The WEC was specifically designed to operate in earthshine had the mission required it. For some indication of the SEC sensitivity the Apollo 9 downlinks, though short, exhibit the enormous range of light sensitivity the camera could handle. The honeysuckle feed as seen in Australia shows remarkable clarity as Armstrong climbs the ladder. This was unfortunately high contrast in the rest of the world as a switch in Goldstone was improperly selected.

Once Parkes kicks in you see an extremely good picture when you consider the bandwidth limitations placed on the camera (320 lines, 10fps). There was a device planned but never flight-qualified which would have allowed color pictures in hi-re mode for Apollo 11. The images from that camera in color are stunning!

Those of you willing to do a side by side comparison with the A12 color camera and A11 B&W can turn off the color info on the A12 footage. You'll see (ignoring the conversion, kinescope etc degredation) that the two cameras were not that far removed quality wise.

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