Well, they took plenty of photos and of course, only the best one were widely published. If you look at the complete collection of images, you'd see that there are plenty of "wrong" shots.
In one of your first posts you claimed tha you do some §D work on SGI. Then you should understand the difference between specular and diffuse reflection. Also, just because you've made a good photo that is later used in many ways is proof that it is a fake?

Harald

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"Flying in space is risky business, but just staying on this planet is risky business too." - John Young, astronaut

Note also that even in the supposedly perfect fourth shot, part of the rover's tire is cut off. So he took four tries and wound up with a pretty good, but not perfect, photograph. I think a well-trained man with a camera strapped to his chest should be able to achieve that.

Another thing to note that Image 4 (AS15-88-11866) is quite a bit brighter then the others so it is possible that they increased the f-stop to expose it longer, or that the image was "pushed" in the development process to bring out the front of the astronaut's suit and the flag decal. If you compare it to AS15-88-11864 you can see how both dark the front of the suit and flag on the LM are, as well as the change in colour of lunar surface itself.

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Howling from the Shadows

It must be fun to lead a life completely unburdened by reality. --- JayUtah

You can't reason an irrational person out of an irrational belief. --- Noclevername

Apollo: The History and the Hoax
Enter the World of Athran

..the image was "pushed" in the development process to bring out the front of the astronaut's suit and the flag decal

Considering that most of us darkroom workers continually burnt, dodged and otherwise manipulated our prints to enhance or minimise certain parts, I see nothing unusual in exactly the same being done to the print for illustrative or editorial purposes. This does not mean that there is anything fake about the original.

Dank, I don't understand your comment, "the picture is far to pin pointed." Could you elaborate? As has already pointed out, this particular picture was the best of four, and the ability of the astronauts to accurately point their cameras came down to one thing: practice, practice, practice. If you have indeed thoroughly investigated the Apollo missions (which I seriously doubt), you would have seen in the many films taken by the TV cameras on the rovers, plenty of shots of the astronauts taking photos by doing exactly what you claim they couldn't do: pointing the cameras by moving their bodies. In fact, when I viewed the Apollo 17 TV films I was intrigued to see that they often pointed the camera up or down by simply bending their knees. And we all know that they took excellent photos by doing this.

Do you seriously believe that the joke footage with the falling ladder that is linked on the Clive Campbell Smith site is actually the real thing?

Here are some very brief answers to many of the hoax-believers' arguments:
http://www.badastronomy.com/phpBB/vi...=105193#105193

I urge you to read them, and to also study fellow-contributor Bob B's site:
http://www.braeunig.us/space/hoax.htm

plus, of course, JayUtah's brilliant site, Clavius:
http://www.clavius.org

dank, if you did any deeper research you would know that the so-called "lost" footage with the falling light fixture was done in the last few years as a joke. Either Clive Campbell Smith is using a bit of satire or he is ignorant. Here is the link at iFILM. At the present moment, I have no audio, but IIRC, I believe there is a "Mr. Gorsky" reference towards the end of the clip is a giveaway that it is a joke. See this thread for a more in-depth look.

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Sorry folks, I need to make a slight mea culpa here - I have jumped to a conclusion myself! ops:

88-11863 is actually taken by Jim Irwin of Dave Scott. Then they traded places and Scott took a sequence of 3 (not four) photos of Irwin.

From the ALSJ....

This doesn't change the point of my original post, but my mistake needed to be corrected. Now, I'm just off to write 100 times, "I will check before posting".

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This 2ed picture from Apollo 15 is really an amazing feat of camera work if you consider that it was taken without any means of knowing that everything was in shot.

Hogwash. I've used an Apollo Hasselblad camera with the Biogon lens. With no practice at all I was able to take appropriately framed shots. You just sight along the top of the camera body.

Journalists take pictures all the time without using a viewfinder. It's not nearly as "impossible" as the conspiracy theorists make it out to be.

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Clavius Moon Base

I've always doubted that specular vs. diffuse reflection -explanation with this particular photo. On later J-mission LMs the quadrant IV side was black, as can be seen in this Apollo 17 picture:
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/Hi...-134-20482.jpg
It was a bit more difficult finding a good close-up from Apollo 15 but with
as15-87-11796
you can compare the left and right sides. The MESA side looks black, unlike the quadrant where LRV was stored, which has the gold-foil-like Mylar.

Have you tried it? How can you be so sure that it can't be done? As Jay points out, photojournalists do it all the time. Haven't you ever seen them holding their cameras above the crowd and pointing it to where they think the subject is? These photos get published in newspapers.

This picture was later used on postcards and NASA advertising. hmmm money money money

dank's image claims have already been finely diced, so I'll just pick on this.

NASA images may be used freely, as long as you don't try to imply an endorsement of your product. Hence, NASA doesn't make money on "postcards and advertising", except for relatively small sums from sales at NASA center gift shops. Not exactly a significant revenue source for the agency. You, however, could use the photographs for T-shirts, coffee mugs, postcards, whatever you want, and sell as many as people would buy.

You didn't study the subject at all before coming here, did you?

PBS had a show that interviewed the scientist responsible for the "Pillars of Creation" image. His wife is really ticked that he doesn't get a cut of all the t-shirts and postcards made from it.

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...except for relatively small sums from sales at NASA center gift shops.

I believe NASA has subcontracted tourism at its centers to private companies.

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Clavius Moon Base

So are you now accusing NASA of being a money making venture?

wow--wouldn't the budget people love to know that?

I'm going to second the call for improved clarity of your posts, dank. I'm really having a hard time reading them.

now that that's out of the way . . . .

I'll admit that most of my research on this particular subject is, well, here and Clavius. (thanks, Phil and Jay!) however, I have never seen a question that couldn't be answered using simple physics. could I have answered them, given how little I know about physics?

in many cases, yes. like the shadows thing. or the "waving" flag. or the lack of stars. frankly, even using basic common sense ought to tell you that it's far, far harder to fake such a massive government program than it is to just do it. (notice no one ever suggests that, say, the WPA was faked? it's because people know how many people were involved. they seem not to have the same awareness of Apollo.)

in short, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that Apollo was real.

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"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Somethin' Tells me, he Ain't Comin' Back ...

Score One, for The Good Guys?

Or ...

Just the Bull-Headed?

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A reporter friend of ours has sometimes held a camera high over his head if a crowd is in the way, and took pictures in the approximate direction of the action. They come out remarkably well.

In pre-digital Apollo era days reporters lugged around old Rolleiflex cameras or "Rolleis" which had viewfinders on top. They'd hold these up-side-down to snap pictures over their heads. They'd also simply shoot without even opening the view finder. Everything could be cropped in the darkroom. Photographers (who are not reporters) sometimes forget that one can take a picture with a camera in any angle. The finished photo can always be rotated. The Astronauts were not as rushed and they simply aimed in the right direction.

You know, I'm reminded of Leon Lederman's (Nobel winner in physics and former director of the Fermi National Accelerator Lab) comment that went something like this.

"Science is not a religion. If it were, we'd have an easier time raising money."

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"If it was so, it might be, and if it were so, it would be, but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic!" - Tweedledee

This isn't right. This isn't even wrong. - Wolfgang Pauli

As someone who has darkroom experience, black and white only, I can attest to that. I've done all kinds of enhancing and most of it is pretty easy to do as well as cropping.

If you what to see how bad the originals are check out the Apollo Image Library. Apollo 16 is especially poor. About 40% are taken from the LRV, because you can see the LRV camera.

Good thing you folks write for the lurkers, because of course you realize that the OP has days ago returned to whatever fringe site he came from claiming victory over the "government shills" at BABB?

Called it ...

\/

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If you Ignore YOUR Rights, they Will go away.

I'm watching a vintage Ali fight right now on ESPN Classic and low and behold what do I see? A photographer at the side of the ring leaning in taking photos with a Hasselblad. No viewfinder and hes holding it at arms length, away from his head and into the ring. He blasts away by simply pointing the camera in the direction he wants it, cranking like crazy with his manual advance camera. Funny!

I think a lot of misconception is bred at the hands of conspiracists who claim expertise in photography. They are invariably studio photographers. Now there's nothing wrong with studio photographers, so Craig doesn't have to humph in indignation. But my point is simply that studio photographers approach the art very differently than journalistic or other opportunistic photographers. Often we see the rules and conventions of studio photography applied to Apollo photography, which is more closely aligned -- in my opinion -- with photo journalism.

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Clavius Moon Base

You are exactly right in my opinion. I have a lot of respect for those who capture images on the fly as it were and the Apollo astronauts were no exception.

I came to one other realization as I watched the fight and then did a web search to find the photographer, Neil Leifer. Neil, like the Apollo astronauts shot a hasselblad, which is a square format camera. Having shot the blad for years before moving to the 35mm format Canon 1Ds and 1Dsmkii in the last few years, I find find the rectangular 35mm format much harder to work with than the square of the blad. You have to move the camera horizontal or vertical whereas with the square its always right no matter what. I have to think this would make framing without a viewfinder much easier. Not a lot of people shoot square so their first hand experience is limited, unlike a 35mm style format which many have experience...mostly cutting off the heads and feet of their subject

I shot the Hasselblad MK70 with the viewfinder removed, and had no problem. I do have some difficulty with my 35mm shooting without the viewfinder, but that's because I have a predilection for long lenses.

Most of my photography is of the opportunistic variety. As such I get used to taking 20-30 shots for each one I keep. Yesterday I was at the zoo shooting pictures of butterflies with a 300mm lens on a Canon 20D. Since the depth of field for that lens at f/5.6 is about an inch at a range of 6 feet, a lot of shots simply drifted out of focus as my head moved. Disappointing, but worth it for the 4 or 5 shots that come out stunning.

When I hire a portrait photographer to do family portraits, each of the shots is properly exposed, framed, and lit. That's because the photographer controls each frame carefully. He can take all the time in the world to set up what he wants. I apprenticed with a portrait photographer, and the art really does seem to be in the setup. The clicking of the shutter is merely the end of a lengthy process of composing the shot and adjusting the technical parameters. The photographer is pretty sure of obtaining a technically acceptable shot each time.

There is, of course, a concession to empirical methods such as bracketing for exposure when using film whose exposure characteristics cannot be easily determined from instruments. But that is still a method; and it is still employed under controlled circumstances. At that point the photographer simply accepts that his instruments and his intuition together are not enough to ensure proper exposure.

You can't tell a butterfly to stand still. You either get the shot or you don't. You can recriminate forever about how great a shot it would have been if the butterfly had just been turned slightly differently, or if you had underexposed it by half a stop, or if you had stepped to the left to get a better background. That's more in line with "field" photography, and that's the photography that the astronauts practiced. More specifically, when you read about their training you understand that's what they were told to practice. And so I get very fed up with David Percy's pontifications about how photographers will want to work and why the Apollo photography is unacceptable.

http://www.clavius.org/img/sm-butterfly-1.jpg

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I've had similar experiences with photography.

My (then) fiance and I went into a studio for some photos. The photographer and her assistant spent a fair bit of time setting us up with props, adjusting the lighting, the background panels and the camera settings. Most of the photos were quite acceptable, though neither of us were terribly thrilled with the outcomes.

Then there were the wedding photos. The wedding was outdoors on a sunny autumn afternoon, the official photos were later in the afternoon, and the reception was indoors in the evening. The official photos were the most posed, though even there we used a bit of improvisation. Some of the reception photos were posed, while others were a bit opportunistic.

The result is that our proof album has only about 80% of the photos taken, judging by the numbers under the photos. Presumably the rest were unacceptable in some way to the photographer.

Now compare this to Apollo.

Our photographer is a professional, and takes these sorts of photos as her job. The Apollo astronauts did this as one aspect of their job, on top of everything else they had to learn. Our photographer had a lot of control over what she photographed and how she did so. The Apollo astronauts had to work in the environment they were in. They couldn't move rocks to better locations to photograph them. And so on...

No wonder the Apollo photos include so few good pictures of butterflies.

Absolutely beautiful!

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I can tell you with some degree of certainty that the actual act of making the exposure in a studio setting is the anticlimax. I have spent days preparing a single image, from concept, building the set, prepping the product, creating a lighting scheme, making test exposures and adjusting 10-20 lights oftem making a move as small as 1/4 inch to a given light. When the moment comes to expose the film ( or charge the sensor as it happens now) its a huge letdown. Days of hard work and toil are over, and you just tear it all down and put the gear away. Sure the resulting image has its own rewards, but for me (and most other studio product photographers I know) the real thrill is the chase, and finding solutions to the problems that product poses.

OT...is your 300mm the the F4 is L version? If not you should really give it a try. The IS is a wonderful addition and it make handholding pretty easy. I bought it for my wife to shoot birds with her 10D and its reaally great for that application.

Don't you think the Soviets would have detected if the transmission didn't come from the Moon? and milk it for all the propaganda it would have been worth?

Oh, but don't you know? The USA had bribed the Soviets to keep quiet, by sending them all that grain right around that time! 8)

(Yes, I've been reading these theories far, far too long. I know many of the rebuttals by heart. 8-[ )

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