Did My Camera Capture A UFO Over France??

Hi guys!

Here’s something that needs your opinions.

Whilst traveling on the high speed TGV from Nice to Paris on 31st Jul ‘08, I was busy taking pictures of the fabulous landscape with my Nikon digital camera and took about a couple of dozen pics of the countryside. I checked them out on the camera’s 2.8” LCD monitor and felt pretty satisfied with the results. There was nothing out of the ordinary and so I tucked it away and continued gorging on my chicken sandwich.

I reached home today and ran the scores of pics I had taken in France, on my 42” plasma display panel for some good viewing. Lo and behold, on one of the pics I had taken on the TGV, was something that I almost chocked on my beer!

I noticed an object floating above a cluster of farm houses! An aircraft? Didn’t look like one. Was it a balloon? Such a huge metrological balloon over farm houses? Unlikely. A fly on the window? With the TGV pelting along at over 250 Kmph it would have been squashed by the wind shear. A Reflection? Most unlikely as the deg of luminosity outside was much greater than inside the compartment. A UFO? Well.....

So what do you guys think it could be?

Here’s the pic of the area taken from inside the train. Notice the object toward the right above the group of farm houses…



Centered……



Enlarged…



Cheers!!

Just got a U2U suggesting that it could be dust on the lens. Well, if it was, it should have showed up in the subsequent images or the previous ones taken within 10 to 15 seconds of each other. But this 'object' appears in just this one image.

Looks like a hub-cap or a frisbee. Do they have disc golf in France? I think the French are to stuck up and cowardly opposing the war in Iraq--still--to do something as cool as disc golf.

reply to post by pluckynoonez


Well, hub caps or Frisbees are not more than a couple of feet in diameter. This one looks pretty huge as it seems to be over farm houses a mile away!

Hi Mike, i hope that you did enjoy your travel my friend

At first glance, it looks to be out of focus, while the houses are on focus: it may be something of very small very close to the camera, but its shape doesn't seem to indicate a bird: i'd vote some bug very close to the camera, and don't think it's dust on lens, also becuase you did rule it out.
Why in .gif format? It reduces the color scale to 256
Do you have te original somewhere (you can send it to my email address).

Thanks for sharing, looking forward to read your account about the travel

Ahh..Thanks internos! I'll be forwarding you the original on your email ID.

OK, my camera being on auto focus, wouldn't it have shot the bug in clear, with the background scenery out of focus? But that's not the case. Just the opposite. So I think the object is way behind the farm houses, probably a few kms away, making it somewhat blurry compared to the farm houses in the foreground.

My two bits! What say you?

Cheers!

Infernos and Mike read your U2U ive sent ya both please

Hi Mike,
Yes, I think you did capture a ufo, it looks exactly like the Earth/Lunar spheres that generations of us have been seeing for centuries.
I'm not sure that a really crisp or sharp photo is possible with these things,as the camera always seem to capture an energy field too. I have seen four of these little craft[comparatively] from about 1000-1500 ft but it's still difficult to gauge their actual size. They certainly look 'sharper' to the human eye, also I believe that these are the what the Tibetans call 'The Gardeners of the Earth.
Just my thoughts,
Regards,
Horsegiver.

ok - photography , DOF and focus for dumies

auto focus ` selects ` one spot in the image then uses various methods [ active range finding , or passice phase contrast ] to focus the image correctly - based one that SINGLE point

DOF - depth of feild , determies the distance infront of and behind the selected focus point will also be in focus
2 main factors determine this - the cameras circle of confusion a fixed value dependent on camera type and format , an the lens aperture which can be adjusted
this DOF guide contains a very handy DOF calculator app - just tell it your camera model - focal length , aperture and it will tell you how much of the depth of the shot wll be in focus

if you play wih it for a bit - it very quickly becomes apparent - that getting everything from your focus point to infinity can be acieved very easily - at even modest fstops

howver the hyperfocal distance means that what ever you do - you will never get more than half the distance to your focal lenght in focus

now without your camera model and exif data - i have no idea how it focused - or what the DOF is

but - as the links i give demostrate - unless you focus of a very near object - then things at close range will almost never be in focus

and if you focus on a near object - things on the horizon will only be in focus if you use a very small arpeture [ high f number ]

i will stop now - because further discourse on thes matter requres the data that only you can provide

howver i will cose with a ` pretty picture ` that demostrates DOF control



camera - nikond200 , focal lengh 50mm arpeture f1.8 , focal distance 0.5m

that shows how only a select part of the image will be in focus

ok - its an extreme example using a very fast lense and extremely tight focus - but it illustrates the point

and the point is - that very close objects will not be in focus - if you focus on a far object

hope that helps

I noticed an object floating above a cluster of farm houses! An aircraft? Didn’t look like one. Was it a balloon? Such a huge metrological balloon over farm houses? Unlikely. A fly on the window? With the TGV pelting along at over 250 Kmph it would have been squashed by the wind shear. A Reflection? Most unlikely as the deg of luminosity outside was much greater than inside the compartment. A UFO? Well.....

Do you know what was beyond the farmhouses? I'm sure the world didn't end at the farmhouse in that direction.

As to it being a UFO, if it is Unidentifiable by you, Flying, and an Object; then it meets the criteria for being a UFO. So, I'd have to say Yes.

oh - and my opinion on ths pic

its a piece of airborn debris - probbally kicked up by the locomotive - and being buffeted in the trains wake as it passes your window

here is another pic

this is a tight crop - the obkect on the leaf - but can you ACTUALLY identify the one on the right ?



here is the full image



as you can see - the site is a mess - so airborne debris is everywhere

trains kick up a lot of dembris - and generate a lot of turbulence -

OK, my camera being on auto focus, wouldn't it have shot the bug in clear, with the background scenery out of focus? But that's not the case. Just the opposite.

Not necessarily. Can you imagine your camera's auto focus system searching the frame for something to focus on, and choosing a miniscule dot in the corner? I know I can't.

My guess is that the window was dirty. On the centered picture you can clearly see the other faint, grey specks of dirt.

You said that the object appeared in only one picture. So obviously the object wasn't on your camera's lens. My question is, do you have any other photos taken through the train window in the same position?

If you do, and my theory is correct, the dirt should show up again.

Such a huge metrological balloon over farm houses?

What makes you think it was over the farm houses? If you look at the centered image, you will notice that the steeple is sharp and in focus. Now look at the "UFO". It's completely out of focus. This indicates that it is very close to the camera, most likely on the train's window.

If the "UFO" was over the farm, or even further than the farm, it would not be out of focus.

Well, it looks authentic to me and the blur around it even leads me to think of it as being alien technology rather than ours.

Play with it my friend as you have the best of analysists on your team...

Originally posted by antar
Well, it looks authentic to me and the blur around it even leads me to think of it as being alien technology rather than ours.

Because it's blurred it's authentic and alien?
You're kidding right?

Originally posted by ignorant_ape
now without your camera model and exif data - i have no idea how it focused - or what the DOF is .

i will stop now - because further discourse on thes matter requres the data that only you can provide

Hi i_a. Thanks for the gen. The details of the camera I used:

Nikon Coolpix P4 VR

Specifications

* 8.1 megapixels.
* 1/1.8inch CCD sensor.
* 2.5inch LCD monitor.
* Vibration reduction. Equivalent to using shutter speeds three stops faster.
* 3.5x optical zoom.
* Focus range of 0.3m to infinity, Macro: 4cm (wide) to infinity.
* Rechargeable Lithium Ion EN-EL5 battery.
* Movie with sound.

I used the auto focus function. Plus, I would like to add, there was nothing on the inside of the window - no bugs etc. (SNCF do keep their trains spotlessly clean, especially 1st Class! )

Subsequent pics taken through the same window showed NO artifact like the one in question. Probably dirt kicked up by the train, but that would have flashed by at more than 250 Kmph. So wouldn't that have come out as a streaky blur?

Cheers!

[edit on 12-8-2008 by mikesingh]

You sure you weren't walking through the field with your buddies and someone said hey I wonder what a cow chip would look like flying through the air. take a picture.

reply to post by mikesingh

but that would have flashed by at more than 250 Kmph. So wouldn't that have come out as a streaky blur?

the steeple and farm house are not blurred - and you were passing them at 250+ kph - your shutter speed was obviously high enough to ` freeze ` the image
thats a very nice camera - it has a good lens - and VR which is very usefull

with a cheap crap camera travelling at that speed - if it the shutter speed was too slow - you would have got motion blur on the entire image

reply to post by TH3ON3


he was on a train - sheesh

but poo flinging accusations does raise a posibility - he was travelling across france

and the surrender monkies are not averse to flinging poo at foreigners

reply to post by mikesingh
It is as of yet unidentified,so yes,you did.

Nice pic mike. i believe it to be a UFO or at least nothing of conventional make