Apollo photographic evidence

[porphyry]

Dave McGowan's "Moondoggie" series has an extensive discussion of the photographs which were ("allegedly") taken by the astronauts on the moon. Dave observes that shadows on the moon should be very dark, and yet in many cases we can clearly see shading and detail and sometimes very bright illumination within areas that should be in shadow.

However, I reject Dave's argument that shadows on the moon should be absolutely dark. On the contrary, we should expect some light scatter from nearby objects. This is discussed rather extensively by an anonymous blogger who claims to be a 3D modeling expert, see:

churchofnobody.blogspot.com/2009/10/lighting-moondoggie.html

Regarding one of the pictures that Dave discusses extensively, "Nobody" replies:

"I swear to God - professional reputation, the whole thing - this photo is halal. Without a shadow of a doubt (ha ha), I could build this scene in 3D and prove it utterly. It'd be the big don't-argue from hell." And furthermore, "Oh! I tell you what - if anyone feels really confident on this shadow caper, like really, really confident, like 50oz of gold confident (all the money I have in the world), and wants to put their money where their mouth is, I'll take that bet! I'll dig up my 3D Maya license, clock up a day's labour, and Baby, I'm a Rich Man, Yeah!"

McGowan is an amateur photographer, and judging from the pictures at his site, he's better at it than I am. But I've taken a few photos in the sun myself, and I'm with Dave on this one. The photos from Apollo just don't look right to me. The shadows should be deeper.

Also, Dave is skeptical about the framing & composition, considering that the astronauts were said to be aiming blind without benefit of being able to see the viewfinder.

When I think about conspiracy debates, I'm always looking for the arguments that might be decisive. It seems to me that this could be one of them. But an important factor is, what went on in the NASA darkroom when those prints were made? How much cropping, masking, burning and dodging?

Before I go making a big bet with "Nobody" to work through the 3D modeling, does anybody know -- are the original negatives archived somewhere? Are there any records of the processing steps? Or of what the photos looked like before any editing took place?

[Jason]

Go watch the Mythbusters episode where they directly addressed whether the shadows should be darker or not, and recreated a famous picture with a single light source.

The light source illuminating items in shadow is the moon's surface (reflecting sunlight). Considering that you can look up at night and see a brightly illuminated moon, this shouldn't be that hard to guess.

Framing & composition is only a problem if you ignore all of the photos that were not well-framed. Unsurprisingly, those pictures tend not to be as famous.
The astronauts also had considerable training at taking pictures with the modified cameras.

[gillianren]

Feb 3, 2010 14:59:01 GMT -4 porphyry said:

McGowan is an amateur photographer, and judging from the pictures at his site, he's better at it than I am. But I've taken a few photos in the sun myself, and I'm with Dave on this one. The photos from Apollo just don't look right to me. The shadows should be deeper.

Why?

Also, Dave is skeptical about the framing & composition, considering that the astronauts were said to be aiming blind without benefit of being able to see the viewfinder.

That's because Dave, from what I can tell, knows crap-all about the extensive training the astronauts put into working with the camera. Or the vast numbers of pictures which aren't generally published because of framing and composition issues. His study is, shall we say, not exhaustive.

When I think about conspiracy debates, I'm always looking for the arguments that might be decisive. It seems to me that this could be one of them. But an important factor is, what went on in the NASA darkroom when those prints were made? How much cropping, masking, burning and dodging?

There is no decisive argument. In order to throw out Apollo as a hoax, you have to explain all the evidence. Photos would be relatively easy to fake. Film would not. Telemetry would not. Showing any of the pictures were fake would prove those pictures were fake.

Before I go making a big bet with "Nobody" to work through the 3D modeling, does anybody know -- are the original negatives archived somewhere? Are there any records of the processing steps? Or of what the photos looked like before any editing took place?

You can find tons online, many of which don't look as well as the ones which were published. Those were the best of them, so those were the published ones. Hardly unique to NASA, that.

[echnaton]

Feb 3, 2010 14:59:01 GMT -4 porphyry said:

The photos from Apollo just don't look right to me. The shadows should be deeper.

What is you basis for this opinion? Is it really just the argument that it must be fake because it doesn't look right to you?

Also, Dave is skeptical about the framing & composition, considering that the astronauts were said to be aiming blind without benefit of being able to see the viewfinder

What constitutes too good of framing and composition? They were trained in using the camera and it had a wide angle lens. It's not hard to get a photo of what you want under those circumstances. Again all I am reading here is that it doesn't look like what you expect it should. What makes those expectations right?

People who make this argument usually on show a selected subset of the photos that happen to look nice and ignore the bad ones. Even the iconic photo of Aldrin standing on the moon was badly framed, cutting off the top of the PLS yet many have cited it as an example of a too well composed shot.

Are there any records of the processing steps? Or of what the photos looked like before any editing took place?

Wouldn't it be prudent to look this basic resurce up before calling the photos fakes?

[JayUtah]

Feb 3, 2010 14:59:01 GMT -4 porphyry said:

...

McGowan is an amateur photographer, and judging from the pictures at his site, he's better at it than I am.

I'm a semi-professional photographer. I own and operate my own studio and I make part of my living from the taking and selling of photographs. These days anyone with a camera (and whom doesn't that include?) can claim to be an "amateur photographer." What makes McGowan's expertise so special?

Further, I'm also a trained photographic analyst, which involves considerably more and different skills than mere photography. I have taught formal illumination models and radiometry at the college level, at the college that produced most of Adobe's and Pixar's pioneers. Again, I make a substantial portion of my living from the analysis of photographs, and my work has been reviewed in Science, the most prestigious scientific journal in the English language.

Again, David McGowan doesn't know what he's talking about and he refuses to debate me.

The shadows should be deeper.

Please show your work.

I demonstrated qualitatively on a National Geographic special in 2004 the geometric portion of the ground-spill principle. This was a demonstration on international television that no "amateur photographer" has yet been able to argue his way out of.

Further, I assisted the Mythbusters program in 2007 in setting up quantitative radiometric measurements. They were able very faithfully to duplicate the Apollo photography using only the spill characteristics provided by the Apollo lunar environment. My name appears in the credits as a consulted expert.

Sorry, but the radiometrics of Apollo photography have been validated both qualitatively and quantitatively under rigorous conditions. It's going to take a lot more than simple denial to get past this point.

Also, Dave is skeptical about the framing & composition, considering that the astronauts were said to be aiming blind without benefit of being able to see the viewfinder.

I had no problem using the Apollo Hasselblad cameras and the equivalent Hasselblad MK70 without a viewfinder. The astronauts practiced for months to do this. I was able to take appropriately framed photographs with an equivalent camera and lens with no practice at all.

When I think about conspiracy debates, I'm always looking for the arguments that might be decisive. It seems to me that this could be one of them.

Nope. McGowan is simply copying the claims made by David Percy almost ten years ago. They were debunked at the time and they remain bunk. McGowan has simply dusted them off and presented them to a new generation of gullible readers.

Percy first argued that shade and shadows should be deeper. However he presented no quantitative case; he simply gave his unsupported impression of what he thought the photos should look like. I contacted Percy and asked whether he had performed any radiometric computations to support this claim. Percy didn't even know what radiometry was. When I was asked by National Geographic, Discovery Canada, and Channel 4 (UK) to refute Percy's claims, Percy was invited to come on the same program and defend his findings. He declined. I gave a similar demonstration for the History Channel, on a program that has not yet aired, and Percy was also invited then to come defend his claims. He again declined. Much like McGowan, David Percy does not like his claims directly examined and refuses to debate his assertions with qualified experts.

Similarly Percy first offered the opinion that usable photography could not be obtained without a viewfinder. He didn't describe any experiments or any other means to test that belief, just as McGowan doesn't either. Apparently these guys are supposed to be experienced photographers and we're just supposed to respect their opinion. Until I did it in 2004, no one seems to have thought to take a medium-format camera with a 60 mm lens and try it out. Lo and behold, it's not hard at all to take well-framed shots without a viewfinder. The 60 mm Zeiss Biogon on the 70 mm square format long-roll gives you nearly 45 degrees field of view horizontally and vertically. It's pretty hard to miss.

These aren't decisive arguments at all. These are people just making stuff up -- often in the face of sure proof to the contrary. These claims are all of the form, "Hm, I think X is impossible." But in return someone always comes along and says, "Look, I just did X."

But an important factor is, what went on in the NASA darkroom when those prints were made? How much cropping, masking, burning and dodging?

No cropping, but various techniques were used to adjust exposure. No dodging and burning in the originals, as that wouldn't be possible. That's for printing and duping only. No dodging or burning in the dupe masters either, but for PR purposes some photos have been released also in an altered or improved form, alongside the more faithful copies. It depends on why one wants the images whether any alterations would be acceptable.

For example it's common to crop AS11-40-5903 because it was awkwardly framed. It is also common to remove the reseau fiducials for artistic use. The question is not whether photographs are being altered for various purposes, but whether reasonably faithful original copies are available to those who need fidelity. The answer to the latter is yes.

does anybody know -- are the original negatives archived somewhere?

Yes, although for the color photography it is more proper to call them transparencies. You can get high-quality scans of the original Apollo 11 Roll 40 transparencies. Other scans are typically taken from dupe masters. There is a program in the works to scan the remaining camera originals.

Are there any records of the processing steps? Or of what the photos looked like before any editing took place?

Yes; photographer Michael Light is the leading expert on that. I guarantee that Light is a more accomplished expert than McGowan.

[drewid]

"Due to the lack of atmosphere on the Moon, light is not scattered and travels only in a straight line from the sun and is reflected back in the same direction. What that means is that anything that falls in the shadows will be in virtually complete darkness."

Hahhhaaahaaahaahahaaahhaa

How can anyone take him seriously. The moon is completely retroreflective. That's a good trick. So how come we can see a crescent moon from earth? It ought to be invisible.

[echnaton]

Feb 3, 2010 14:59:01 GMT -4 porphyry said:

When I think about conspiracy debates, I'm always looking for the arguments that might be decisive.

CTs seem to think that they can find one detail that can expose the whole mess of lies. This thinking works on the assumption that it is all a lie anyway. The conclusion is drawn before any evidence has been studied. Not a particularly good approach to finding the truth.

A better way is to examine evidence without a preframed goal then draw a hypothesis and check it against the evidence. Falsify then repeat as falsification gets to be more difficult. In the case of the Apollo missions, the hypothesis of fakery is easily falsified and can be rejected.

[porphyry]

Folks,

Thanks for all your answers. If anyone is keeping score -- I remain unconvinced. To my eye, some of those photos look fake.

I'm not comfortable with further discussion here because I believe the moderation here is biased and unfair. I have a thread about that, over at:

apollohoax.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=othertheories&action=display&thread=2709&page=6

If anyone would like to take this to another board where we all can agree that we can count on fair moderation, please PM me.

Otherwise, y'all have a nice day.

[laurel]

Has a moderator done anything unfair to you personally?

[Jason]

Did a moderator censor or otherwise alter your posts? If not then I'm not sure what a biased moderator would matter.

On several other threads I have argued directly against our moderator, with no real discernable detriment to my own argument simply because he is the moderator.

[porphyry]

Laurel and Jason,

Over the long run, the quality of moderation has a huge effect on the quality of discussion. If people feel they aren't being treated fairly, they leave. Or in a moment of anger, someone might say something outside the rules, and wind up banned.

Maybe that's why there don't seem to be any "HB"'s here. I feel lonely.

[porphyry]

On Drewid's post, I call a violation of rule 1. "hahahahah" is not polite in the context.

[randombloke]

Feb 3, 2010 16:52:00 GMT -4 porphyry said:

Laurel and Jason,

Over the long run, the quality of moderation has a huge effect on the quality of discussion. If people feel they aren't being treated fairly, they leave. Or in a moment of anger, someone might say something outside the rules, and wind up banned.

Maybe that's why there don't seem to be any "HB"'s here. I feel lonely.

There aren't many HBs here because they either come in genuinely concerned with the truth and learn something and stop being HBs, fade quietly into the background after two or three posts with little to no content and even less originality, or they deliberately and loudly set out to get themselves banned at the first opportunity.

If this board really banned HBs just for being HBs, as you are so desperate to imply, what the hell are you still doing here?

[JayUtah]

Feb 3, 2010 15:37:35 GMT -4 gillianren said:

There is no decisive argument. In order to throw out Apollo as a hoax, you have to explain all the evidence.

True. I've heard one author refer to this as the Bellwether Fallacy: the erroneous belief that problems involving many variables or much evidence can be reduced to one simple question that resolves all aspects of the problem.

In some cases involving authenticity there may indeed be a "smoking gun." But that's only when the rest of the evidence is largely inconclusive. In the case of Apollo where all the evidence (e.g., moon rocks, photographs, radio tracking) are not individually questionable, there can be no smoking gun -- no reduction to a single salient point such as radiation. In order for a smoking-gun argument to apply, all the rest of the evidence must be a wild card.

Proponents of fringe theories misuse this principle to avoid the burden of proof for all the applicable evidence. This approach conditions the reader to accept the circular argument that inevitably follows. If, for example, the proponent believes he has proven that Apollo was in no way possible because of the inability to pass through the Van Allen belts or survive outside them, then he can use this circularly as a premise for dismissing other evidence. He says, "Apollo cannot have gone to the Moon because there was no way to survive the radiation."

"What about the moon rocks?" asks his critic.

"They are fake."

"How do you know?"

"They have to be; Apollo was clearly fake, so the moon rocks can't possibly be real. I don't know exactly how they were faked, but the fact that they can't have been retrieved as claimed is evidence that they must be fake."

Similarly a proposition such as, "The photographs look fake to me, therefore everything else must somehow be fake," is simply poor investigation. Failing those other explanations, it's more likely that the one outlying determination is in error than that the majority of the remaining determinations are in error. Where there is much evidence to consider, letting one question run the whole investigation is clearly biased.

[porphyry]

Randomblock, I'm not implying that HB's are banned just for being HB's. I'm saying that HB's are human and they violate the rules sometimes. But if only HB's are banned for violating the rules, it's not fair.

You ask why am I here? I'd like to have a conversation. If this is not a safe place, I'd like to take it somewhere else. I might suggest

www.chrismartenson.com/

This site is primarily about economics, but they have a side forum on conspiracies which I think is very fairly moderated. The only prohibited topic is religion.