Okay, I'm looking for critique/suggestions on my thinking, as I'm relatively inexperienced with arguing with Lunar hoaxers.

On another board, someone starts a thread saying a friend of his was skeptical about the Lunar landing, and the OP was looking for arguments/ammo to reply. After a few responses, someone comes up with this gem:

I responded with four key ideas gleaned from a quick search on Google and Clavius:

1. First, each mission had two astronauts for photos and mission work. So that's 4834 minutes x 2 = 9668 man-minutes. Plus, they planned and rehearsed plenty ahead of time to maximize mission objectives and minimize wasted time.
2. Second, many published photos were panoramas, which can be taken quickly (shoot, twist, shoot, twist, shoot, etc.). Also, some photos are video stills (not sure if that's right, but video is, what, 60 pictures per second?)
3. Third, the poster said *ALL* pictures were flawless. I challenged him if he *really* examined all 5771 pictures himself, or if he was just parroting Jack White's figures unchecked. I linked to the Apollo Image Atlas which has thousands of photos, and a random sample showed some of them (to me) to be sub-par.
4. Fourth, and best of all, I boggled at his premise. "We went to the moon, but we faked a percentage of the photos." This was a total new one to me: hoaxers argue we didn't go to the moon at all. This guy want NASA to go to the moon numerous times AND set up an elaborate sound stage with which to fake additional photos. For Apollo's sake, WHY? It sounded like he was trying to be "cautious" and straddle the fence with a foot in both camps. But all that gets you is splinters in your butt.

So first off, was my rebuttal accurate?
Second, did I miss anything obvious? (Knowing this board, he's going to lash back with a long list of "yeahbuts."

That's a pretty good response.

All pictures do not appear flawless. There are many examples of sunstruck frames, exposure problems, lens flares, and focus problems. There is an entire roll in one of the J-missions that is overexposed by a stop.

Viewfinder, schmiewfinder. I used the Hasselblad MK/70 (equivalent to the EL/500) and the 38mm lens without a viewfinder and I had no problem framing shots.

There really wasn't a lot of tweaking necessary for the camera settings. Generally they left the shutter speed at 1/250 or 1/125, for which there were three predetermined f-stop settings cued by a placard on the magazine. The focus detents were present at 1 meter, 10 meters, 30 meters, and inifinity. Zone focusing, common in journalism. The lens rings had paddles to allow easy manipulation in space gloves. Again, I had no problem at all, and that was on a cantankerous 40-year-old relic lens.

On those issues the conspiracy theorists are handwaving. They've obviously never tried it, so they just assume for everyone that it would be a problem.

Studies like that misinterpret the notion of what an average is. If I have five people whose heights in meters are, respectively, 1.34, 1.41, 2.11, 2.05, and 1.95, the "average" height of that group is 1.77, which isn't the height of any of the five. In fact, the 1.41m person is 36 cm shorter than average and the 1.95 m person is 18 cm taller. And those are the most "medial" of the group. The shortest and tallest people are considerably shorter and taller than the average.

In fact Apollo photographs were taken in bursts, as you mention. If an astronaut fires off a pan of 10 shots in 15 seconds, he can go ten minutes thereafter without taking a single picture, and still preserve the average. The argument above makes it sound like the astronaut had to stop every minute and take a picture.

It's not strictly true that the photography took place "in addition to" all the crew's other activities. In most cases the astronauts were expected to document photographically what they were doing. So while setting up the ALSEP, for example, one person might do the lion's share of the actual setting-up, while the other is standing back a ways and photographing every 30 seconds or so.

It all amounts to begging the question. The poster wants you to accept his interpretation of the role of photography, and accept that his mathematical model of photographic behavior relates in any way to how the photos were actually taken.

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"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

I would also be inclined to direct him here where each of the photographs taken on the lunar surface can be seen in the context of where, when, why and by whom it was taken. That way you don't even need to worry about averages, etc - just say "read this, and get back to me when you can tell me where you see a problem".

For example, from the Apollo 17 flag deployment:

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"I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day." - Douglas Adams

I concur with that. Back in the day I shot football games with a Hasselblad that belonged to my then-boss. It had the 45 degree viewfinder and I quickly discovered that I could cover the action more effectively by not even using the viewfinder.

The angled finder messed me up. As I tried to pan and follow the action, I would invariably tilt the camera up or down as my brain tried to "correct" for the disparity between what my eyes saw as vertical, and what my body knew was vertical.

After a few frames I just started pointing the camera in the general direction of the action and firing off shots. It worked great. Of course this was all without the aid of a light meter as well. The large negatives and wide latitude of the film helped mitigate any errors I made in composition and exposure.

When I show people these photos and tell them the circumstances under which they were taken, their jaws usually drop. In this age of digital, automated "K.I.S.S." cameras, people have a difficult time believing that beautiful, razor sharp photos can be produced consistently with a complete and utter lack of automation. Of course, back then we did other things that are unheard of today, like enroll in photography courses and actually read photography books not for the pictures, but for the technical knowledge they contained.

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Apollo unbelievers go here for immediate salvation:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khDI2MsWSYc

"I had a hand in Tom Morrow's kiester."
-JayUtah

"The only physical proof nasa has that they landed men on the moon is 840 lbs. of rocks"
-straydog02

Toseek has posted several pictures of the Queen's visit to Goddard. One of them look to have been taken by simply holding the camera up over the crowd in front of him, but the cropped section shows a good image of the Queen.

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Howling from the Shadows

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

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

God response. Here's mine.

The photos taken are simply too many and too professional looking to have been taken by astronauts on a busy schedule.

That's a very subjective judgement.

They spent a total of 4834 minutes on the moon and the total number of published photographs was 5771. That is 1.19 photos taken every minute,

Have you ever stood around and counted how long a minute is? It's a long time. Taking a picture takes about a second. An astronaut could take about thirty or forty pictures in a minute without too much trouble.

Also, on many missions they not only had two men but two cameras. On Apollo 11 there was one camera on the Moon, and on the others there were two. As you correctly point out they therefore had effectively twice as long to take pictures.

regardless of their other duties and activities.

Photographic documentation was one of their major objectives, and was part of a training process.

Left out are also the photographs that was unusable, overexposed or underexposed, which you can't find in NASA's database.

Ask him how far he's looked. I've seen bad images a-plenty, online and in books.

All pictures appear flawless,

Rubbish. Not so long ago I looked through the single magazine exposed on the lunar surface during Apollo 11, and found no less than 32 bad images. Hardly all flawless.

despite the fact that the astronauts was wearing thick gloves which would make it very difficult to adjust camera setting

Does he honestly think no-one noticed the gloves and limited dexterity and just sent them an ordinary camera? The cameras were modified specifically to make it easier to operate them with the gauntlets on.

and also the fact that the cameras used had no functional viewfinder.

But they did have a wide-angle lens. Aim that in the right direction and point and you'll get the image all right. Also, a significant proportion of the lunar surface photography was landscapes and rocks. How do you screw up a picture when you're just trying to show a landscape with no specific feature framed in it?

Even the ones with specific subjects are rarely perfectly framed. The most famous moon shot of the lot nearly cuts the top of Aldrin's head off, but is often cropped and reframed when published to make it more visually pleasing.

I'd ask that guy if he's actually looked at the photographic record himself, and if he hasn't how he has drawn his conclusions.

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The forum rules specifically state not to discuss religion.

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To the regular visitor of internet bulletin boards it is clear that it's an excellent idea your parents get to choose your real name.

A) the astronauts were professionals, not morons with a Kodak box camera.
B) The Hasselblad cameras they used were very very good
C) Many journalists and photographers and war correspondents in the 'old days' took a lot of photos without viewfinders - people weren't locked into screens like they are now.
D) The photos were taken in rapid series with motor drives - the chances of 'outstanding ones' goes up dramatically, which is why pro photographers use them all the time.
E) Come down to the parks along the Intercoastal in Cocoa Beach and talk to a lot of the old engineers that were THERE when it happened and still come out anytime there's a launch; they're glad to talk about their experiences and laugh at the nutballs who believe they didn't exist.

But they did have a wide-angle lens. Aim that in the right direction and point and you'll get the image all right.

To be honest, you have to be exceptionally clumsy to miss with a lens that has a 45-degree field of view.

The most famous moon shot of the lot nearly cuts the top of Aldrin's head off...

Understandable. It's easier to get the horizontal component of the aim right than the vertical.

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"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

I always thought that Neil was trying to capture both Aldrin and the footpad.

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I'm glad you linked to the Apollo Image Atlas, because it clearly shows that many of the photos are to put it kindly BAD. If you look at the Apollo 16 surface photographs, you'll see that many of the photographs are taken from the Lunar Rovering Vehicle and are just pictures of the surface, the trip along the surface and the LRV's TV camera. Link

Many more than one. A lot of them didn't turn out, but at least half-a-dozen were useful.

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Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

Hey, if I were actually on the Moon, and if photography were the primary means of recording it, I'd be taking as many photographs as I had film and life left in my shutter finger to take.

And, yes, every once in a while I'd toss a couple of rocks in a bag to take home.

I don't understand the issue, here...

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Mine: "Perception isn't reality. It's merely an abstraction thereof, and quite often not a very good one at that."

Heinlein's: "Staying young requires the unceasing cultivation of the ability to unlearn old falsehoods." "Freedom begins when you tell Ms. Grundy to go fly a kite."

Heck, I do that I vacation, here on Earth. On a typical week long vacation, my wife and I will EACH take 200 - 300 pictures (both film and digital) no problem. I've been on trips with same really hard core photographers who will take that many in a day.

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At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

That would be me. I take an average of 300 photos a day on vacation. I've actually had people look at my camera bag and ask if I work for National Geographic.

__________________
"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

Heck, I do that I vacation, here on Earth. On a typical week long vacation, my wife and I will EACH take 200 - 300 pictures (both film and digital) no problem. I've been on trips with same really hard core photographers who will take that many in a day.

I worked as a photographer for a year while in college. I'd easily shoot 200-300 photos during a single football game. If I'd had a really good camera like the ones they took to the moon, I would've taken many more. Sports photography (especially during night games) is tough. You take a lot of shots hoping that a handful will capture the exact moment when something special happens. On the moon, they had large capacity film magazines. If the lighting conditions were tricky, you'd want to shoot several shots at different exposure settings to make sure you got at least one good one. If you weren't able to aim the camera very well (and they weren't), you'd take more shots to ensure you'd get at least one good one. You can easily take several shots per minute that way, do some other work, then take some more.

The longroll magazines held enough film for around 180 frames. Usually 2-3 were sunstruck at each end of the roll because the darkslide was not employed in the traditional manner.

The astronauts generally didn't bracket for exposure, although I agree it's common practice in other photography -- especially on reversal film. The E-3 emulsion was chosen supposedly because it offered more options in the darkroom to recover poorly-exposed frames. But the astronauts generally just shot one picture of each intended subject and didn't worry too much about optimal settings. There are some interesting interviews you can read in the historical record about the photo training.

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"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

Heck - my dad can do over 1000 pictures in a day (digital) at a rocket launch or other similar event with his high speed digital camera (my avatar is one of his pics of my rocket). I don't find the numbers of photos taken as anything near unbelievable.

Sports photography (especially during night games) is tough.

Fakes! All fakes. You can't see any stars...

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"Transport of the mails, transport of the human voice, transport of flickering pictures - in this century, as in others, our highest accomplishments still have the single aim of bringing men together." St. Exupery