trees.

[DMoriarty]

It is going too far to compare me and my approach to this material to Cirba and his approach.

As for the camera, doesn't everyone have a Kodak Brownie around for those special occasions?

My mistake on the 4.25" film. I looked that part up and I guess I copied it wrong.   My points remain essentially unchanged though.    And on the bright side, we now have an exact match on the proportions of our film and pretty good indication we have the right camera.   The photo in the book is  5 x 8.5 inches, and fortunately I don't need trigonometry to know the proportions match. 

Which brings me to your theory regarding the vertical vs. horizontal field of vision.
- First and most important, turning again to my old Brownie, The camera is a viewfinder camera and there are two viewing prisms located on two adjacent surfaces, 90 degrees around the course from each other.   So the camera was meant to shoot portrait or landscape even then, depending upon whether the photographer was shooting something fitting for a vertical orientation like a portrait or a horizontal orientation like a landscape.
- Second, the dimensions of the film match the dimensions of the photo.  This photo is wider than taller because the camera was so oriented.  Do you really think they took a 2.5"x 4.25" negative and cropped it down to a 2.5"x1.5" negative?

I'll try to get to the rest of the questions and comments soon. 

[Mike Cirba]

Gentlemen;

It may help you fellows in your calculations to look at the drop from the 4th fairway to the bottom of your ravine in this 1920 aerial.

Note also the very close relationship between the 4th green and 18th green, as well as the 5th tee between the two buildings.




Here is the 4th.   If one considers the position of the trees on both sides of the fairway as the boundaries of that hole as corresponding to the Brown photo and the  1920 aerial..




...then this is what I believe the photo reveals.   Excuse the low-tech presentation, but I think it's about right.   ***EDIT*** In looking at it again I might place the 4th & 18th greens just a bit more to the right but it's close enough to convey the point, I believe.




...the 5th green may even be in the photo, but is obscured by trees on the right.   From a slightly higher elevation (to show the distant features like the 4th and 18th greens in relation to each other better), here is about the same angle.




This photo is also useful to see the spatial relationships between the features.




Don't know much 'bout trigonometry, and the only Brownies I was interested in were wearing skirts, but I do trust my eyes.

[Mike Cirba]

Bryan,

I'm very curious to see the results of your efforts comparing the 1898 Topo Map to the spring 1913 Stick routing.

Do you think it reflects Crump's work, or perhaps prior Sand Mining efforts on the property between 1898 and his purchase in late 1912?

[Bryan Izatt]

Mike,

Your field of view and angle fails for two reasons:

1) the tree line behind the 3rd tee would not be visible from that angle and is therefore inconsistent with the picture

2) from ground level, there is a ridge up from the ravine to the 5th green and 6th tee that would (especially with trees on it) block the view down the ravine.  There is no such ridge visible in the picture.


David,

I have overlaid the Shelley and Brown pics and they are evidently one and the same.  Each has been cropped, but in a different way.  We can infer that the original negative was at least as big as shown in red.  This is more consistent with a 4.25 x 3.25 film.  That's the size of 124 film used in the No. 3 Folding Brownie.  I wouldn't bet against you having one of those in the attic too.   

In any event, I think that my 30* field of view from the elbow in the 6th fairway comes closest to matching the picture.  We can't know for sure based on the information we have now.  I think at this point we should throw the two pictures on the scrap heap of unverifiable information.

[Mike Cirba]

Bryan,

Would your same concerns hold true if the photo was not taken from ground level, but say elevated another 10-15 feet, say in a tree, or on the back of a truck?   In other words, is it a matter of elevation or a matter of where the features lie in relationship to each other?

Aren't there distant point across beyond Lake Lekau higher than 150 feet?   I'm not understanding why they wouldn't be visible above the 3rd if photographed from a position on #6 above that third tee?

For example, here's the angle simulated from eye level of 173 feet, nine feet above ground level, or a mere three feet higher than a six foot tall photographer.



All,

Speaking of the stick routing map, I knew I saw that steeply uphill tee shot on the dogleg right before!    

[Bryan Izatt]

Mike,

Seems to me unlikely that the photographer was climbing trees, trucks or water towers to take the picture.  But, say they had a 6 foot tall tripod, then sure there may have been a sliver of horizon showing above the ridge.  There are no hills I can see out that specific direction all the way to Cherry Hill and beyond.  A sliver of horizon showing is inconsistent with the picture.  The tree line over the ridge is about the same height from the left edge to about the middle of the picture.

[Mike Cirba]

Bryan,

Might that 3rd tee have gotten built up a bit during construction or any time subsequent to then, accounting for today's Google Earth elevation measurement?  **EDIT** I just checked the 1913 stick drawing topo and the 2nd green and 3rd tee are on the same elevation point on that map.   Google Earth shows the 3rd tee as 11 feet higher than the 2nd green.  **END EDIT**

Also, given the site was a construction site at the time, there would certainly be some trucks and such available.   I wouldn't be surprised to hear that the photo was taken by Tillinghast, who was something of a camera buff.

In terms of distant elevations, I see everything from 150 foot ridges to highs of 170 feet in the perspective of the camera in the distance near and beyond Lake Leuka.   I'm not sure why you think these wouldn't be visible?

Thanks.

[JESII]

How about if the picture were taken from just short of the corner of the 6th fairway and centered towards todays 1st green? The distant elevations are lower and the angle across the ravine is similar. This probably moves Mike's Macadam Road into the center of the 4th fairway but I'm willing to go out on that limb...

[Mike Cirba]

Jim,

Please see my edit to my last post...thanks.

[JESII]

Mike,

Not sure why, but the picture isn't coming up on my screen. It's the only one like that.

For what it's worth, Google Earth seems to have some flaws because when I last checked the third tee elevations the back tee was 5 feet lower than the middle tee...I'm pretty certain it's not!

The middle tee on 3 might be 5 feet higher than the middle of the second green.

[Mike Cirba]

Jim,

Has Tom Fazio been to PV recently?  

This should help with the topo in question as to what's across the tracks...

[Bryan Izatt]

Mike,

You asked if the hills past Lake Lekau could be seen if you looked over the 3rd tee. The answer is no.  Look at the following picture.  If you follow the yellow line from from the elbow of the 6th fairway, across the 3rd tee and on out 8+ miles to Cherry hill, there are no hills in that specific direction.  If you look out from the 6th within the red field of view, then you can see the hills near Lake Lekau.  Those hills peter out as you go west and are gone by the time you get to the yellow line.

As for the elevation differences between two points within 20 or 30 yards of each other, I don't think that GE has that kind of precision.  Their data comes from a digital elevation model (DEM) data collected by NASA's Shuttle Radar Topography Mission that just doesn't have that level of resolution.

[Mike Cirba]

Bryan,

Are you saying that the field of view in that photo doesn't extend as far right as the 4th green?   That seems to be a very narrow spectrum across hundreds of yards and does not seem consistent with the angles of the 4th fairway and/or the ravine.

Or am I misunderstanding you and your point is simply that the field of view doesn't extend as far left as the 3rd tee?

Also, any general impressions from looking at the differences between the 1898 topo and any of the subsequent ones?

Thanks.

[Mike Cirba]

Bryan,

I believe you are correct that the 3rd tee does not appear in the photograph.

I just measured the width of the 4th fairway on Google Earth at about 50 yards at the top of the hill.   On the photo, that corresponds to very slightly over 1.5 inches.

From the far left side of the 4th fairway out across the 2nd green beyond the fringe on the other side it's another 75 yards.   To reach the edge of the 3rd tee it's another 15 yards or 90 yards from the left edge of the 4th fairway.  To get there I would need another 3 inches on the photo left of the 4th fairway, and we really don't even have two.  

Now that we know that, can we establish a far right coordinate?   I'd place it approximately 175 yards (5 inches) to the right of the right edge of the 4th fairway.   From there, the 18th green and 5th tee would be just visible in the far right corner, depending on where the photographer is standing if he was near the corner of the dogleg, and at about the 1.5 inch mark if it was taken from closer to the green.

[DMoriarty]

Bryan,

Respectfully, I just cannot buy your 30 degree field of vision.  It may look reasonable on Google Earth but that is only half the equation. I don't think it looks so reasonable when you actually take a look at the old photograph and start considering the distances.  
- As you have it depicted, your ridge line is only about 350 yards from your point of reference  At that distance your horizontal field of vision would only be about 188 yards.  That is from picture edge to picture edge.  
- About half the ridge line is out of the trees on the old pic.  If you are correct about the field of vision then along that ridge line from the left edge to the tree line is only about 94 yards.  
- Go to a point that you think is half way the ridge line; your horizontal field of vision would only be about 94 yards from picture edge to picture edge.

I know photos can be deceptive, but I have trouble reconciling these numbers with what I am seeing in the photo.

I have created a much better image of the old picture that I think might help clarify things, but am not too excited about posting my stuff on here only to see Cirba deface it and repost it, ad infinitum, without my permission and against my wishes.  I guess I can send it to you and Jim offline, but it really seems a shame not to discuss this stuff publicly.  
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Cirba,

You use the term "gentlemen" above and I sure hope you are not including yourself in that grouping.   I see that after your hissy-fits, your false accusations, and your snide and inaccurate remarks, you went ahead and copied and posted my photo without my permission.  You repeatedly blab on about how you will ignore me and say that want nothing to do with me, yet you cannot manage to refrain from glomming onto my photo and scribbling all over it?  You are even sleazier than I had thought.  

Delete the photo.  I want nothing to do with you, and am not here to help you while you try to mock me, malign me, and make false accusations against me.  You already have the photo from the Shelly book, and surely with your mentor's connections you can manage to get your grubby paws on your own copy of the underlying image from the Brown book to muck up.  There is really no need for you to use my photo.

As for your bizarre comment about having been interested in 2nd and 3rd grade girls, I really hope you are talking about when you were in 2nd or 3rd grade, but even if so your comment was in extremely poor taste.  

[DMoriarty]

Bryan,  Here is an image of part of the second green from your cross section above depiction above, overlaid over the old pic.  To me the proportions of this green look way off as compared to the surrounding  terrain, trees, etc.  Yet as I understand it, this would represent the area on the pic if your 30 degree field of vision is correct.  It sure looks out of whack to me. 



And it gets worse if we add in the 2nd fairway, doesn't it? 



Even if you tilted one or another to make the fairway fit the land, look at the size of the trees and such at that point in the photo?   Do the proportions match at all?   It sure doesnt' look like it it me.

[Bryan Izatt]

Mike,

I just measured the width of the 4th fairway on Google Earth at about 50 yards at the top of the hill.   On the photo, that corresponds to very slightly over 1.5 inches.

The fairway could be 50 yards wide, depending on which angle you measure it.  I don't know how you can equate that to 1.5 inches in the old photo.  We don't know the horizontal scale of the picture.  Or,have you found two identifiable points in the picture that we can measure on GE?  The rest of your math is just conjecture if your assumption that 50 yards = 1.5 inches is wrong.


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David,

Disagreement is fine.  If either of us had proof positive, then there would be no debate.  Since we're not positive, I understand that we might disagree.

I assume in your second picture that you meant 4th fairway, not the 2nd fairway.  I'd say that you pasted it about a quarter of an inch to high.  The orange line on the right should align with the white line (road), IMHO.

As a little exercise, how tall do you think the trees in the foreground (on the down slope of the ravine) are?  We can see over them, so they can't be more than 30' (10 yards) tall, given the depth of the ravine near the top end. If you use that as a measure, and turn it side ways and measure across the foreground near the bottom of the picture, how wide do you make it?  It's not very wide, again, IMHO, as I can only fit about 5 trees laid on their sides across the picture.

[Bryan Izatt]

As another exercise in photo judgement, here are three photos taken from an elevated tee, looking across a ravine to an elevated green backed by a heavily forested ridge.  Anybody who wants to can play.

Can you tell us in degrees the width of the field of view for each of the three?

How tall do you think the trees in the background are?

How far away do you think the tree line is?

How much of an elevation drop is there from the tee to the beginning of the fairway?

How far is it from this tee to the beginning of the fairway?

At the beginning of the fairway in the foreground, how wide is it from the middle line of the fairway (defined by the cut line) to the left edge of the cart path?

And, please, no cheating by resorting to GE.  This is a test of photo reading skills.