The autofocus modules in most cameras were designed to focus on typical subjects under normal daylight or indoor lighting conditions, not on points of light at night at a distance. Therefore, they hunt and seek.

Most cameras have some way to defeat autofocus, the problem is interpreting it from the supposedly “universal” symbols used by camera makers! Often there’s an auto-manual focus switch. Manual focus might be indicated by a hand icon. A couple of jagged peaks, like mountains, indicates far focus. . The numeral 8 on its side, always indicates infinity focus on a lens. And that's far as in "To the moon, Alice, to the moon!"

3) Shoot 35 mm film in old, manual-everything cameras.

Think about it – modern digital cameras, and even modern film cameras, rely on printed circuit boards and electric micromotors. What is one well-known characteristic of a close encounter of the second kind? Two words: electrical interference! Whatever the UFO phenomenon is, it reliably appears to garble radio signals and stop spark-ignition engines in their tracks. Even DC devices like flashlights may be affected.

Old, all-metal, manually-focused, hand-wound, mechanical-shutter film cameras are not only durable; equipped with the right optics – which can frequently be had for pennies on the original dollar – they are powerful image-gathering tools.

With a decent lens, a frame of fine grain 200 speed 35mm color film, when properly scanned, can record the equivalent of a 15 or 20 megapixel imaging chip! And it holds better detail in highlights and shadows. Getting that performance in a digital camera would set you back several grand – and you wouldn’t want your abductors getting their slimy tentacles on our advanced Earth technology, would you?

4) Take the filter off the lens! If you don’t keep a filter over the lens, why don’t you? It prevents dirt, dust, fingerprints and all kinds of other crud from soiling the front element of your lens, which has been polished to gem-like perfection and coated with multiple layers of rare, anti-reflective coatings.

If you’re shooting into any kind of light source, whether it’s the sun coming up at midnight or a suspected runaway paper lantern, a filter will produce a secondary or “ghost” image of the highlights. The apparent brightness of this secondary image depends on how good the filter is, which is usually a direct function of price. Even expensive filters do it a little; cheap filters do it a lot.

This happened to the above-mentioned UFO enthusiast. He brought me an amateur’s negative with mysterious “lights in the night sky” for enlargement and analysis. I noticed that the pattern and location of car headlights in the foreground inversely corresponded to the UFO’s above, which meant they were a reflection. I demonstrated it to the client on the print with a straightedge and grease pencil. When he still didn’t believe me, I told him to ask the photographer one question: was there a filter on the lens at the time the photo was taken? The photographer said “Yes,” and we didn’t hear much from the client after that.

5) Freeze time. By that, I mean choose a fast shutter speed to stop the subject’s movement and your own. On many point-and-shoot camera, both digital and film, this can be done by setting the mode dial or menu panel to the little “running man” figure, also known as “sports” or “action” mode. This tells the camera to select the fastest possible shutter speed for the lighting at the expense of more overall sharpness and less noise.

If you’re hand-holding a manual camera, choose a shutter speed at least the same fraction of a second as the focal length of the lens you’re using, i.e. 1/250 sec. is the slowest speed with a 200mm (or equivalent) lens, etc.

The advantage is you’ll get a clearer, more detailed image.

6) If you’re shooting digital, get a better camera. Convenience and image quality are often a tradeoff. In general, physically larger imaging chips produce higher quality image files than small ones, but large chips also require larger optics, bigger batteries and bodies. The best camera in the world is useless if you leave it at home.

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