Not Quite CSI, but close.

April 30, 2008 | Lance, Personal Blogs

Well I was contacted by Phillip Sanfilippo of the Miami Dade Police Department a few weeks ago requesting that I come help teach a workshop on digital photography for law enforcement I had visions of CSI:Miami. I thought I was going to be working with Horatio, Calleigh , Natalaia and their team that I have spent the past couple of years watching on TV. What could I possibly teach these guys? They had high tech everything. I quickly found out there is a big difference between TV and real life!

Well it was a little different , in a good way. The students that were from a variety of departments were normal people eager to learn about how digital photography will enhance their jobs. One of the specific things I was demonstrating was how to cope with the lose of the use of Polariod film eventually for the collection of fingerprint evidence off of objects.

The equipment I was using was a Phase One P45+ with the Mamiya 645AFDII and 120mm Macro lens on a re-purposed Polaroid MP4 copystand with new fibre optic lighting . This provided to be an excellent tool for capturing the highest quality detail from the forensic evidence. From my calculations on some objects we were able to do a 7000dpi 1:1 reproduction!

They provided me with imprint samples and various types of fingerprint evidence to use in the training. (definitely not CSI-Miami evidence)

Here is a sample of the a fingerprint captured from a spoon.

It was a great day and hopefully what I had taught these folks will assist them in solving some crimes.

I was awarded a certificate of appreciation and now have a MDPD shirt as well!