And I'll say it again: JayUtah is my hero.

And Kipp is mine.

Nice work on the flattened Earth picture!

Quite easy, actually. And I don't mean that egotistically. You don't need advanced education to solve 90% of the photo analysis issues. It requires only good observational skills and some curiosity.

The JSC scans are terrific. Don't get me wrong on that. I think that if someone 30 years ago were told that anyone in the world would one day be able, with little or no expense, to obtain a collection of every photo taken on the Apollo missions, it would have floored him. But a good researcher simply must understand and respect the limitations of his sources. The JSC scanning project was an exercise in "breadth" and not "depth". One day they will no doubt be superseded by better scans.

The reseau grid (the little crosshairs) is included on the LEVA photos precisely for the purpose of detecting image distortion after duplication. That's a necessary first step to photogrammetry, which is why so many stereo pairs were taken. Unfortunately only the surface cameras were fitted with reseau plates, so most of the en route pictures and lunar orbit pictures don't have the reseau grid.

Ironically, Craig includes on his site one of the few photos taken in lunar orbit with the surface camera. These are important and rare because the resolution of the JSC scans doesn't generally let you see the fiducials. But if you take a picture of the moon from orbit, you have a big patch of white. You need to see at least four adjacent fiducials to assess distortion. In short, Craig's photo is one of the conclusive proof photos of the distortion in the JSC scans.

I discovered the distortion not by using the fiducials but by doing some image processing between JSC frames and scans of the same photos taken from prints. I had intended to establish a baseline color correction model for the JSC frames, but I was annoyed at how badly the frames registered spatially. I finally found a few LEVA photos from the JSC collection that had fiducials I could use to confirm which version was correct. The JSC frames are, in some cases, squashed 15% in the vertical direction.

Anyone can tell that the JSC scans are of poor quality. But you have to take that extra step and find out why they are so poor.

The bottom line is that it takes so very little inquiry to find answers to these question. I spent about half an hour making observations, and I had a response back from Kipp in 24 hours. I strongly believe that the people who are so "confused" about Apollo photos simply aren't taking the time to do research. They already know what they want to believe.

And I believe the professional moon hoax theorists like David Percy are simply lying when they claim they've done meticulous and exhaustive research. Percy claims he spent five years or some such inordinately lengthy period researching his book. John Witts can attest to how easy it is to find refutory evidence. It took us exactly half an hour to refute Percy's jump-salute claim. And his claim that all the photos are of studio quality is prima facie evidence that he hasn't looked at very many of them.

These people must know they're wrong. You can't do the research they've claimed to do and make the statements they make.