This was sent to me from my friend Chris Miller in West Virginia. I am forwarding it.

 

-- Original Message --

 

Hey Guys ,

 

I am in the middle of making a Family tree Video for my own Grandmother. She gave me approximately 1000 pictures to scan, and look what I found in the bunch....

Comment
Good Day Jeff,

Chris, Pplz, I have two questions on this photo..

1) How come the UFO is in focus (relatively, compared to the guys cigarette or ear) and
2) Why is the UFO in color?

Thanx,
Edofin

Edofin,
It could be that the UFO is stationary in the air at this moment and not in motion, while it appears the two men are moving somewhat. And it might actually be quite a bit out of focus, as we have no clue what it might look like in perfect focus for comparison. It appears to be a very simple, streamlined object of some size in the distance, which could account for it appearing smooth and undistorted. As for the color, this is a color scan of a b/w photo, so any enlargement is going to leave behind color pixels from the RGB palette. Below is a screen snap showing the actual color values of just the sky alone when sampled in Photoshop. what appears to be black and white is not at all. It's more of a duo-tone. - webmaster

----- Original Message -----

From: James Neff
To:Stephen Peterson
Sent: Tuesday, May 07, 2002 5:23 PM
Subject: Re: UFO in 1939 Family Album Photo

Stephen

Take a gander at this. This is from the larger scale (300 dpi) image we received (the one online is 72 and compressed a lot). I ran an auto-curves filter on it and then equalized under RGB. What I find is that anything in the sky area appears to have over-saturation of color, probably to compensate for the brightness compared to foreground objects like the two men. Notice the extreme color distortion and warm color to the right of the man with the hat.

The element which now disturbs me the most is the UFO and the pixels around it which appear to be extremely "hot" and very sharp -- possible evidence of retouching. But then again, it's very, very hard to evaluate from JPG images because of the compression scheme.

Not sure what to think.

From: "Stephen Peterson"
To: "James Neff" <webmaster@rense.com>
Subject: Re: UFO in 1939 Family Album Photo
Date: Tue, 7 May 2002 17:45:38 -0700
X-Priority: 3
(Note: Stephen is familiar with digital photography and imaging, etc)

James,

Yes, I think there are enough oddities/inconsistencies about this photo to warrant heightened skepticism, if not outright rejection. I noticed the apparent sharpness of the "UFO" also. The rest of the photo is soft, but the object seems too sharp, especially given its apparent distance from the men, which admittedly could be misleading.

In addition, in your attached image, I see what appear to be trails and other possible virtual cut-marks around the object which further raise doubts in my mind. They might be cracks in the emulsion, discolorations, or something else. In particular, the slightly magenta tinted feature surrounding the object in your processed image seems very suspicious. Maybe it's a force field?

It is conceivable that some of those odd artifacts and warm areas you've isolated are due to discoloration or foreign objects on the backside of the photo, scanner glass, or cover, perhaps from adhesive, stains, or something of that nature. In addition, scanners themselves vary tremendously in quality of output, especially the cheaper, consumer grade models which are so common. As you know, there are any number of potential areas for glitches to creep into the whole process, and I suppose it's best to give the benefit of the doubt --- up to a point.

I wonder if you could get an uncompressed scan from the source?

//// we will check into this ///

In the final analysis, pending a look at an uncompressed version(s) of this photo, I remain highly skeptical of the authenticity of this image based on my earlier comments, and your additional input here.

sp