"Digits" in the Digital Age?

[lloydthomas]

Many say we are now in the digital age.
However, concerning latent prints (fingerprints), I would be interested to know how far into the digital age this field is.
Many agencies by now have made the transition from film capture to digital capture of images, but what about comparisons? There are agencies that still make comparisons "the old fashioned way" using photo prints of their digitally captured images and analyzing them with glass magnifiers.
I would be interested to know how those who have gone "fully digital" are doing.
I would welcome any comments as to the problems or experiences some have had, and perhaps are still having, in making the transition from film to digital.

Lloyd T.

[George Reis]

I still get e-mails and calls from people asking for recommendations for printers that will provide the best 1:1 reproduction of fingerprints, so there are definitely a number of agencies who seem to be keeping at least one foot firmly planted in the non-digital world. When I worked at Newport Beach PD, we began our digital transition in 1992, and I think all of our fingerprints were done digitally, including comparisons, by 1995 or 1996. At the time that I took my early retirement in 2004, we were still following the same methods as we started in the mid-1990s, with only a couple of changes that we incorporated as software changed, or we learned something that we didn't know before. I guess my point is that some agencies are hesitant to move completely to digital until there have been agencies who have shown that it works well over time - I think that Newport is one agency that shows that; I know that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of others who have also been 100 percent digital for at least several years.

[Neville]

Hi Lloyd
Like George Auckland moved to digital in about 1991 through events out of our control. AFIS was installed and with it came a Crimcon, also the Photographic Section had been moved out of our building so we had swapped to Polaroid 665 some years previously, a very expensive road to go down but really a knee jerk reaction to the administration. As it happened it played into the hands of digitisation as one year's use of Polaroid paid for the computer and almost every thing we needed apart from the printer. The printer was more than paid for in the second year of savings, an easy sell to the administration.

As we, unlike England had never done contact printing, we had been enlarging 3 to 1; the crimcons 5 to 1 was an easy transition and so we purchased the same printer that was in the Crimcon and set up the computer system to do 5 to 1 also. Like George we had almost completely stopped using film by 1996-7, 665 is no longer produced by Polaroid they stopped production about 2001.

Things have changed again since then but the basic operation is much the same, lifts are examined with the magnifying glass then printed to thermal paper as required, idents are marked up on the 5 to 1 enlargements with red marker pen, this forms the NOTES MADE AT THE TIME.

Auckland has never looked back and wondered what all the fuss was about, there was never any issue at court, we were saving the Police about $10,000 per annum, and the work load became manageable at a time when we were terribly understaffed. Digitising gave us the ability to look at the stats to build cases for more staff without using massive amounts of man hours to obtain the stats.

With live scan there are no more fingerprint forms from the Watchouse so this is a move further to digitisation.

Auckland has averaged over 3000 idents a year over the last 10 years most of which (70%+) are cold searches on AFIS with about 16-18 staff, and some of these are trainees, I think you can safely say digitisation works.

As for the further step to full digitisation I am not sure what you are meaning, presenting evidence in the same manner as DNA? Wash your mouth out.

[lloydthomas]

A further thought with regard to going "fully digital":

I referrred to the transition from film capture to digital capture of images.
This is fine for latents that ordinarily would be photographed, but what about latents that are lifted from surfaces?
In my opinion, in order to be 100% digital, you would either have to take these lifted latents and scan them onto the computer system or digitally capture the latents in-situ (good practice anyway) prior to lifting (if lifted at all). In other words, to be 100%, 100% digital you would digitally capture the latent prints developed at the scene, or on the exhibit in the lab etc, input these digitally captured images onto your computer system, analyze these images on the computer screen using a photo application and perform any comparisons with tenprints (digitally captured and stored on the system) on-screen, all without the use of film, printing, glass magnifiers etc.
Essentially, the capturing, analyzing, comparing, evaluating and verifying would all be done on the computer system and the results stored on the system.

[Ash666]

We are regularly called ludites by our imaging department for our insistance on retaining photographs as our main method for comparisons. The quality of the photographs has declined over time due to financial restraints, quick fixes, businesses going under, products ceasing to be produced and the imaging department no longer wanting to provide support for something they consider outdated.

The few trials I've participated in for digital comparisons has proved workable, beneficial even, with nice searchable marks but have been problematic for low quality marks and ones where orientation aren't clear. Yes, you can rotate things on screen but it's certainly not an easier method. A large proprtion of our work falls into this catergory of poorer quality. There have been numerous occasions that a mark considered low value digitally was identifiable upon of receipt of the lift.

Yes, we need to adapt and move on with the technological changes. Turn around speeds having improved dramatically but not all technological adavances improve the quality of the comparisons we do, just what the higher up measure.

[Neville]

Hi Ash
I am accused of being a dinosaur and I agree that the quality of a 5x4 FP4 neg is unsurpassed unless you want to get into high end negative type scanners, but when we looked at the quality issue there was no difference between the 665 neg and the image obtained with a video camera with 16mm movie camera lens and for the 5% of jobs that required 5x4 fp4 it was not worth the expense and time maintaining a lab to do it, fine if you have a photographic lab on site who are willing to keep things going I guess, but we did not have that option. If it is a homicide the expense of going to a private lab can always be justified, an option we only used once or twice. Of cause things have moved on from then and so has the digital quality.

Lloyd I am wondering what the percentage of lifts over photos you are receiving, over here I would guess 1% PHOTOS AND 99% LIFTING. Why would you want to be scanning every lift it seems a massive waste of man power. Isn't your government about to cut Police vote by 20%. Makes no sense to me.

I think scanning a very slow and not such a great way to capture a lift as compared to straight SLR digital photography. Obviously the camera needs to be set up correctly in the first place with back lighting and overhead lighting and it will cost a little more but the time saving over scanning and resulting quality is worth the effort. Most lifted marks improve in quality using this method in my experience, in particular white and silver powder lifts on clear or black backing sheets. Black powder on clear or white backs can be improved though not quite so drastically. Ash who is capturing your lifts and how are your lifts being captured maybe there can be an improvement there?

[lloydthomas]

Just to add clarification to the path I'm heading down.

The scenario I am picturing is an entirely digital one - no lifts, no photograhic prints - only digital images.

At the scene, any latents developed would be photographed with a digital camera instead of lifting.
In the lab, any latents developed from processing evidence would be photographed with a digital camera.
Tenprint forms would be acquired digitally (as they are presently using Livescan etc).

"Everything" is acquired digitally and is subsequently dealt with on-screen - a paperless ("plasticless?") system.

In my opinion, this is the way this field is going and it is my guess, after reading comments from ones such as George Reis re: Newport, that many out there are already doing this successfully. My interest is in how these ones achieved this and the challenges they successfully addressed in doing so.

[Ash666]

Money is as ever the issue!
Lifts are scanned by CSI's to be accessed remotely by the latent examiners. The scanners are considered fit for purpose but they're certainly not high end. Same applies for the photo printers.
Don't get me wrong, we've gained a lot by applying this method but I fear if it went 100% digital we'd struggle a lot when it comes to those lower quality marks.
If we do go down this route, the cost *should* be exorbitant due to getting the best in software and hardware etc. However I think we all know that compromises would be made for the sake of the budget.

[Amy Hart]

I have two thoughts on this:

First, since the rest of the world is going digital, film and chemical companies are finding it not worthwhile to produce the 4X5 film and the means to develop it any more. The variety of films available has been greatly reduced over the last 5 years, and the films that are still on the market do not seem to be as versatile as their predecessors.

Second, I would not prefer to eliminate the making of lifts. For the most part (and granted, I work in a laboratory, not at crime scenes, so my perspective is a bit different), I make lifts because I'm trying to capture something that the background is making difficult or impossible to see. A digital camera and image processing would require much more time and effort than creating a lift. I would be willing to scan it for the convenience of record keeping, but there is no way I would destroy the lift.

[Steve Everist]

Just to add clarification to the path I'm heading down.

The scenario I am picturing is an entirely digital one - no lifts, no photograhic prints - only digital images.

This sounds good on paper (pun intended), but may not be entirely practical for all, if not most, agencies.

At the scene, any latents developed would be photographed with a digital camera instead of lifting.

A couple of things that immediately come to mind are:

Time: When processing a recovered stolen auto, this may not be good time management depending on how the department allocates these duties. Officers may not have the time to do this when they're still responsible for patrol, not to mention the resources and equipment along with proper training to take examination quality images. The same goes for sending evidence processing technicians - how many and how much time can be spared to do the proper photography, especially processing things like auto thefts?

Difficult to photograph latent prints: Certain situations make it difficult to photograph a print of comparison value (as opposed to general documentation of location):
Prints on the underside of both exterior and interior door handles of vehicles.
Interior mirrors (rear view, visor, etc...). Powder lifts are going to generally more successful and much quicker and easier to acquire than trying to set up a camera mount and deal with the reflection from the mirror.
Vehicles in locations where it would be difficult to get a camera: tight garages (both personal and those used at precincts for storage, etc...) where the car can't be easily removed.
Difficult lighting situations; very bright outside ligthing or very dark lighting
Other locations where you wouldn't be able to dismantle the item and a camera lense wouldn't easily be able to access.

"Everything" is acquired digitally and is subsequently dealt with on-screen - a paperless ("plasticless?") system.

The idea sounds good, however the reality is more that some sort of hybrid system would work for most agencies.

In my opinion, this is the way this field is going and it is my guess, after reading comments from ones such as George Reis re: Newport, that many out there are already doing this successfully. My interest is in how these ones achieved this and the challenges they successfully addressed in doing so.

Although many agencies are 100% digital in their camera systems, I don't know if any agencies are acquiring all of their latent print evidence digitally.

[lloydthomas]

Thanks Steve.

Steve raises some very good challenges to digital capturing of latents and I would be very interested to hear from any agencies that have indeed gone fully digital and addressed these challenges.

Perhaps, as Steve suggests, there may not be such an entity as a fully 100% digital system as yet (or perhaps those "difficult to get at latents" are initially lifted and then digitally photographed).

Quite often our recovered latents end up on the computer for an AFIS search and so any time spent on the initial capture is somewhat compensated for by not having to scan the latent onto the AFIS system anyway. However, I feel that any time differences between getting your tape out, lifting that latent and placing it on the card, as opposed to getting the camera and capturing the latent, don't add up to much (advancing camera technology is even beginning to make a lot more of us better at capturing good quality latent images). In principal we all should be photographing what we can prior to lifting anyway, however I know that in practice this is not always feasible (and especially nowadays it is not cost-effective).

However, back to what I am seeking to find.......comments from any of you guys that are presently as near to 100% digital as you can get. You have already addressed the issues and challenges such as those raised in Steve's post (or perhaps you haven't?).

How about you at Newport?

George, do you know of anyone else?

[areitnau]

Perhaps this is a sub-question in what Lloyd has been asking (or maybe I'm off base), but I am also curious how agencies who are capturing their latent evidence digitally are handling the issues surrounding the loss of resolution from printing out these digital images to do traditional magnifier comparisons. In today's technological age we're capturing latents at resolutions that are exponentially higher than the output of the printers available, which can result in a loss of image detail. On-screen comparisons is a possible way to avoid these concerns, but there could be the potential for valuable latent evidence to be excluded due to the poor quality of the printout. Any thoughts?

[josher89]

Since we are discussing the digital age of latent prints, I think it's also important to discuss the digital capture of known fingerprints...livescans.

areitnau wrote:

In today's technological age we're capturing latents at resolutions that are exponentially higher than the output of the printers available, which can result in a loss of image detail.

The same with knowns; those of you (probably all of you) that have seen livescan 10-print cards absolutely know that in a lot of cases, the prints look much better on screen than when printed out. The areas of lighter ridge color (greys) won't always print out correctly. If they did print greyscale, we would be seeing the residual residue (oxymoron?) from the previous roll if the platen wasn't wiped down correctly. That's why most states won't accept livescan prints for applicant cards (nursing licenses, real estate licenses, etc) if they were captured out of state because what they are getting is essentially a 2nd or 3rd gen image printout.

Amy hart wrote:

I make lifts because I'm trying to capture something that the background is making difficult or impossible to see. A digital camera and image processing would require much more time and effort than creating a lift. I would be willing to scan it for the convenience of record keeping, but there is no way I would destroy the lift.

In some situations, this may be true (as Steve E. illustrates). But I know by experience (as does George R. and many others) that after a while, changing levels, contrast, channels, etc. in latents to remove backgrounds comes second nature if not automatic (there's a macro for that!-->sounds a little like Apple's iPhone ad campaign).

The above being typed, I would still rather use a scanner/computer to perform comparisons; I understand Photoshop well, I can make my marks in different layers, I can make court presentations that fit on a disc, I don't get kinks in my back or neck from stooping over all day looking at latents. We tossed around the idea of scanning in all lifted evidence for ease of retrievability (sp) but decided that this may convince CSIs that are lifting prints to lift fewer and thus decrease a chance of identifying a latent because it was never lifted because one would have to scan it in once they got back to the barn. So I still vote for lifting traditionally when acceptable and photograph when acceptable and use a computer for comparisons when necessary.

I think Steve E. hit the nail on the head; we can use the old technology and supplement with the new technology to make examinations more efficient. I don't think we'll ever see a loss of physical collection (lifts) of latents; it could cause problems later on down the road in a court setting as we may not have the original piece of evidence the latent was photographed on.

[Steve Everist]

To expand the topic a bit further; I'm interested in what kind of increase (or decrease) has been experienced in the number of photographs captured by agencies who have transitioned from film capture to digital. I'm primarily thinking of latent prints in the lab as opposed to general crime scened (especially when adding officers into the mix).

My head tells me that there will be more exposures as a result of not being conscious of how many more shots are left until a new roll is needed along with the idea that with the size of cards being so large that the number is almost endless.

But is that the reality?

[josher89]

Steve,

I've heard about homicides back in the day (70s and 80s) that were documented with a dozen or maybe two dozen photographs. I know now that we've worked homicides that have accumulated over 1000 images from the scene alone. My guess is you are going to see a huge increase in digital images versus film images. Storage space is really cheap and film development costs nothing!