Impressive looking UFO photograph for sale on ebay

Hmmm...

I was waiting on an informed debate but...so much for that.

OK.

Lets' see what we've got at any rate..


What we really need are the original's but the chance of him giving them away for a 'little peek' is somewhat remote but we still have useful information to work with so...

According to the image blurb on E-bay what we have is a image print and not an enlargement produced using a drum scan of the slides at 300 dpi.

No surprise there since the Negative isn't a negative as he used a positive film.

Technically its Fuji Velvia 50 (a slide film introduced 1990 discontinued 2005) with a Nikon 6006 35mm camera (introduced 1991 and superseded 1994).

This type of film is normally regarded as the de-facto standard of low speed, low grain, high saturation professional colour slide film that everyone wants to emulate and is well regarded for its richer than rich colour representation that you see in the images.

Personally I would considered it to be one of the best landscape films ever made.

So much so that Fujifilm reintroduced it again last year with a modified emulsion the tech specs of which can be seen here. Professional Color Velvia 50

If you take a peek at the EM response curves of the new stuff here: Fujichrome Velvia 50 (PDF link) You'll see that it is sensitive just up to 700nm which is visible range and not IR.

Old stuff was supposedly more sensitive but we can't tell since it's a dead media. However there is no reason to expect it to differ too wildly since the colour representation is what the new emulsion is intended to reproduce and even a 100nm differential would just about put it into the near IR range but not by much.

We can ignore the Nikon since we don't know the lens used which would be the important bit.

Despite this seeming absence of information however we can tell a few things from the images themselves and in doing so effectively reduce the possibility that it's an accidental reflection of something taken whilst in a car...

We already know 3 important things about the pictures.

1. The film is ISO 50. (Slow exposures only, none of this AE digital garbage)

2. The images display a maximum depth of field. (the smaller aperture values for the camera)

3. The shooter was working at dusk. (ambient light was pants)

All three of these points say that it is likely that we are looking at a range of long exposure shots possibly somewhere in the range of a second or more.

Additionally If you look more carefully at the original images that Ignorant_Ape has pointed out you can tell that there are actually over 8 different exposure times used and that there are three distinct sets presented taken at three different times all from roughly the same vantage point.
The original E-bay listing

(Just to note I'm not hot-linking them and I'm not uploading them because of the copyright issues that I can just tell the original snapper takes rather seriously)

Cont.

The object in question is present in 4 exposures which appear to form a single set and has moved within that set. (look at its distance from the edge of the frames and you'll see) and as such looks like whatever it was is present for a single consequential range of 4 shots and was present for a limited period.

In other words, the shooter was present at a single location for quite some time, outside, using a tripod and more possibly than not using a cable release for the exposures.

Also...

You can see the images he has marked as keepers on the slides and you can see that the artefact looks at first glance like a glaring film problem or error.

As the man says, he didn't use a loupe when he first looked at them.. why would he, they're instant rejects and from the e-bay response he gave to the already asked question about light reflections..

I didn't get in the car the whole time except to and from the airport, and I wasn't shooting then

As such we can assert with a reasonable confidence that the chances of the resultant oddity being an accidental light reflection is rather below par.

(Personally I wouldn't have ditched them but then again I don't play with cameras for money and i like the battered look)


Now... the specs of the shot aside let's take a look at the man himself.


As Palasheea has already pointed out this guy lives here and is what you'd normally refer to as a Pro.

Included as a handy bonus is an image of the man himself as well as his working history which we need not go into unless you want to correlate locations and times.. (working LA in 1999/2000 assisting a commercial shooter which ties perfectly with what he said on E-Bay)

Also, the chaps not just a commercial shooter, he's a wedding snapper.
To a wedding snapper his reputation is everything and those guys, apart from just being good don't come cheap.

As for a scam idea?

Well.. 2500 mounted prints is a tad pricy for a joke and if your selling you always show both sides of a slide to illustrate both quality of process and mounting.


Could it be a scam?


Well, yes, of course it could.


Either he's risking his reputation and lying about everything and it's actually a digital or its one of the best double exposures using slide film I've ever seen, but at the minute I'm leaning towards 65%+ that it's the real deal since the circumstances do not seem to support the fake hypothesis.


Maybe Jeff could throw cold water on this but I'm betting that he'll say the same thing I do.

We need the slides, not a print.


Cheers.

Absence.