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Originally Posted by JohnnyB
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Hi JohnnyB,
Richard's original photo does show a four-engined aircraft.
The key to understanding this is understanding what happens in photography when a moving object is photographed during a moderately long exposure of a few seconds - ghosting and blurring occurs in the image if an object is moving in relation to the camera.
Cameras in the these aircraft were designed to keep the shutter open for a period of seconds in order to synchronise with the explosion of the photo flash (i.e. the longer the shutter is open, the greater the chance that the photoflash will explode while it is open; the illumination of the photo flash would act like a 'flash gun' and freeze motion for the fraction of a second that it exploded).
In the case of Richard's photograph, with the shutter open, either (a) the photographing aircraft moved violently during the exposure and explosion of the photoflash (i.e. the camera was moved in relation to the scene below), or (b) the bright background had enough illumination to record on the film over a few seconds without the aid of a photoflash. The aircraft seen was moving in relation to the camera (but generally moving in the same direction as the photographing aircraft), and I strongly suspect that it was banking - this has caused one inner engine to record as a moderately visible blur on the film, the other inner and one outer engine to record as barely visible blurs, and the remaining outer to hardly record on the film at all.
In the comparison negative that you posted, the image is clear enough to assume that the aircraft seen was illuminated by a photoflash from a stable camera platform, i.e. it is reasonably sharply defined, as opposed to blurred. The difference between the two images is simply the difference between photographing a moving object with a flash in low light and photographing the same moving object in low light without a flash (or ditto but sharply moving the camera during the exposure or keeping the camera still during the exposure).
Cheers
Rod