BY FRANCES ROBLES AND JACK WHEAT

 Unable to believe the little boy they claimed for their own and kept for five months
 is happy with his father, Elian Gonzalez's Miami relatives charged Sunday that a
 photograph released Saturday of a smiling Elian reunited with his Cuban family is a fake.

 ''The picture -- that is not Elian,'' said his cousin Marisleysis Gonzalez at a Washington,
 D.C., press conference.

 But the Rev. Joan Brown Campbell of the National Council of Churches vouched
 for the picture's authenticity on ABC's This Week Sunday morning. And a Herald
 examination of the photo found no signs of fakery.

 Photos of Elian with his father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, his stepmother and baby
 brother, were released Saturday by the father's attorney, Gregory Craig. The
 Miami family focused on one that shows the four family members together. A
 smiling Elian has his arm around his father.

 Marisleysis Gonzalez said the proof the photo is phony is Elian's hairline.

 Elian's hair in the reunion photo is longer than his hair in a photo taken by The
 Associated Press during the raid in which federal agents removed the boy from
 Little Havana earlier that day, Marisleysis said.

 SHIRT QUESTIONED

 Marisleysis also said that in the reunion photo, Elian was wearing a different shirt
 from the one he was wearing when he left the Gonzalez home in Little Havana.

 However, the Immigration and Naturalization Service said Saturday that agents
 provided Elian with a change of clothes. And Campbell, a supporter of Juan Miguel,
 told ABC that she was with the father and son after their reunion, and saw that he
 was wearing the shirt he had on in the photo.

 Bill Andrews, electronic imaging editor for The Herald, analyzed the reunion photo
 for authenticity Saturday before it was accepted for publication in Sunday's editions.
 It appears completely legitimate, he said.

 CHEAP CAMERA

 The signs point not to fraud, but a cheap camera -- probably a disposable camera
 -- with plastic lens, he said.

 Andrews attributed the changing appearance of Elian's head to differences in
 cameras and photographic conditions.

 The most widely published photo of the raid, Associated Press photographer
 Alan Diaz's image of armed federal agents preparing to take Elian from a defender
 inside a closet, showed the hair on the side of Elian's head cut close to the scalp.

 ''The picture in the closet was real sharp, taken by a professional camera. You
 could see every hair in detail,'' Andrews said.

 In the reunion photo from Andrews Air Force Base, Elian seems to have more
 dark hair. But in fact, the analysis of the photo showed that the sides of Elian's
 head are simply darker, probably due to the combination of how the flash
 illuminated the scene and plastic lens that blurred details, Andrews said.

 Several clues argued that the reunion photo is for real, Andrews said. ''The first
 thing I noticed was the red-eye you get from home pictures you take with a cheap
 camera. It was consistent among Juan, Elian and the baby.''

 Next was the pattern of shadows. In the photo of a smiling Elian hugging his
 father, the shadow from the electronic flash is the same around the heads of
 Elian, his father and his brother, Andrews said.

 Andrews also could find no technical signs of computer-morphed photographs,
 such as a hair cutting off when it should continue, or the same hairs being
 repeated several times to cover up the seam where two images were joined
 together.

                     Copyright 2000 Miami Herald