Photographs

[WAB]

Dear Mr WAB sir!
Well i think i'm on the side of Mr Koshkin, that object seems to be glowing with more than moonlight and if so you would expect it to be hot and heating the surrounding air with the water vapour contained within condensing at the object's thermal boundary and drifting away as steam.


 

1. You have the right to be on either side, as well as the right to be very wrong.
2. You should not add your fantasies to what was not there. Like something "hot" and "air heating". Nights in the North Urals, even in August, have very low temperatures, sometimes even negative (Celsius). What exactly was the fact of that night.
3. The fact that it is the moonlight and shortcomings of the simplest digital cameras is an undeniable fact obtained from the first source (Valentin Yakimenko). Therefore, there is no need to twist many tall tales around it. This distracts readers from the truth very much.
4. You, together with the Koshkin, can fantasize lot, but it is irrational activity.

Although he should have reported Yakimenko's observation to maintain balance.

Then it would be someone else... 

On a separate question. Keith ****'s book "Journey to Dyatlov Pass" states that the film strip marked "Zolotaryov" has a "Plane3" photo. Two questions :-

I don't think Mr. Keith ****'s statement is authoritative.
1. It's a retelling of what they talked to Kuntsevich about what Valentin Yakimenko said, which is no longer original in the study.
2. Keith **** himself analyzed this image on film directly...
3. The inscription "Zolotarev" cannot speak about anything, because it is not clear who (presumably it was Ivanov) and why this inscription was made. This is nothing more than an abstract assumption, considering that on the film the images Zolotarev could have made with very little probability. There are many images of the UPI University summit in November 1958. If there's one thing I'm not confused about because I don't have any tapes in front of me right now...

   

• Do you know about a Plane3 photo?

This is what Valentin Yakimenko spoke abstractly about in 2013, and what he was much objected to by other people who know photography on film. This is not an image of an airplane. It is a very small fragment of a dried-up sodium sulfite crystal (part of the developer). Its size compared to the window of perforation of 135 type film is very small (about 40...50 times smaller), with the size of the "window" about 1.5 x 3.5 millimeters (0.059 x 0.139 in).
Modern technologies make it possible make any magnifications by digital methods, but "chemical photography" does not allow obtain images of objects in this size on film with such sharp edges at these sizes of parts.
I have not yet been able to convince Valentin Yakimenko that this statement is wrong, but many qualified experts in "chemical photography" confirm my opinion.

   

• Do you know if the negatives of this strip are available to be shared, online etc?

Please provide me direct link to this original negative. Not the image that Valentin Yakimenko himself gave as secondary image, and namely the original negative. It is better if it is with dimensions (in millimeters or inches - it will not be so important).
If you do it honestly, it will be very clear to other readers.
I have worked with original negatives in person (in my hands before my eyes). So I can talk about it for sure.

• I think that the Plane2 photo is highly significant to the fireorb theory but inspection of the negative is important.

Then why don't we do this test first, and then draw conclusions?

[Nigel Evans]

Please provide me direct link to this original negative. Not the image that Valentin Yakimenko himself gave as secondary image, and namely the original negative. It is better if it is with dimensions (in millimeters or inches - it will not be so important).
If you do it honestly, it will be very clear to other readers.
I have worked with original negatives in person (in my hands before my eyes). So I can talk about it for sure.

• I think that the Plane2 photo is highly significant to the fireorb theory but inspection of the negative is important.

Then why don't we do this test first, and then draw conclusions?

It seems you have misunderstood, i am asking you if you know of the location of the Plane2 negative?

Regards

[Australie]

I have been looking closely at the photos purported to come from Zolotaryovs camera. Frame 3 called Lynx looks to me like a human face when viewed from the side. Possibly wearing a hat or balaclava. The eighth image called eagle looks more like an antler. The eleventh image does resemble an aircraft but how would it be lit at night?

[NightLurker]

Marley has a point in the "three heads" photo. Snow covered shrubs or snow covered rocks. That photo has no real merit because there are no bodies to go along with it.

The pic with the three heads and the orb of light? Quite interesting but cold weather, nighttime, flash? Light could have bounced off a ski or something. Old film could pull that off too. Yes, I know about and have seen the "orbs" photos. My mother who was a photo journalist had quite a few of those in her collection of photos, black and white with a Pentax 35 mm camera. I'm not saying that there is nothing there, but for the most part, old film does that. Lighting can play tricks. a white wall with three peoples heads in the dark could display almost the same effect. My mom LOVED black and white pics of horses in the dark and she got a few like this.

Read into the pics as you wish but don't hold them up as lore. I'm not being mean, but it does happen.

Thanks for your post!

[Marley]

And… I’m back! I planned to write a post on frame no. 34 back in June but real life got in the way. I also got a bit discouraged by the amount of old skool photography stuff I had to write in order to explain my take on no. 34. But now I’m ready to give a try. It’s going to be a long read. I can’t help it. Here we go. Enjoy!


Old skool 101
The exposure (brightness) of a photo depends on four variables:
1.   Available light
2.   Aperture. The opening in the lens through which the light travels before hitting the photographic plate/film/sensors. The size of the aperture can be adjusted. When it’s dark you need a large aperture. On a sunny day you can make do with a smaller one.
3.   Shutter speed. The amount of time a film is exposed to light while taking a photo. When it’s dark you need to keep the shutter open for as long as possible.
4.   Film sensitivity. Old skool films come in different grades of how sensitive they are to light. Some require a whole lot of light before they start reacting. We call them slow films. Others need far less time and far less photons to come up with a similar image.

Baseline
In the case files the camera settings and, most importantly the film speed are recorded of one particular photograph. There are two candidates. It doesn’t really matter which one it is because the brightness, the exposure of both photographs is basically the same.



In one of the cameras the last frame shows the moment of excavation of snow for the installation of the tent. Considering that this frame was shot with an exposure of 1/25 seconds, with a diaphragm of 5.6 at a film sensitivity of 65 Un., and taking into account the density of the frame, we can assume that the hikers started the installation of the tent around 5 pm 1.II.59. A similar picture was taken with another camera.
(https://dyatlovpass.com/case-files-384-387, page 385)

Bollocks
Before I continue: The 5 pm estimate in that paragraph is utter bollocks. It’s not possible to determine the time of day by looking at a camera’s settings. It can’t be done. Even if you know the film speed, shutter speed and aperture size of a photograph, nobody knows, not even the Lord Jesus himself, the amount of photons bombarding a lens at a certain place, under certain weather conditions, coming from a certain angle and from a certain direction in precisely that split second (in short: variable 1 – available light) and connect that to a certain time of day. It’s madness to suggest otherwise. Ivanov is just being pompous here. He pulled that estimate right out of a certain body part. But I digress.

Film speed
Back to the film speed. 65 GOST (USSR sensitivity scale) is comparable to the (western) ASA/ISO value of 65. Anyone remotely familiar with old skool photography knows that this is at the slow end of the slow speed film scale. In short, a super slow film, aka a super light-insensitive film, a film that takes forever to react to light. Back in the day all films were like that, in the West as well, 50 or 100 ASA/ISO. In comparison: my run-of-the-mill camera phone can mimic a max. ISO sensitivity of 1,600. That’s about 25 times (!) more sensitive.
So, while my camera phone can take a lovely picture of a lovely sunset somewhere in the Pacific (a person can dream) without any problem, those Zorkis needed an aperture the size of a pizza and/or a shutter time long enough for me to take a shower, pour myself a gin and tonic (you can have one as well ) and order something more appealing than a pizza, and still it wouldn’t be a half decent photograph. Okay, I’m exaggerating a bit. But not much.

This is why the Dyatlov files contain only a handful (5) of indoor photographs, all of them quite dark with two thoroughly underexposed. There aren’t any pretty sunsets, campfire scenes or horsing around inside the tent photographs. That slow film speed, not to mention the rest of their technology, didn’t allow it.
So it’s highly unusual that somebody on that pass tried to take a photograph at night, in the dark. (No, it’s not a technician’s shot. I’ll get to that later) They knew better. We all knew better. It must have been something extraordinary that prompted them to bring out the camera and try to take a picture at night. Something extraordinary and very bright.

Exposure time
No matter how bright the object was, to make an imprint on that super slow film of 65 GOST, the shutter needed to stay open for a long time. As in a long, looooooooooooong time. The daytime photograph of setting up the tent has an exposure time of 1/25 seconds. That is long. That is the longest available shutter speed on those cameras bar the manual option: pressing the “keep the shutter open” button for as long as necessary. Any nighttime photograph like Frame no. 34, regardless of who made it and where, obviously required an exposure time well beyond 1/25 of a second.

Tripod
And here’s the thing. Those max shutter times on cameras are indicative of the time you can hold the camera steady enough to make a crisp and clear photograph. If you keep the shutter open any time longer you, your camera, and ultimately your photograph will get the shakes. It takes multiple seconds to make a nighttime photograph like Frame no. 34. During those multiple seconds a handheld camera would be all over the place. But that’s not true of Frame no. 34 is it? It’s steady, well organized. There is movement but it’s not the camera that’s moving. It’s the light. That camera was mounted on a tripod. There’s no doubt about it.

Now, we all know that the search party found a tripod, right? A tripod and a cracked light filter. On this site it’s presented as if these items were found separately from the cameras. Photographic accessories just lying around. But when I went through the case files I realized this wasn’t the case at all. From the very start https://dyatlovpass.com/case-files-3-6?rbid=17743 a camera with serial number 488797 is described as ”coming with” aka mounted on a tripod and with a broken light filter attached. The counter of that camera stopped at the 34th frame and there’s plenty of evidence that this is Krivonischenko’s camera and that Frame no. 34 was made with this particular Zorki. I can explain this at length in a separate post. if you folks are interested but for now just trust me on this. Frame no. 34 was made with a camera mounted on a tripod and with a light filter on the lens.

Aperture
The last setting that determines the exposure of a photograph is the aperture size. De different sizes are described by so called f-numbers. I won’t go into the specifics of these numbers but f/8 is the lazy man’s number. That aperture works for most situations under daylight conditions. The f/5.6 used for the setting up the tent photograph is one stop larger (i.e. doubles the amount of light) which makes total sense considering the low sensitivity of the film and the lack of sunlight. The maximum aperture size of those Zorkis was f/3.5, another one and a third stop larger than the aperture used for the setting up the tent photograph. You’d expect Frame no. 34 to be shot with the largest aperture available but that isn’t the case. The photograph itself proves that they used a smaller diaphragm. My guess is that they didn’t have the time to get all the settings right. They just plunked the tripod-camera down and held the manual shutter speed button for a number of seconds. That’s all they did. They didn’t adjust the diaphragm.

Diaphragm
A diaphragm, the mechanism that controls the aperture, consists of blades. When the aperture is at its largest these blades are fully withdrawn. The aperture is circular shaped. A smaller aperture brings out the blades. They form a polygon, the number of sides depending on the number of blades. Six blades is very common.


Ghosts
Smack in the middle of Frame no. 34 there’s exactly that same shape:


It’s not a light or an object in the real world, nor the eye of a monster. It’s a ghost. But not a supernatural one. It’s the result of lens flare, a totally explainable phenomenon. A light beam enters the lens, but instead of passing through the lens unhindered the photons start bouncing off walls and more specifically the blades of the diaphragm, leaving an impression of the shape of the aperture. This happens when there is a bright light shining directly at the lens.



Ghosts are common, but this is a massive clue that Frame no. 34 isn’t a random technician’s shot. To create a ghost a light needs to be quite bright. The sun will do, or stage light. An average light bulb in a technician’s office (not to mention a dark room) not so much. And if an office lamp was bright enough to create a ghost, it would definitely be bright enough to illuminate the room to the extent that we would see at least something of the room’s interior. We don’t. There’s just this ghost and his mother.

Mother
The mother light that causes the ghost to appear is obviously the one on the left. It appears to be more or less rectangular, which is odd. Basic science tells us that light radiates from its source. So unless there is something to constrict it, like a window frame or something, a light, seen from a sufficient distance will always appear to be sphere-shaped. Regardless of the original “shape” of the source. Planes on fire don’t appear like bright, plane-shaped artifacts on a photograph. They take on the shape of fire. But that’s another story.
Here the apparent rechtangular shape of of our mother light matters. If you look a bit more closely though the light isn’t really rectangular. You can actually recognize the hexagonal shape of the diaphragm. It’s not easy to tell because there’s not one solitary ghost but a trail of polygons overlapping each other. But it’s there. The mother of ghosts has ghost qualities herself. And again this is a known phenomenon. A light can spawn a whole array of ghosties.



But inside there is a light, and if we were able to see it with our own eyes it would look completely normal, spherical, like any light in the sky. I mean the shape would be normal. The brightness of that light must have been something else. Don’t be fooled by the apparent mwah quality of the photograph. To create a (number of) ghost(s), to even register on a super insensitive film, that must have a been a serious, big ass light.

Tail
As I explained earlier, even with a big ass light and an average sized aperture (I’m going for a f/5.6. Dissenting opinions welcome) Frame no. 34 needed a long, hand timed exposure time. Which brings me to the tail that seems to follow the light. Some people believe it’s heat or vapour, toxic gasses, exhaust fumes, something like that. But this is yet another optical illusion. This time it’s not a ghost. It’s the same object, the same light source, making an imprint time and time and time and time and time again during the same take but each time at a different position. It’s a fast moving object photographed with a slow shutter speed.



Trajectory
If you live close to an airport’s flight path (like I do) it’s easy to recognize in Frame no. 34 the trajectory of a descending plane. If a plane comes right at you, the light seems stationary in the sky for quite a long time. Then it starts to move, slowly at first but picking up speed as it comes closer. The light continues to accelerate and it starts to descend faster and faster until the plane thunders by, leaving the impression that it followed a curved trajectory and picked up speed during the descend. Neither of that is true. The flight path overhead is a straight line and planes do not accelerate when descending. That curved trajectory is optical illusion number four.

Two lights?
What interests me is that the tail seems to consist of two lights, whereas the mother light is undoubtedly a single source. It doesn’t look like a lonesome missile. I wonder if it could be an ASM (air-to-surface) missile, a cruise missile, something like that.
Any ideas?

[Monty]

Staggering analysis.

[sarapuk]

All speculative analysis. Just guesswork. No evidence.

[Nigel Evans]

I'm loving it! Marley's expert post is describing my belief that these photos are genuine. My favourite theory is that they deliberately elected to pitch the tent at that location to photograph these lights (which they had already observed on previous nights) with Igor recording his doubts in the group diary the night before. If so then this rules out military ordnance of course. If you then also rule out YuriK's peculiar third degree burns resulting from a modest campfire then you're left with........ electricity.

[Marley]

Thank you Monty and Nigel.
I'm sorry to hear you're not convinced, sarapuk. Can you elaborate on what you consider guesswork re my post? I thought I was being rather factual. The specs of those cameras are correct and so are the descriptions of lens flare and motion blur. So I'd really like to know where you think I'm making stuff up. That would really help me to improve my theory. Or discard it even, if I missed something big. Thanks in advance.

[Marley]

And I have more...

Frame no. 34 (continued)

Film no. 1
Frame no. 34 is part of Film no. 1 and is attributed to Krivonischenko. Film no. 1 is the only film in the Dyatlov archives that is complete. The standard length of old skool films is 36 exposures and all 36 frames are there:  https://dyatlovpass.com/resources/340/gallery/Dyatlov-pass-film1.jpg. The film is cut in 6 strips of 6 negatives each, as is (nowadays) standard practice, except for the last strip. The one that contains frame no. 34 has an additional, sloppy cut, made with scissors, between frames no. 31 and 32.

When Koskin and Kuntsevich researched the photo archive in 2009 they cut up the films/longer film strips in the usual 6-frame format. It’s safe to assume they are responsible for the overall cutting of film no. 1. The sloppy scissor cut was made by someone else at an earlier date, possibly during the 1959 investigation.

The cut off strip
The cut-off strip starts with two shots of the group on Feb 1, going up the pass. The next photograph is frame no. 34 and the last two frames are blank. They appear completely blank, as if never exposed to light. When you take a picture in the dark you get a blank negative as well (blank negative means a black print) but usually you can see a few vague lines or spots or blotches on a negative because complete darkness (as a natural phenomenon) is extremely rare. There’s always a stray photon hopping around. But there’s nothing here. I’m confident that frame no. 34 was the last photo taken.

A snippet of paper
Near the back of the case files there’s an envelope containing three pieces of paper. On each of these snippets is something written like “film from…” followed by a serial number from one of the three cameras initially retrieved from the tent site. https://dyatlovpass.com/case-files-volume-2-17?rbid=19667

And luckily for us one of the pieces has even more information on it. It says:
488797 Zorkiy
film № 1
tripod attached
missing 3 frames

That last line, missing 3 frames, is written with different ink and in a different handwriting. The handwriting of the rest of the note is, if I’m not mistaken, Ivanov’s.
So now we have two films no. 1: “our” film that contains Frame no. 34 and the one mentioned on the snippet. “Our” film has the last three photographs cut off, and the “snippet” film has three frames missing. There’s every chance that these two films are one and the same. And we can more or less figure out what happened to it.

What happened to Film no. 1
Initially they found three cameras (I’ll get to that shortly). Somebody (Ivanov?) had the films from these cameras developed but not cut. He received three continuous strips of 36 negatives. He looked at the films to see if they contained any information about what had happened to the hikers. He took an interest in the last three negatives of Film no. 1, cut them off and gave them to a technician, asking for prints.

Nowadays having prints made takes you… what?... 30 minutes? Something like that. Back in 1959 it was a time consuming business. They had to feed all the negatives one by one into a device called an enlarger. The enlarger projected the image onto photographic paper. Next the paper had to go through a number of chemical baths: developer, stop bath, fixer, washing. Finally the paper had to dry. One film took you hours. It’s common sense that the prosecutor’s office didn’t print all of the photos made by the group. They only printed a small selection.

At one point photographic films started to come with preprinted numbers on the edge so you could easily identify each frame. The Dyatlov films didn’t have any numbers. The person requesting prints could not send the whole strip of negatives (all 36 of them) and say: I’d like a print of frames no. 6, 21, and 32 to 34, please. The surest way to get the photographs you wanted was to cut the film up and only send the negatives that had to be printed. So I don’t think there’s anything nefarious about the Dyatlov films being cut up. The man with the scissors didn’t work for the KGB. He was just making a selection of negatives he wanted to see in print.

It seems that the strip with the three frames from film no. 1 never got reunited with the rest of the film. And when somebody else went through the case files afterwards, archiving the whole shebang perhaps, he found that the information on that piece of paper did not match the number of negatives filed with said paper. And that’s when he wrote: 3 frames missing. That’s Soviet bureaucracy for you 
But let’s move on to the best bit of information on this little piece of paper: the tripod!

A tripod attached
According to this piece of paper Film no. 1 belongs to a camera with serial number 488797 but that’s not all. This camera was mounted on a tripod. It says: screwed on. It says: attached. This is not a report on how they found some camera accessories lying around and managed to link them to a certain camera. No. This is just a little note saying: this film comes from that camera. That camera being the one with serial number 488797 and A TRIPOD ATTACHED. I repeat: A tripod attached. A tr… 

To state the obvious: when you’re on a skiing trip you don’t ski around with a tripod attached to your camera. You carry the tripod in your backpack and the camera (in its protective casing) wherever it suits you: around your neck or in side pocket of your backpack or something like that. On the rare occasion you want to take a tripod mounted photo while on the go, you disassemble the whole thing and store the tripod away before taking off again. You don’t mount your camera just for the heck of it; you don’t leave it mounted when you go off to bed. 99% of the time your camera and your tripod are not joined together.

But according to this piece of paper camera no. 488797 had a tripod attached to it. And this strongly suggests that the camera was “abandoned” (for lack of a better word) just before, or shortly after someone took (or wanted to take) a tripod mounted photograph of something. And if there’s one kind of shot that screams Tripod! it’s nightscapes. Long exposure time, slow shutter speed photography under low light conditions. But I’m getting ahead of myself. First I need to follow the paper trail of this camera and it’s tripod all the way back to the tent site.

Inspection protocol – Camera no. 488797
One of the first documents in the case files is a joint inspection protocol by Tempalov and Maslennikov about their findings on 27 Feb 1959. That’s the day they found the bodies of the first five hikers. Tempalov wrote the report on the spot. He, Maslennikov and three witnesses (including Slobtsov, who discovered the tent the previous day) signed it. It’s as official as it gets.

The report contains a list of documents and valuables retrieved from the tent site. There are three cameras on that list, identified by their serial number. The number of frames shot with each camera is also recorded. And “our” camera is described as “with” a tripod and broken light filter:
1. Camera "Zorki" with a tripod and a broken light filter. Camera № 488797. Filmed 34 frames.
2. Camera "Zorki" № 486963. Filmed 27 frames. Deep scratches on the case. Strap is torn.
3. Camera "Zorki" № 55149239. Filmed 27 frames.
https://dyatlovpass.com/case-files-3-6?rbid=17743

And again, this is not a report on how they found a couple of cameras and some accessories and how they managed to link the accessories to a certain camera. No. This is merely a list of things retrieved. If the camera, the tripod and the light filter were found separately they would have been itemized separately. Because this is an official protocol. Besides, Tempalov, or the search party had no way of knowing that the tripod and light filter belonged to that one particular Zorki unless they were attached to it. Not while they were on that mountain. Not on 27 Feb.

I’m perfectly satisfied that when Tempalov was presented with the camera, it was attached to a tripod, and there was a damaged light filter on the lens.

There are two other instances in the case files where camera no. 488797 is mentioned,
https://dyatlovpass.com/case-files-3-6?rbid=17743
https://dyatlovpass.com/case-files-volume-2-42
and on both occasions it is described in the same way, as coming “with” a tripod and a broken light filter.

A broken light filter
So I disagree with the claim on this site that the light filter was found in its casing:
That is the other strange detail - the light filter has its own protective case and to brake [sic] the filter one has to either stomp on top or take it put and brake [sic] it. The filter was found cracked inside its protective case.
https://dyatlovpass.com/cameras
The case files show otherwise. It was mounted on the lens. And that makes perfect (old skool photography) sense.

The type of light filter is not specified in the files but there’s a 99.9% chance that it’s a UV-filter. That was the first filter people would buy and very often the only one. Other kinds of filters only made sense when you were quite serious about photography (and you had a high quality camera). A UV-filter is useful when photographing snowy landscapes. It’s the one filter I would bring on a skiing trip.

The good thing about a UV-filter is that it has hardly any negative side effects. You can leave it mounted, make all the photographs you want under all kinds of circumstances and they won’t be any worse for it. That’s what people did, back in the day. You left the filter on 24/7, unless it cracked of course. A cracked filter would leave a mark on all subsequent photos.

Camera filters are rather fragile. They’re just a thin disk of glass in a metal frame. Drop it, step on it and they’re gone. But when mounted on a camera, in front of the lens, you need to slam the camera, lens first, into a solid object. That’s not your average camera accident. Something violent happened to that camera before it reached Tempalov and he wrote: Camera "Zorki" with a tripod and a broken light filter.

Camera no. 488797, which belongs to Krivonischenko, was found with a broken light filter mounted but as far as I can tell none of Krivo’s photographs show any sign of cracks, lines, spider webs, spots, in short a damaged filter. Everything suggests that the damage occurred after the last photograph was shot. The last being our notorious frame no. 34. And that brings us to the last bit of information from the Inspection protocol: the number of photographs taken.


The number of photographs
It is suggested on this site that the number of photographs taken with each camera (34, 27 and 27) was determined by taking the film out of the camera, developing it and then counting the number of negatives. I disagree. There was no need to do that. Besides, the Inspection protocol was written on the spot, according to the witness testimonies of Tempalov, Maslennikov, Slobtsov, Brusnitsyn and every other person on the mountain that day.

Those old cameras had mechanical counters. Every time you pushed the advance lever (or turned the advance knob) the counter would add one. That’s how you knew how many photos you had taken and how many frames there were left. That’s how Tempalov knew right away the number of photos taken with each camera. They didn’t take the film out, had it developed and counted the negatives. No. They just wrote down the number shown by the counters.

And this ties all the evidence together:
Frame no. 34 comes from a camera that was found mounted on a tripod and with a broken light filter attached. The counter of that camera stopped at 34 frames. Frame no. 34 doesn’t show any signs of damage to the light filter, nor does any of the earlier photographs. This strongly suggests the damage occurred after someone took photo no. 34 but before Tempalov registered the light filter as broken. This essentially refutes the theory that frame no. 34 was a random technicians’ shot.

There is a slim possibility that Slobtsov, or one of his mates from the search party, is responsible for our mystery photo. They had custody of that camera for a couple of hours before Tempalov wrote his report. But then, did they smash the light filter as well after taking that shot? What for? And what about the tripod? Were they responsible for mounting the camera? If so, why? It just doesn’t make sense.

There’s only one logical explanation for the state of that camera + film, as recorded by Tempalov on the 27th. Krivo, or one of his friends, took photograph no. 34 during the night or in the early morning of Feb 2. In order to do so they mounted the camera on the tripod. They managed to take that shot but then something happened that sent the camera, with the tripod attached, flying. It slammed, lens first, into a solid object, causing the filter to crack. And that’s how Slobtsov and friends found it.

[sarapuk]

I'm loving it! Marley's expert post is describing my belief that these photos are genuine. My favourite theory is that they deliberately elected to pitch the tent at that location to photograph these lights (which they had already observed on previous nights) with Igor recording his doubts in the group diary the night before. If so then this rules out military ordnance of course. If you then also rule out YuriK's peculiar third degree burns resulting from a modest campfire then you're left with........ electricity.

What  !  ?  They risked their lives to photograph Electricity.

[sarapuk]

Thank you Monty and Nigel.
I'm sorry to hear you're not convinced, sarapuk. Can you elaborate on what you consider guesswork re my post? I thought I was being rather factual. The specs of those cameras are correct and so are the descriptions of lens flare and motion blur. So I'd really like to know where you think I'm making stuff up. That would really help me to improve my theory. Or discard it even, if I missed something big. Thanks in advance.

Well the Cameras would be useful, but like other things, they disappeared. I would like to inspect the films as well. I believe the films are kept safe.

[Nigel Evans]

I'm loving it! Marley's expert post is describing my belief that these photos are genuine. My favourite theory is that they deliberately elected to pitch the tent at that location to photograph these lights (which they had already observed on previous nights) with Igor recording his doubts in the group diary the night before. If so then this rules out military ordnance of course. If you then also rule out YuriK's peculiar third degree burns resulting from a modest campfire then you're left with........ electricity.

What  !  ?  They risked their lives to photograph Electricity.

What you do not do after ascending 1000ft up a mountain on skis in a raging blizzard carrying a heavy backpack and clearing a metre of snow to pitch your tent  with an apex 1metre high and then sharing it with 8 other individuals who are climbing over you to get outside for night time toilet trips is......... setup a camera on a tripod for no purpose.

[Naufragia]

@ Marley

An excellent piece of analysis and really well explained.  Thank you so much!

[MDGross]

A possible scenario: Ball lightning phenomena are seen by the Dyatlov group on the evening of Feb. 1. After the first sightings, Yuri K. sets up his tripod and camera and shoots frame 34. Zolotaryov also takes several photos, but his are distorted because his camera is hand held. Before Yuri K. can take another photo (he has two frames remaining), ball lightning gets nears and explodes. The guys outside the tent see fireballs rolling down the slope. As underdressed as they are, those inside the tent exit in fear of their lives. In the confusion, Yuri K's tripod is knocked over breaking the light filter. Zolotaryov. who is holding his camera, simply puts the camera strap around his neck as the group descends. At first they walk rapidly as fireballs continue to be seen. Then Slobodin falls and fractures his skull. A couple of guys help him down the slope and everyone slows to a normal walking pace for fear of falling in the pitch black.

Hey, thanks to the great work by Marley, I believe we've solved the case.

[Nigel Evans]

I like the narrative that some of them got whacked by a fireorb on the descent which made a flashlight useless and/or was lost in the confusion and the ravine four carried on in fear of their lives. These four chose the raised ground at the cedar to light a fire as it would act as a beacon and help the stragglers find them (not much use calling out in high winds). The 2Yuris made it later barely alive and soon to perish. Meanwhile they built the den on Semyon's advice. After an hour or so of the rest failing to turn up the four abandoned the fire (it appears to have been extinguished) and retired to the den. Then something happened in the ravine....

[RidgeWatcher]

Thank you Marley,

I took 3 years of photography (1970's) using several of my father's cameras. My favorite was a Zeiss(Ikon?) from the early 50's. I used to see the tell-tell signs of the shudder eye and would realize with a slow recognition that the photo was ruined.

Thank you for a complete analysis and kind words for the novice.

[mk]

And I have more...
[lots of really awesome stuff...]

Good grief, I want to stand up and cheer.  It's like the ending of an underdog movie when the little kid hits the homerun out of the park.  Finally!

There are some really good posts and ideas on this forum.  There are others that I suspect are really good, but the translations are tripping me up.  There are those that I think, "Wow. Maybe.  I could see that happening," and some that I just shake my head and click on by.

But it is rare to find a particular point carefully explained in a way I can understand, step by step, all the way through.  I kept thinking, "Of course--of course!"  What you explained is exactly what I imagined the first time I saw the photo.  And then I imagined a hundred other things it might have been and got sidetracked by what-ifs. Thank you for sorting out my impressions and explaining those things that niggling at the back of my mind.  What you say makes SO much sense.

(And for the rest of you who have actually made posts as clear and thoughtful as Marley's--I'm sure it's my own fault for not recognizing their greatness, perhaps because I don't have enough background with the specialized subject to grasp the salient points.)

Thank you, Marley, for taking the time to write up all this.  Please--anything else you have to say on the subject--please share with us!

[eurocentric]

Dear Mr WAB sir!
Well i think i'm on the side of Mr Koshkin, that object seems to be glowing with more than moonlight and if so you would expect it to be hot and heating the surrounding air with the water vapour contained within condensing at the object's thermal boundary and drifting away as steam.


 

1. You have the right to be on either side, as well as the right to be very wrong.
2. You should not add your fantasies to what was not there. Like something "hot" and "air heating". Nights in the North Urals, even in August, have very low temperatures, sometimes even negative (Celsius). What exactly was the fact of that night.
3. The fact that it is the moonlight and shortcomings of the simplest digital cameras is an undeniable fact obtained from the first source (Valentin Yakimenko). Therefore, there is no need to twist many tall tales around it. This distracts readers from the truth very much.
4. You, together with the Koshkin, can fantasize lot, but it is irrational activity.

Although he should have reported Yakimenko's observation to maintain balance.

Then it would be someone else... 

On a separate question. Keith ****'s book "Journey to Dyatlov Pass" states that the film strip marked "Zolotaryov" has a "Plane3" photo. Two questions :-

I don't think Mr. Keith ****'s statement is authoritative.
1. It's a retelling of what they talked to Kuntsevich about what Valentin Yakimenko said, which is no longer original in the study.
2. Keith **** himself analyzed this image on film directly...
3. The inscription "Zolotarev" cannot speak about anything, because it is not clear who (presumably it was Ivanov) and why this inscription was made. This is nothing more than an abstract assumption, considering that on the film the images Zolotarev could have made with very little probability. There are many images of the UPI University summit in November 1958. If there's one thing I'm not confused about because I don't have any tapes in front of me right now...

   

• Do you know about a Plane3 photo?

This is what Valentin Yakimenko spoke abstractly about in 2013, and what he was much objected to by other people who know photography on film. This is not an image of an airplane. It is a very small fragment of a dried-up sodium sulfite crystal (part of the developer). Its size compared to the window of perforation of 135 type film is very small (about 40...50 times smaller), with the size of the "window" about 1.5 x 3.5 millimeters (0.059 x 0.139 in).
Modern technologies make it possible make any magnifications by digital methods, but "chemical photography" does not allow obtain images of objects in this size on film with such sharp edges at these sizes of parts.
I have not yet been able to convince Valentin Yakimenko that this statement is wrong, but many qualified experts in "chemical photography" confirm my opinion.

   

• Do you know if the negatives of this strip are available to be shared, online etc?

Please provide me direct link to this original negative. Not the image that Valentin Yakimenko himself gave as secondary image, and namely the original negative. It is better if it is with dimensions (in millimeters or inches - it will not be so important).
If you do it honestly, it will be very clear to other readers.
I have worked with original negatives in person (in my hands before my eyes). So I can talk about it for sure.

• I think that the Plane2 photo is highly significant to the fireorb theory but inspection of the negative is important.

Then why don't we do this test first, and then draw conclusions?

If I can respond to that highlighted point...

I find it hard to conceive of this DPI film, of all films, not being processed properly, given how it was recovered months later and may have held the forensic evidence they desperately required to explain this tragedy. I'm sure it would be treated like a black box flight recorder recovered from the floor of the ocean, and not subject to inadequate processing, rushed through by a student.

The developer is only the first of 4 liquid stages, followed by acetic acid or running water 'stop bath' solution which would quickly end the development stage, and then the fixer, followed by rinsing. Agitation during these processes, especially the longer development, is continuous, together with knocking the developing tank to dislodge air bubbles. It's a very active process compared to rocking prints around in a developing tray.

Generally speaking chemical processing faults do not cause angular marks/shapes, they tend to be rounded, blobby, more random. Mechanical grazing inside a developing tank potentially could, the film getting mashed in the tank reel during loading. Mishandling with print forceps could also scratch a wet print emulsion. The images could also be faked, either using a stencil across the printing paper at exposure to room light, or by photographing the stencil in the dark with a bright light shining up at it, to produce a negative.

The bottom line is, if the two 'plane' images are taken to be a random processing fault then it's a pretty remarkable coincidence that the crystalline results share so many features with the only non-phenomena thing which could have been in the air that night, motionless enough to allow the camera to photograph it without blurring, and with the underlighting of perhaps flares dropped for better visibility.






Note also, how related to that, the clearest of Semyon's photo's images a bright lamp, and the Yak-24 fits the bill there too, with one the same shape and angle.




I find it bizarre how much credibility is given in Dyatlov folklore to the supposed 'yeti' photo, which is clearly determined to be a man for the sake of some simple adjustments to brightness and contrast, but somehow the work of a man running around all night with a camera is dismissed as either the result of processing faults, or alternatively, producing the imagined animal visions of a mystical interpreter.[/list]

[Marley]

Thank you @Naufragia, @MDGross, @RidgeWatcher, @mk for your kind words. I always get nervous when writing a post this long. Nothing hurts my ego more than a tl;dr in response. And I’m happy you all thought my analysis convincing.

@RidgeWatcher, I’m not familiar with the expression “shudder eye”. It conjures up images of a horrible disease but I’m sure that’s not right. Please enlighten me.
You learned the trade with a Contax IIa/IIIa? (that’s the post-war Zeiss Ikon rangefinder) Lucky you. Those are legendary!

@mk, I do have more And after all this praise what else can I do but try and write a sequel? I keep you posted.

[time2fly]

Hello to all - I haven't posted yet to this forum, so excuse my directness:

I would like clear up a long-time mistake. I happen to have analyzed the frames from this topic over the last weeks. I am currently writing a paper in which there will be more insights, but at the moment I would like to assure you that:

The 1st frame in Zolotaryov's presumptive frame series is actually a magnified CUTOUT of frame 34 from Krivonischenko's camera.

They both represent the same frame!

Here's how I found out: I was intrigued by the 3 bushes, heads or whatever, and I wanted to look for similar artefacts in other frames. So I enhanced frame 34 and noticed the same 3 artefacts at the bottom right. I was excited first and thought they were the same bushes. I then enhanced more, added Gamma, Contrast and Histogram correction, overlayed the 2 pictures and came up with exactly the SAME SCRATCHES. There is absolutely no doubt - these bumps are from frame 34. The scratches are a forensic fingerprint, like the marks on a projectile that can only come from one gun.

As to the origins of the bumps, I can only guess. They could be the fingers (or fingerprints) of the lab technician who developed the negative. I had that happen to me back in the old days when I was developing film myself in the lab. If they're the bushes compared to a contemporary photo earlier in this thread, that would be a real wonder - I know of no bush that remains the same size & shape over half a century.



To me: I'm an image analysis & software engineer, I write algorithms and software.
Cheers, Henning

[mk]

...The 1st frame in Zolotaryov's presumptive frame series is actually a magnified CUTOUT of frame 34 from Krivonischenko's camera.

They both represent the same frame!

Interesting!  I follow your explanation, I think, so far as it goes.  Does this mean you suspect someone intentionally made a blow-up print of that particular part of the negative?  Or is there another reason the frame might be cut? 

[mk]

..stuff about the helicopter...

I feel a little silly asking this, but I don't quite follow you and I want to understand.  If the hazy, white shape is a helicopter, why is the whole thing glowing white in the picture?  Is a searchlight shining on it? Are there, perhaps, two aircraft present, and one has the spotlight on the other?  Is it possible for a light inside the helicopter to shine through the whole thing and make it sort of glow?  You could probably convince me that the shape is the same as a helicopter shape; I can't argue because I don't know a thing about aircraft.  But I'm having a hard time imagining how the picture came to look like that.  When a car drives up on a dark night, you don't see the whole outline of the car--just the headlights.  When you come upon a house at night, you don't see the outline of the whole house unless there is another light source--just the windows to rooms which have lights inside.  In the night sky, I can only identify an airplane by the blinking lights on the wings or tail or whatever--I never can see the whole plane.  I don't understand how the whole helicopter body showed up in the photo.

[time2fly]

Interesting!  I follow your explanation, I think, so far as it goes.  Does this mean you suspect someone intentionally made a blow-up print of that particular part of the negative?  Or is there another reason the frame might be cut?

In my opinion: Reducing the amount of information in a photo (cutting, zooming) can only have one reason: to create a confirmation bias, i.e. to influence a certain opinion. Valentin Yakimenko, who allegedly created the Zolotaryov album, was very much into the "fallen angel/higher level demonic involvement" theory. So he found some scratches, ice crystals and dust particles and enhanced them to the size of spaceships and daemons. Why he chose to sneak in frame 34 from Krivonischenko's camera...? Obviously to underscrore his point.

If you don't follow this psycho-religious stuff, you can basically ignore the whole collection, except two. The only frames that seem original are the two "eagle" frames showing a light blob. If someone can find the original, unaltered frames from Zolotaryov's camera, I would be quite happy. I have not been able to find them.

[eurocentric]

..stuff about the helicopter...

I feel a little silly asking this, but I don't quite follow you and I want to understand.  If the hazy, white shape is a helicopter, why is the whole thing glowing white in the picture?  Is a searchlight shining on it? Are there, perhaps, two aircraft present, and one has the spotlight on the other?  Is it possible for a light inside the helicopter to shine through the whole thing and make it sort of glow?  You could probably convince me that the shape is the same as a helicopter shape; I can't argue because I don't know a thing about aircraft.  But I'm having a hard time imagining how the picture came to look like that.  When a car drives up on a dark night, you don't see the whole outline of the car--just the headlights.  When you come upon a house at night, you don't see the outline of the whole house unless there is another light source--just the windows to rooms which have lights inside.  In the night sky, I can only identify an airplane by the blinking lights on the wings or tail or whatever--I never can see the whole plane.  I don't understand how the whole helicopter body showed up in the photo.

I mentioned how flares may have been dropped to provide a source of lighting underneath. This brightly burning light, intended to illuminate a wide search area, far exceeding the directional abilities of a search light, could either be a hand flare dropped to the ground, or one discharged on a parachute where it floats down. This may also explain the burning to some tree tops said to be observed by the recovery team.

[eurocentric]

Hello to all - I haven't posted yet to this forum, so excuse my directness:

I would like clear up a long-time mistake. I happen to have analyzed the frames from this topic over the last weeks. I am currently writing a paper in which there will be more insights, but at the moment I would like to assure you that:

The 1st frame in Zolotaryov's presumptive frame series is actually a magnified CUTOUT of frame 34 from Krivonischenko's camera.

They both represent the same frame!

Here's how I found out: I was intrigued by the 3 bushes, heads or whatever, and I wanted to look for similar artefacts in other frames. So I enhanced frame 34 and noticed the same 3 artefacts at the bottom right. I was excited first and thought they were the same bushes. I then enhanced more, added Gamma, Contrast and Histogram correction, overlayed the 2 pictures and came up with exactly the SAME SCRATCHES. There is absolutely no doubt - these bumps are from frame 34. The scratches are a forensic fingerprint, like the marks on a projectile that can only come from one gun.

As to the origins of the bumps, I can only guess. They could be the fingers (or fingerprints) of the lab technician who developed the negative. I had that happen to me back in the old days when I was developing film myself in the lab. If they're the bushes compared to a contemporary photo earlier in this thread, that would be a real wonder - I know of no bush that remains the same size & shape over half a century.



To me: I'm an image analysis & software engineer, I write algorithms and software.
Cheers, Henning

Excellent discovery, but one which, as ever with the DPI, throws up many more questions.

While the lower part of the image, the 3 (or is it 5) 'heads' appears to be the same, down to a scratch here and there, the neatly-edged lens flare in the centre of the fuller image would appear to have been replaced with the blinding white-out from elsewhere, and the position of that light, relative to the heads/plants, is now much closer to them. Look at the gap between the heads and the leading edge of the light across both photo's.

That might suggest it isn't just a crop, but a cut & shut - that the middle of the full image has been discarded and the top and bottom brought nearer together. Intriguing as to why that was done if so.

Alternatively, and this would be my preference, it may be that two separate exposures were taken by the same camera, which appear the same if the hiker heads/bushes are used as your only reference point, because they do not move, but the light does between exposures, and a shutter or lens fault places marks in the same position.

I have to say though, that although this thread has been extremely intriguing, I have my doubts Yuri K would go to the trouble of setting up a tripod on a windswept mountain and attempt to take a prolonged 'b' exposure, doing so half-dressed, without centre framing his subject and focussing, especially when the rest of his photographs reveal he was by far the best photographer. And then we are to accept Semyon did a lot better without a tripod.  Also, since the camera and tripod were found back in the tent, why secure your photographic equipment and not take what you needed to survive.

My own enhanced version of Frame 34 concerned itself with the shape of the light source, not the heads. The light in the middle is as Marley suggests, a lens flare. The source of light is broadly similar in shape and angle to that of Semyon's two 'eagle' images, a snowflake on the lens likely the eagle shape.

[mk]

..stuff about the helicopter...

I feel a little silly asking this, but I don't quite follow you and I want to understand.  If the hazy, white shape is a helicopter, why is the whole thing glowing white in the picture?  Is a searchlight shining on it? Are there, perhaps, two aircraft present, and one has the spotlight on the other?  Is it possible for a light inside the helicopter to shine through the whole thing and make it sort of glow?  You could probably convince me that the shape is the same as a helicopter shape; I can't argue because I don't know a thing about aircraft.  But I'm having a hard time imagining how the picture came to look like that.  When a car drives up on a dark night, you don't see the whole outline of the car--just the headlights.  When you come upon a house at night, you don't see the outline of the whole house unless there is another light source--just the windows to rooms which have lights inside.  In the night sky, I can only identify an airplane by the blinking lights on the wings or tail or whatever--I never can see the whole plane.  I don't understand how the whole helicopter body showed up in the photo.

I mentioned how flares may have been dropped to provide a source of lighting underneath. This brightly burning light, intended to illuminate a wide search area, far exceeding the directional abilities of a search light, could either be a hand flare dropped to the ground, or one discharged on a parachute where it floats down. This may also explain the burning to some tree tops said to be observed by the recovery team.

Aahhh--I understand now.  Thanks!

[Nigel Evans]

It's just occurred to me, if YuriK placed himself at the end of the tent (furthest from the entrance) he could use the gap in the tent normally used by the stove chimney as a viewing portal. The orientation of the tent probably sheltering the same from the wind and the snow. Then he would have a grand view of the slope down to the valley....

[time2fly]

Excellent discovery, but one which, as ever with the DPI, throws up many more questions.

While the lower part of the image, the 3 (or is it 5) 'heads' appears to be the same, down to a scratch here and there, the neatly-edged lens flare in the centre of the fuller image would appear to have been replaced with the blinding white-out from elsewhere, and the position of that light, relative to the heads/plants, is now much closer to them. Look at the gap between the heads and the leading edge of the light across both photo's.

No. The extracted section of frame 34 has been further brightened with Gamma. Eventually, this will cause lighter partes of the image to become white. Valentin Yakimenko probably did this to add drama to the thus altered image. Remember he was trying to explain (in his personal mindset!) what killed his comrades. His angel (or UFO, helicopter, whatever you want to see) frames are subjective interpretations, similar to a religious person who sees the face of Jesus in a toast.

My own enhanced version of Frame 34 concerned itself with the shape of the light source, not the heads. The light in the middle is as Marley suggests, a lens flare. The source of light is broadly similar in shape and angle to that of Semyon's two 'eagle' images, a snowflake on the lens likely the eagle shape.

I fully agree that the "eagles" are melting snow flakes or ice crystals. This in my opinion proves the authenticity of the frames, and that they actually show a real light ball in the sky, and not a light source in the lab. The lens flare usually only happens from a very bright light, like the sun. It would not appear from a lamp in the lab.

[time2fly]

My own enhanced version of Frame 34 concerned itself with the shape of the light source, not the heads. The light in the middle is as Marley suggests, a lens flare. The source of light is broadly similar in shape and angle to that of Semyon's two 'eagle' images, a snowflake on the lens likely the eagle shape.

I like the colorization you did - very realistic. While of course a subjective interpretation, it's also my belief that these are authentic images of a fireball. Do you by any chance have the originals to these images, or know where I can get them? I have been looking for them a while, in order to do a more thorough analysis. As I said, image analysis is my field of work, and I have come up with a few more, let me carefully say "interesting", observations, which I am writing a paper about.