Summary of the Alan Smith UFO photo solution:
Smith's camera - A "Boy Scout Camera"
The flashholder with door open
Or it may have looked like this
A variant of the Imperial Satellite
A very simple plastic body camera. Fixed focus (probably plastic) wide angle lens with a large depth of field. Most of the time your photos would be in acceptable focus.
Two f-stops: "Color" and "B&W." The color film and B&W film you were supposed to use had a different ASA. That little switch was a casual amateur-friendly way of changing the aperture - the f-stop. But exposure was very iffy. You'd often get negatives that were over or under-exposed.
A single shutter speed. Probably 1/60; which is suitable for flash photography. So the aperture was probably pretty small on both settings to allow for daylight illumination. That would also help with depth of field. Taking photos in dim light with no flash is not possible.
The flash bulbs themselves were reliable. The flashholder was usually not a problem. The big reason why the flash would fail is a
weak battery. Batteries in 1964 were flabby.
Another big one was just forgetting to put a fresh flashbulb in.
127 film
https://www.lomography.com/magazine/349528-the-life-and-death-of-127-film
127 film was first created by Kodak in 1912 for their new Vest Pocket Camera (pictured above right). This was a folding camera that, as you can probably guess from the name, would fit comfortably in the vest pocket of the user. For this reason 127 film was also often referred to as Vest Pocket film.
... in the 1950s 127 film experienced a revival with the release of many cheap and easy to use cameras such as the
Kodak Brownie 127.
Imperial was another camera brand that made many of these cameras similar to the Kodak Brownie, with plastic lenses and fixed apertures, the most well known being the Imperial Satellite.
Like 120, it's a paperback film and the cameras that used it produced negatives that were 4x4cm, giving 12 images on a roll, 4x6cm (8 images), or 4x3cm (16 images).
Not a cartridge film like the Kodak Instamatic used.
The timeline
In December of 1964, Smith took some pictures during the Christmas season. At least one of these photos included an aluminum Christmas tree in the frame. They were a big fad from about 1958 to the mid '60s. (Mentioned in
A Charlie Brown Christmas.)
These trees typically had a color wheel that would illuminate the tree. The tree would sparkle because you'd get specular reflections off the shiny surface of the "needles."
Some of the Christmas season frames came out. One of the frames didn't come out, because the flash failed because of a weak battery or Smith, being a kid, forgot to put a fresh flash bulb in the holder.
The color film sat in the camera for a long time. That was common.
Forward in time to August 1965
Perhaps the greatest UFO flap of all time in the U.S. happened in 1965 to 1966. Many people were looking at bright scintillating stars and bright planets.
Smith was in his backyard looking at a bright scintillating star and he attempted to take photos. This of course was way beyond the ability of the camera and film.
https://midimagic.sgc-hosting.com/howituls.htm
The photo processing company had not printed the UFO photos (most of which showed nothing), but one negative with an object in the corner was found to have not been printed. The photo, cropped, is reproduced at right. The UFO was not in the center of the photo, but was down in the lower right corner (see below).
A contact print of a negative strip was printed in a UFO book, purporting to show that the UFO photo was between Christmas photos. But Alan says that the roll of film was new, and that the strip containing the photo was cut apart when he had it printed again, so he wouldn't be charged for all 4 pictures (indicating not a lot of money available). If it was cut apart, where did the book author get the strip? (I am trying to track down this book again.)
I think Smith was fudging this. The strip was in original condition. He wanted to "save" his UFO photo.
As fate would have it, this period photo I found on the Internet is a very good example of what Smith's Christmas tree photo would have looked like if the flashbulb had worked.
It's clear that the tree was in a dark room. The fixed shutter speed and aperture setting was meant to capture daylight scenes. The illumination from a flashbulb at a few feet from the subject would also be adequate.
The Kodacolor film was incapable of capturing the dim light in this situation. The color wheel was the only source of light bright enough to show up at all on the negative. Only the light shining directly from the bulb shows on the negative. The rest of the color wheel is not visible.
Yes, the Christmas tree would have been illuminated by the color wheel. But the specular reflections would mostly have headed back toward the light source, not toward the camera.
Also, not all Aluminum trees were silvery. Some were anodized in different colors, including a "natural" dark green color.
And, although most aluminum trees came with color wheels, these wheels were sold separately and not all trees they were aimed at were aluminum.
And there may have been no tree at all. Maybe someone was just pointing it at the wall and ceiling. Or long shot, perhaps outdoors.
Lastly, and the one I favor. The owner may have put in a dim bulb. 25 watt? 15 watt?
Important to note that the axle for this particular color wheel was
above the light fixture. The wheel was not centered on the light bulb. I think that has caused some confusion.
The light bulb illuminates a portion of the color wheel. That illuminated area is circular. The edges are curved. The light has spread out a bit. The circular area of illumination on the filters is bigger than the rim of the light fixture.
It's unclear whether the bulb was the usual household pear shaped kind or a floodlight type. Probably a pear shaped. Doesn't matter. The illuminated area would be circular in either case. And bigger than the rim of the fixture.
This cropped image shows pretty well what I'm talking about.
I've added arrows to this photo from the Larry Robinson article. The purple points to the rim of the light fixture.
The green arrow points to the edge of the illuminated portion of the filter. This edge is neither a spoke nor the outside rim of the wheel.
The color wheel is a short distance from the light source. The light has spread out a bit. Part of the wheel is illuminated, and that area is circular with curved edges, and bigger than the rim of the light fixture.
The green arrow points to the curved edge of the separation point between the directly illuminated area of the filter and the darker area of the filter that was not directly illuminated. The darker area was not bright enough to show up on the negative.
This filter (blue or green) is partitioned by the rim of the light fixture.
The other filter is also partitioned by the this rim, but less noticeably.
The other filter is either red or yellow. It's hard to tell. We have to remember that this is a color print from a dim negative. Then it's been digitized, messed with, and uploaded to the Internet.
The color balance is going to be off.
But... if these filters are blue and yellow, which I think likely, the Smith photo matches really well to the wheel in that period photo I found.
The order of the filters is the same - blue and yellow.
And the wheel is even in the same position. Another quirk of fate in this quirky case.
This time the red arrows point to the rim of the color wheel.
White - the spoke of the wheel between the filters
Yellow - the rim of the light fixture
We even see spots of light leaking through the ventilation holes on the light fixture.
I consider this UFO photo fully explained and busted. And it's pretty clear that the French fellow just added those images in later, because he had a George Lucas like itch to keep fiddling with his paintings and found the Smith UFO image intriguing.
This was probably not a hoax. A coincidence and a series of naïve assumptions led a 14 year old kid to really believe he had a genuine UFO photo.
Later, he started to dig in his heels and change the story as needed against disconfirming evidence. That's where it gets smelly.
