Claim: Original Calvine UFO Photo

Of course this goes against the theory, which David Clarke now favours, that the 'UFO' was really an experimental high-tech American craft, which for some unknown reason was flying (or hovering) over an inhabited part of Scotland in daylight. If this is correct, then Baldwin and Spiers were either 'out of the loop', or part of an elaborate cover story which was not activated

I wonder whether shouldn't he back up his theory of a possible experimental high-tech American aircraft by sharing to the public some of the black projects that best fit into this case?
 
Wasn't the speculation that the experimental aircraft was a F117 prototype, we had a brief discussion about if the object could be one back when all we had was the photocopy.

The problem is "realistic" experimental aircraft are still aircraft and can't do this: "They watched as it hovered close to their position for some ten minutes, only to shoot off vertically at relatively high speed."

So if it is US tech is basically "recovered alien spacecraft" type tech that has never been revealed to exist in 32 years..
 
I'm tending to agree with Baldwin here: "an airborne Loch Ness monster."

I'll bet it's in the Scottish psyche to attempt pranks like this. ;)

I agree on here, although the possible cover-up story by the MoD about the alleged US Black project's secret aircraft completely lose its sense then. Pope anyway made a very bad assessment of that photo... broad daylight??
 
Interesting. I hadn't seen that one.

This stood out to me:

A source in MoD’s defence intelligence staff, whose identity I have chosen not to reveal, claims the object in the photograph was identified as a US experimental aircraft. He says it was operating from a RAF base in Scotland and was escorted, not shadowed, by RAF and US aircraft.

"There was nothing extraterrestrial about what was seen in Scotland," he said. "No one else other than the Americans had anything like it at the time. We were not allowed to say exactly what it was. But we knew what it was."

He claimed the US agencies ‘went ballistic’ when they saw the image, which he said had been captured by civilians in ‘a one in a million chance’.
Content from External Source
Does anyone really believe the US flew a top secret craft at low altitude over a populated area of Scotland - and maybe even hovered it in places for several minutes - and then went mad when they realised, against all odds, that a human with a camera had seen it?

Also notable for Nick Pope saying:

"The photos are pretty much as good as it gets. They were assessed by the defence intelligence staff as real…they were clearly visible, sharp focused, broad daylight with the Scottish countryside in the background."
Content from External Source
Sharp focused? Countryside in the background?

And remember, he only ever saw one of them and didn't join the department until after the whole analysis was done and the photos and negatives had been returned/discarded.

I'm tending to agree with Baldwin here: "an airborne Loch Ness monster."

I'll bet it's in the Scottish psyche to attempt pranks like this. ;)
AW&ST supposedly did an article in a Dec 90 issue that describes an "unmanned diamond-shaped hypersonic vehicle" then under development in the US. I say supposedly because, although I have seen a screenshot of part of the article, I have not seen the actual magazine. I dropped my AvWeek subscription after I retired, so I have no means of electronically checking out the 4-5 issues published in Dec 1990 to read it in its entirety. I'm sure the tech library on base has hard copies of the magazine, so when time permits I will go take a look.

I grant you the bit about the US getting mad when the story/photos were released/acknowledged is kinda stupid, but I can assure we flew classified a/c over highly populated areas in the 80s/90s. And yes, some of them were reported as UFOs.
 
Last edited:

Attachments

  • 20220814_181742.jpg
    20220814_181742.jpg
    292.5 KB · Views: 103
  • 20220814_181740.jpg
    20220814_181740.jpg
    243.8 KB · Views: 90
  • 20220814_181738.jpg
    20220814_181738.jpg
    197.1 KB · Views: 93
  • 20220814_181736.jpg
    20220814_181736.jpg
    226.3 KB · Views: 102
A fella on Twitter reckons it's a Hunter rather than a Harrier because the Hunter has more v-shaped wings and that's what's indicated in the photo:

1660494200927.png

Harrier:
1660494234092.png

Hunter:
1660494276052.png

The upper wing does seem more swept back in the Calvine photo. But then the quality's so bad perhaps it would have been easy to have lost that information.
 
A fella on Twitter reckons it's a Hunter rather than a Harrier because the Hunter has more v-shaped wings and that's what's indicated in the photo:

1660494200927.png

Harrier:
1660494234092.png

Hunter:
1660494276052.png

The upper wing does seem more swept back in the Calvine photo. But then the quality's so bad perhaps it would have been easy to have lost that information.
yep thats me.
 
I agree that that should be able to, and I think that they can, account for every airborne aircraft at any time. The MoD has said that there wasn't a Harrier flying at 9pm on 4 August 1990. So that suggests that either 1) the MoD are wrong, or 2) The time/date of the picture stated by the witnesses is wrong. Or maybe 3) it isn't a Harrier.
That's what I was driving at. If there was no RAF/RN fast jet(s) in the area at the time/date of the incident, the Brits would have said that. In that event, they could have discredited the photo. By limiting their statement to the Harrier, however, they leave open the possibility there was a military jet there at the claimed time/date/location.

Were there any privately owned Hunters on the UK civil registry in 1990?
 
The problem is "realistic" experimental aircraft are still aircraft and can't do this: "They watched as it hovered close to their position for some ten minutes, only to shoot off vertically at relatively high speed."
This reminds me of the chap in Teignmouth, Devon, who took a photo of a fleet of UFOs, and was quoted as saying it hovered for a while then shot away at high speed. Which is what most UFOs seem to do (TicTac, anyone?) In the Teignmouth case the fleet of UFOs turned out to be the Moon partially obscured by clouds, and we can be sure that the Moon did not shoot away at any speed.
 
It was pretty common to see jets on training missions flying low level in the UK. I think they dropped back on it now recently but back in the 90s it was fairly common in the Highlands/Lake District.

You show a photo to the military, someone says looks like a harrier, maybe they got it wrong and it was a hunter, it's common to imagine that the military did some CSI type top level analysis to come up with that conclusion, but we've seen the military get things wrong all the time.
 
I don't know, but according to Wikipedia there are some Hunters in the UK now owned by civilian organisations.
And there have been for several years. Remember the privately owned Hunter that crashed at the Shoreham airshow back some ten years ago? When the first privately owned Hunter appeared on the UK civil registry I don't know.

The MoD also bails military aircraft to companies in the UK for use on military related programs. The best example is the two seat Meteor used by Martin-Baker for seat testing. They are still on the military rolls and retain their military registration, but are out of military control and maintainence record system.
 
Last edited:
Speaking from memory, the MoD have identified the aircraft as a Harrier but said that no Harriers were flying in Scotland at the alleged time of the photo. Since the MoD would have no reason to lie about the second point, it would call into question the date of the photo. But based on the poor quality image of the aircraft, I don't know how they could be confident about the identification. Maybe it was clearer in the other photos
This is speculative, but is it possibly identified as a Harrier because it hovers from shot to shot? Rather than by it's appearance in the photo being distinct from other planes? Do other cnadidate planes have that ability?
 
This is speculative, but is it possibly identified as a Harrier because it hovers from shot to shot? Rather than by it's appearance in the photo being distinct from other planes? Do other cnadidate planes have that ability?
Harriers only really hover for take off/landing
 
Yeah, and the photographer's reports say the plane made passes, not that it hovered.

I don't think we'll ever know why the MoD were so sure it was a Harrier in the picture.

(Cool vid of Harrier hovering here.)
 
As it turns out thus far, the releasing of that original Calvine UFO photo definitely raised more questions and contradictions on what's been reported/stated as fact that day fourth of August, 1990.
I even question the actual reason or purpose behind the releasing of it through FOIA, as even David Clark's report has gotten intriguingly contradictory:

(
Source: https://www.reddit.com/user/UFOResearch/comments/wn17br/by_david_clarke_august_12_2022_on_august_4_1990/
)
(https://www.gulf-insider.com/the-mo...se-of-the-top-secret-aurora-spy-plane-program)
David Clark
AUGUST 12, 2022
"On August 4, 1990, two young men were working as chefs in a hotel in Pitlochry, a beautiful Highland Perthshire town, just outside the Cairngorms National Park in Scotland.
At 9pm, after a long day in a hot kitchen, they drove about 13 miles north along the A9 to Calvine, a spot on the edge of the Cairngorms, for a walk in the hills.
They hadn't gone far when they saw a huge, solid, diamond-shaped object, about 100ft long, hovering silently in the sky above them. Terrified, they hid in some bushes and looked up.
Minutes later, they heard the scream of a jet aircraft going north: In 1990, RAF Leuchars in Fife had two squadrons of Tornado fighters on 24-hour standby to intercept Russian intruder aircraft.
The jet came back and circled the 'thing' before heading off on its original course, as if the pilot had seen the object too and had come back for a closer look.
Eventually the two men stuck their camera out from where they were hiding and fired off six frames. At that point, the object shot vertically upwards and disappeared way, way up in to the sky."


Judging by his statement the RAF recognised that supposedly 100ft long "thing" as a US military secret aircraft after coming back to it for a closer look. Doesn't this sound a bit weird?

And finally, just out of curiosity, why would the Ministry want the names of the witnesses sealed for a further 54 years (until 2076)? Is that just because of privacy concerns?
 
Harriers only really hover for take off/landing
Or when showing off at air shows, which is the only place I have seen one.
(Vid from YouTube, not mine:
Source: https://youtu.be/IQUAW5AraQk?t=63
)

Even if they do not normally do so outside of particular situations, though, that capability might distinguish them from other planes in a series of pics if the plane does not move between images. "No other plane but a Harrier could possibly do that, therefore it must be a Harrier however rarely a Harrier might do such a thing."

My wondering about that is cued by the obvious alternate explanation if you think of the photos as possibly involving a thing (or things) on a string. One way to get a fighter plane in the frame with a UFO would be to have it fly by at just the right moment. Another would be to hang it on a string, too. Things on strings are also quite good at hovering.

Really, really wish we had those other pics.
 
Minutes later, they heard the scream of a jet aircraft going north: In 1990, RAF Leuchars in Fife had two squadrons of Tornado fighters on 24-hour standby to intercept Russian intruder aircraft.

Sorry to be a pedant - but in 1990 RAF Leuchars had one squadron (43 Sqn) of Tornados and one squadron (111 Sqn) of Phantoms. And at any one time only 2 aircraft were on QRA - Quick Reaction Altert.
 
and finally, just out of curiosity, why would the Ministry want the names of the witnesses sealed for a further 54 years (until 2076)? Is that just because of privacy concerns?
I think it's more than just 'concerns': there's a legal provision in the Freedom of Information Act (2000) itself. Section 40 states that 'personal information' is exempt from the disclosure requirement. If you look at the redacted passages in some of the released documents they have a little note 's40' against them. There's a very complex definition of 'personal information', which includes a reference to Data Protection laws. I haven't followed this down the rabbit hole, but I think the gist of it is that anything in a document which names or otherwise identifies a living individual is exempt from disclosure. Maybe including where people live, where they work, etc. I don't know where the date 2076 comes from, but if we assume that the relevant people were at least 14 in 1990, that would ensure that they would be at least 100 in 2076, and therefore almost certainly dead.
 
For me personaly i think there are 2 leads that could tell us more.

#1. the witnesses :
the 2 hikers
the pilot(s)
finding them will be very very difficult.

#2. the plane in the picture
finding out what plane and where it came from should be easier.
 
For me personaly i think there are 2 leads that could tell us more.

#1. the witnesses :
the 2 hikers
the pilot(s)
finding them will be very very difficult.

#2. the plane in the picture
finding out what plane and where it came from should be easier.
I tried contacting the Harrier Force Association a year or so after it was established in 2010 to see if I could get a lead on who the pilot(s) might have been. No response, and unfortunately no forum or other means to ask the membership at large.

Finding the identity of the aircraft should, at least theoretically, be fairly straightforward. The question is whether the RAF and RN kept their maintenance and operations records from 32 years ago for a/c no longer in operational service. If yes, records for every fast jet in operational service within the UK in August of 1990 could be reviewed to determine which jets flew on the date/time claimed for the sighting. It could probably be narrowed down to a small number of a/c.

It would be a Herculean task, and one I doubt the UK FOIA folks would undertake. If all the records are in one place, like the National Archives or the RAF historical branch, and are well indexed/filed, it's doable with the right people doing the research. Keep in mind, however, the identity of aircrew if shown in the records would probably not be releasable due to privacy constraints, unless the enquiry was being conducted for official use.
 
Last edited:
There is still no real provenance for the newly released picture. The story starts with Pope's book claiming to have seen the picture on the wall at the office, hardly classified. He described it this way to Clark:

‘…It was taken I think in 1990, before my tour of duty, and it was actually in poster form, blown up by various people who had looked at it and stuck on the wall. It really was Fox Mulder stuff. It didn’t have ‘I want to believe’ on it but it was on the office wall when I joined … it subsequently came to be removed but it was there and it had as far as I can recall been taken by two people who had been out walking in Pitlochry who had heard a low humming sound, looked around, done a double take, shot off I think, I’m not sure if they shot off a few pictures or just one [but] it had been sent to the MOD. I don’t think that we had the negative, indeed they may have asked that we send it back
Content from External Source
Content from External Source
https://drdavidclarke.co.uk/secret-files/the-calvine-ufo-photographs/

The story circulates for a while with people like Clark doing FOIA stuff, then somehow gets a lead to Craig Lindsey, a former Press Secretary who tells Clark:

He said: ‘I have been waiting more than 30 years for someone to call me about this story…and you are the first person to do so.’

In his own words, it is ‘either an extremely clever hoax or it shows “the real thing”’
Content from External Source
https://drdavidclarke.co.uk/2022/08/12/the-calvine-ufo-revealed/

And that's it. I didn't find anything in Clark's writings, yet, that mention how or why this guy had the picture or where he got it. Maybe I missed it. He also indicates he's had it for 30 years and was waiting for someone to come find him. Why not just go public with the picture? Is it the same picture Pope claimed to have seen? He called it a "poster", this looks like an 12"x14" maybe?

1660511807338.png

How much classified stuff can an RAF Press Secretary see? If it was a picture of a Top Secret hypothetical Araura in flight, would it have been on the wall so this guy could take it home with him? If everybody figured it was just a hoax and they pinned it to the wall for fun, then that makes sense.

Then there is analysis by Clark's colleague, which DavidB66 mentions:
Having concluded, on these rather weak grounds, that the original negative was black-and-white, the expert considers the kinds of film stock available (remember that this was 1990, when B&W photography was a rare speciality), and draws the important inference that the photographer was probably relatively knowledgeable about the subject.

B&W wasn't common for everyday photography, true, but I had learned Photography and Darkroom in collage in ~1985 with all B&W. There was at the time, and into the '90s, a strong amateur/hobbyist segment devoted to it. And many, many of them also had their own home darkroom setups, that was part of it. One could take a picture, develop the film and print the pictures all at home.

I don't know in the UK, but in the mid '80s-'90s B&W film was fairly easy to find. Not every drugstore stocked it, but it wasn't special order.

Now if we look at the MoD report it says they had, at least, the original negatives. It's a little unclear if there were also pictures. The handwritten notes seem to say 6 color photographs, but the typed up just says photographic negatives:

1660510553855.png
1660510663333.png

So, if there were actual prints, maybe that's what Linsday ended up with. If it was just negatives, it means MoD or someone, Linsday (?), must have made prints from the negatives, right?

But the question is why would our UFO spotter give up his "original negatives"? They are his leverage. I could see if he sent prints to the Daily Record first, and then physically brought the negatives in for them to see if they showed interest. Or maybe send 1 of the 6 original negatives as proof, but all of them? And then the Daily Record sent them on to the MoD. Was this with the photographer's consent or knowledge? And they never returned them that anyone knows of? There is just this one old photo in Lindsey's possession?

Now if our photographer was an experienced amateur working at home, it would be plausible that he was making copies of his negatives and never sent the originals to anyone. It also opens the door to manipulation of the negatives. Be good to get @Z.W. Wolf to weigh in, as he has experience in this kind of photography and darkroom work IIRC.
 
It sounds to me that the MoD treated it with the seriousness they thought it deserved, that is, "not a lot, so how do we politely tell this guy not to bother us." Perhaps those suggesting that it should have been investigated more thoroughly at the time are looking at it through the suspicious eyes of 2022, not the more casual handling more common at the time. UFOs in the USA only earned a lot of attention in later years because of the efforts of a couple of vocal senators, whereas most people laughed them off as hoaxes or misinterpretations...and most people I know still do.
 
And that's it. I didn't find anything in Clark's writings, yet, that mention how or why this guy had the picture or where he got it. Maybe I missed it. He also indicates he's had it for 30 years and was waiting for someone to come find him. Why not just go public with the picture? Is it the same picture Pope claimed to have seen? He called it a "poster", this looks like an 12"x14" maybe?

Is that man on the photo you provided, Craig Lindsay or David Clarke?

Now if our photographer was an experienced amateur working at home, it would be plausible that he was making copies of his negatives and never sent the originals to anyone. It also opens the door to manipulation of the negatives. Be good to get @Z.W. Wolf to weigh in, as he has experience in this kind of photography and darkroom work IIRC.

It would undoubtedly be very informative. The guy who took the photo, according to Clarke's report, was a chef of a popular hotel at that region.
 
And that's it. I didn't find anything in Clark's writings, yet, that mention how or why this guy had the picture or where he got it. Maybe I missed it.

There are 3 pages on Calvine on Clarke's site, as well as the Daily Mail article he wrote, which is actually more detailed in some ways.

I've read them a bunch and won't go back to them just now, but as I recall Lindsay interviewed the two hikers and made himself a copy of the picture before he sent the stuff to the MoD in London.

So, if there were actual prints, maybe that's what Linsday ended up with. If it was just negatives, it means MoD or someone, Linsday (?), must have made prints from the negatives, right?

I believe the negatives were requested after the initial photos were supplied, and then the negatives were returned to the Daily Record. There's a bit of confusion around this aspect in Clarke's various pages but going by the envelope it seems fairly clear that the newspaper supplied the MoD with photographs and not just negatives.

Is that man of the photo Craig Lindsay or David Clarke?

That's Craig Lindsay. There are other photos of him with David Clarke (quite a bit younger), or you can see him on his website.

Clarke, by the way, as far as I can tell, seems pretty cool as an investigator. He's stated in the past that he thought this was a hoax and now thinks maybe it's a secret UK/US military craft. Given that he has access to people involved, as well as the original photograph, and has put considerable leg work in to looking at this case - including visiting the area and questioning many locals - I would expect him to follow it through as thoroughly as possible. In comparison, there's almost nothing we can do here and I wonder if we've investigated it as far as we can go. But who knows what new avenues will open up for him and his associates? For example, if the hikers (or poachers?) come out of the woodwork then probably he might be the first port of call. I guess time will tell.
 
Now if our photographer was an experienced amateur working at home, it would be plausible that he was making copies of his negatives and never sent the originals to anyone. It also opens the door to manipulation of the negatives. Be good to get @Z.W. Wolf to weigh in, as he has experience in this kind of photography and darkroom work IIRC.

Interestingly, Andrew Robinson's photographic analysis suggests the photographer was both interested and knowledgeable about photography as at that time the use of a XP-2 film was not common amongst popular and family photography and loading a camera with such a film would be a proactive choice.
It was Robinson's considered opinion that the film used was Ilford XP-2 processed using C41 chemistry.
 
1660526170559.png
On reddit, some people are suggesting the diamond is a nearby mountain peak seen in between some clouds.

"Ben Vrakie" is pretty similar looking from a certain point of view. I couldn't find a real photo of that mountain from this angle.

Is this the same mountain you guys have been talking about in this thread?

EDIT: Does it look like the shape of the clouds could explain an occlusion of the mountain top in this way?

It doesn't really look like it to me. Some regions of similar color seem to cross the "boundary" between what would need to be different layers of cloud.

1660527119925.png
 
Last edited:
I've read them a bunch and won't go back to them just now, but as I recall Lindsay interviewed the two hikers and made himself a copy of the picture before he sent the stuff to the MoD in London.

Yes, lots of stuff scattered about.

In Clark's Daily Mail article, he says it happened this way:

On August 4, 1990, two young men were working as chefs in a hotel in Pitlochry, a beautiful Highland Perthshire town, just outside the Cairngorms National Park in Scotland.

At 9pm, after a long day in a hot kitchen, they drove about 13 miles north along the A9 to Calvine, a spot on the edge of the Cairngorms, for a walk in the hills.

They hadn’t gone far when they saw a huge, solid, diamond-shaped object, about 100ft long, hovering silently in the sky above them. Terrified, they hid in some bushes and looked up.
Content from External Source
Eventually the two men stuck their camera out from where they were hiding and fired off six frames. At that point, the object shot vertically upwards and disappeared way, way up in to the sky.
Content from External Source
However, he gives no source for any of this. I presume this it what Linsday told him as he implies that he was the one that went and talked to them. Though this must have been after the 2 had sent their photos and negatives to the Daily Record and maybe the Daily Record sent prints to the MoD.

From his Daily Mail article, this is Linsday speaking:

As a press officer for Scotland, I dealt with many UFO reports but most were just of lights in the sky. It was obvious this one was different. When I asked what sort of noise it had made, the man said, “It didn’t make any noise at all.” Up to that point I wasn’t treating it very seriously but when he said it was silent, I suddenly realised there is no aircraft that I know of that is silent.’
Content from External Source
I believe the negatives were requested after the initial photos were supplied, and then the negatives were returned to the Daily Record. There's a bit of confusion around this aspect in Clarke's various pages but going by the envelope it seems fairly clear that the newspaper supplied the MoD with photographs and not just negatives.

Perhaps the Daily record sent photos first to the MoD, but it gets a little different, in that Linsday claims he was the one that got the Daily Record to send the negatives over, not the other way around:

Lindsay arranged for the negatives the men had handed to the Daily Record to be collected and faxed a copy of the best print to the Ministry of Defence’s now-defunct UFO desk in London.

‘Before I could even get back to my desk the phone was ringing and my contact said, “Tell me more about this. Can you get the negatives?”’
Content from External Source
In addition, he claims the negatives were sent to London:

He was willing to talk to me and, most exciting of all, I discovered that he’d broken protocol that day and stashed a copy of the image before, on Whitehall’s orders, sending the entire dossier — negatives included — to the Ministry of Defence in London.
Content from External Source
https://www.mailplus.co.uk/edition/...-the-most-spectacular-ufo-photo-ever-captured

Which is not what the report says:

1660525627848.png

And the story seems to imply that these handwritten parts of the report were by him. So, did he report something different?

Then he either confirms or copies Pope's statement about it being poster, also implying that the photo he had was not what Pope saw:

When he visited the MoD later that year, however, he saw the Calvine photo blown up to poster size on the UFO office wall.
Content from External Source
 
"They hadn’t gone far when they saw..."

This is not supported by the available evidence. In the podcast, Clarke played the interview with Lindsay where he attempts to recall what the witness told him when he called the hotel in 1990. What Lindsay actually says:

"... and that as far as their trip out that night was: uh, they parked the car, they went - [sighs] what, he couldn't - I can't remember now whether he said it was a long distance, I don't think it was terribly far but, the bits that I do remember was they went through a wood, came to the edge of it, climbed over a barbed wire fence, started to walk over moorland, and then realized there was something in the air..."

Lindsay explicitly says he doesn't know the distance (he seems to almost say the witness himself couldn't remember) but doesn't think it was far, then negates that by implying he doesn't really remember that part anyway, compared to the rest.

Timestamped:
Source: https://youtu.be/IgekUVzMSCc?t=2814
 
Interestingly, Andrew Robinson's photographic analysis suggests the photographer was both interested and knowledgeable about photography as at that time the use of a XP-2 film was not common amongst popular and family photography and loading a camera with such a film would be a proactive choice.
It was Robinson's considered opinion that the film used was Ilford XP-2 processed using C41 chemistry.
The only thing I can add, is that this film was used by "art" photographers.
So how do we know that this wasn't just an artsy photo of a pond taken by a photography student or something like that?

Or a mirror. As a matter of fact, when I was a photo major my pal and I took a large mirror to Huntington Beach and made some weird photos that made it look like oil pumps on the shore were sitting in the ocean and so on. But the mirror was vertical. I wonder if I could find those somewhere.

Re: Getting the film processed and prints made in the 90's? Piece of cake. I would have taken it to Allen Photo on Industrial Road (Las Vegas).
 
Last edited:
Focus blur is omnidirectional, but motion blur will only be in the direction of motion. There's no discernable difference in the blur in any particular direction, so it seems likely that focus blur is dominating motion blur.

That fits my experience - there's a lot of sky in the image, and although that's bleached, it's likely that the shutter speed would default to being quite high, so one wouldn't expect a huge amount of motion blur on a plane at that distance, but still some.
E.g. this was taken at 1/1250s, and shrunk/compressed such displays none:

However, that's just the thumbnail, the full size image image is http://fatphil.org/photos/RedArrows2021/s_img_3078.jpg , and you can clearly see how much the motion blur actually contributes. Scale that up for a slower shutter speed, and clearly there can be some.

And on another note - welcome Jud! Looooong time no see.
OK. If the time was 1/1000, and the jet was moving at 300 mph, it would move only about 5 inches.
 
The only thing I can add, is that this film was used by "art" photographers.
So how do we know that this wasn't just an artsy photo of a pond taken by a photography student or something like that?

Or a mirror. As a matter of fact, when I was a photo major my pal and I took a large mirror to Huntington Beach and made some weird photos that made it look like oil pumps on the shore were sitting in the ocean and so on. But the mirror was vertical. I wonder if I could find those somewhere.

Re: Getting the film processed and prints made in the 90's? Piece of cake. I would have taken it to Allen Photo on Industrial Road (Las Vegas).
The RAF involved and the MoD for a lake picture with a timely wait for a fighter jet to pass by ?
i dont think the lake / loch theory anymore giving the surroundings
 

Attachments

  • 20220815_091739.jpg
    20220815_091739.jpg
    192.9 KB · Views: 89
On reddit, some people are suggesting the diamond is a nearby mountain peak seen in between some clouds.

"Ben Vrakie" is pretty similar looking from a certain point of view. I couldn't find a real photo of that mountain from this angle.

Is this the same mountain you guys have been talking about in this thread?

EDIT: Does it look like the shape of the clouds could explain an occlusion of the mountain top in this way?

It doesn't really look like it to me. Some regions of similar color seem to cross the "boundary" between what would need to be different layers of cloud.

I expect all kinds of landscape views in the region can be matched up to things in the photo... Here someone is matching the faint "hill profile" behind the fence with some peaks 20 miles north of Pitlochry (that being the location written on the report):


Source: https://twitter.com/TheTrav49181490/status/1559071810284830720
 
Back
Top