A portion of the photos had the caption of being taken with a standard digital camera which is capable of photos in the multiple megapixel range(2-7). Where are the high resolution versions of the photos?
I vote for this being fake because these hi-res images would most likely be posted too, stating something like, “see for yourself in hi-res” and such.
I can’t sign off on this one.
Nope.
Ha, I have to point out here that the exact opposite is usually reserved for the claim of hoax.
For me the problem is that these things make themselves available to so few.
FWIW, I optimize everything I post on the web through Photoshop.
Is there a higher-resolution version of the shot that focusses on the lettering on the underside of one of the wings?
-FrL-
Why does the Earthfiles article refer to the second set of pictures (over Lake Tahoe) as being from a different person, while the other article says they are from the same “Chad” who took the first set?
Well, quite. It’s obviously a hoax perpetrated by ‘Chad’ - the only issues in question are whether it is a real physical object and if so, whether it is actually capable of flight.
Actually, I googled a couple more articles, and the Tahoe pictures were first, followed by the Capitola pictures. The hoax perpetrators can’t seem to decide if “Chad” took all the pictures or if some mystery woman took the Tahoe pictures. And no explanation of when and why Chad took a trip from Capitola to Tahoe. Definitely bullshit. Cool looking, though. I would guess it’s not capable of flight, because if it were, why wouldn’t they have filmed it flying, since they obviously went to a lot of trouble to create elaborate photoshop images?
Are you convinced it’s photoshopped? I’m heading that way, but even the apparent blending I mentioned above doesn’t quite nail it for me yet.
There’s something weird about the lighting of the object, but I’m conscious of the nonsense claims made to this effect by moon landing hoax nutcases.
Just thought I’d point out something that hasn’t been mentioned - the item is a slightly different design at each of the locations - one has extra “wings” and one has a spikey rear end thingy. If that is the rear.
Tom mentioned that in post #32.
IMO, the hoaxer shat in his own nest here by claiming he saw it in two distinct locations. Ridiculously implausible (quite apart from all the other factors that make it unlikely).
The link in the OP shows a Predator aircraft in flight in bright sunlight. The underside of the Predator’s wing are in shadow, and other shadows can be seen along the fuselage and in the empennage area.
The picture of the UFO flying near the telephone poles, also in bright sunlight, shows the underside of the pole crosstrees to be in shade, and a small shadow can be seen on one of the poles.
However, the underside of the UFO is just as brightly illuminated as its upper surfaces, so the lighting IS a bit weird.
Yeah, but that’s just a side effect of the optical scattering caused by the gravity bubble field.
Oh, who am I kidding? OK. Photoshop.
D’oh! Craftily putting it in brackets, making me overlook it when I scanned!
Well, in any case. It’s fake.
Isn’t this circular? You’re starting by assuming an elaborate photoshop job, and from there concluding that it’s not capable of flight?
No, I don’t notice any obvious evidence that it’s a cut & paste. The lighting looks weird, but if the sun were setting, maybe it would reflect from the underside of the object like that. Look at the shadow on the telephone pole - it’s straight across, as though the sun is lighting it from the side and not from the top. So I can’t see that he made any obvious screw-ups in the image.
I just think it’s photoshopped because it doesn’t make sense any other way. If I built an elaborate craft like that that could fly, for the purpose of perpetrating a hoax, I’d sure as heck want to show it flying, so I would shoot a video of it. My guess would be that someone built this thing as a model, but not a functional one. He maybe took photos of it and pasted them over some outdoor background shots.
I don’t know why there are two different objects, though. I wonder if he was trying to concoct a story where different people were supposedly seeing these craft, but then fouled up and made it obvious that it was the same person.
Chronos - I didn’t assume it was a photoshop job; I concluded that it was. If you have another explanation as to why someone would build a functional flying UFO model and then not bother to film it flying, I’m all ears. Or if you think it’s a geniune UFO, then explain why these disparate “sightings” are both credited to one person and alternately to two different people.
EDIT: I guess another explanation is that he hung it from wires, but he’d still have to photoshop out the wires or whatever mechanism was suspending it, and in the distance shots that would be an elaborate mechanism indeed.
I’m inclined to believe this is a hoax mainly due to the “weird lighting” effects pointed out by Mangetout, as well as the “shadow discrepancy” demonstrated by the link from the OP.
There are other considerations pointing toward fakery, however.
Another poster pointed out the asymetrical aspects of the aircraft. How it is unbalanced.
Of course, this could be remedied by gyroscopes, and ducted thrust.
But, considering that there are easier solutions to this (like building a balanced, symetrical aircraft, examples of which can also be seen in the OP’s link) Why go to the trouble?
Oh, it’s an experimental aircraft? Then why test it in broad daylight, at a location accessible to the public? Why not Groom Lake?
Oh, it’s on an operational mission? To look at trees and tap phone lines? (If that is what it is supposed to be doing). Again, in broad daylight?
Nah.
The lighting on the object in the high-res version posted here looks fairly legit, which leads me to believe someone faked up a toy / model and planted it in the wires, but the lighting in this picture looks off to me–if the telephone pole to the left is fully in sunlight, shouldn’t the angle of the sun put the object fully in the light as well?
I see a shadow on the right side of the phone pole.
Simple: One person made a nifty toy and flew it, and someone else who wasn’t in on it saw it and took pictures. The person who took the pictures grabbed the first camera available, so as not to miss it, and either wasn’t able to take movies or didn’t think to. The confusion of attribution of the picturesis the sort of thing that always happens on the Internet with anything, much like the morphing of urban legends. It shows up in multiple places because it’s probably a standard kit sold in hobby shops across the country (though I confess to a weakness in my argument, that I can’t find these things for sale online). And I in no way believe that it’s a genuine UFO, in anything but the literal sense.
The images reminded me of some pics I saw a few years ago where someone imported characters from the game Half-Life2 into real world photos.
I can’t find any good links to the original pics I saw, but Paul Debevec has a website showing how it’s acheived using HDR lighting and a light probe.
