Moon Hoax claims on the verge of destruction

dropzone said:
If I may indulge in the slightest moment of woo, in my life I've seen a pile of snapshots in my time and the best of the Moon photos are remarkably clear and good for being the products of amateurs.

There. That's out of my system, since a Hasselblad shooting 120 film leaves a lot of spare pixels grains of silver that can be sacrificed to the cropping process. And the most striking thing about them is how CLEAR they are. We think of air as being invisible, but on Earth it and what it contains are always there, reflecting and refracting light.
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http://www.clavius.org/photoqual.html

JayUtah said:
As a matter of fact, a significant percentage of the lunar surface photographs are blurred, unfocused, incorrectly exposed, or otherwise flawed. These photos weren't generally known to the public until recently because they weren't interesting to editors and publishers of popular works and therefore not cost-effective to duplicate. But now that it's possible to efficiently digitize the many thousands of photographs taken on the moon (even the bad ones) and distribute them cheaply via the Internet, we can see the full gamut of lunar surface photography. . . .

The Apollo astronauts were trained in "zone focusing", a technique used by photojournalists and sports photographers who often don't have the time to focus visually or by measurement. At a high f-stop, a camera's depth of field increases. This means that when the lens is set to focus at a certain distance, objects somewhat nearer and farther from this ideal distance are also sharply focused. The narrower the aperture (i.e., the higher the f-stop), the greater the depth of field. And the sloppier the photographer can be be about his focus setting. The Zeiss Biogon lens used by the astronauts had an indicator that specified the near and far boundaries of the depth of field for each combination of focus and f-stop.

Zone focusing is a technique whereby the f-stop is kept high, resulting in lenient depths of field. The focus range is then divided into "zones" corresponding approximately to near, medium, and far. These zones of clear focus overlap slightly and correspond to preset positions of the focus ring. The Zeiss Biogon lens provided to the astronauts had "detents" or click-stops that corresponded to these three zones. The astronaut had simply to push the tab on the focus ring to one of three easy-to-find stops to select the focus zone depending on the rough distance to the subject.
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dropzone said:
If I may indulge in the slightest moment of woo, in my life I've seen a pile of snapshots in my time and the best of the Moon photos are remarkably clear and good for being the products of amateurs*.
...snip
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It's not really fair to characterize the astronauts as 'amateurs'.

Astronaut Training for Lunar Photography

The Apollo astronauts underwent intensive training in preparation for their Moon explorations. Over the several years prior to the Moon missions, scientific and photographic training was provided. Astronauts were encouraged to take training cameras on trips to become more familiar with the camera operation and to enhance their photographic technique.
...snip

Link<-history.nasa.gov

At that link you'll find link to yet another example of NASA's penchant for acronyms: GReat Images in Nasa. GRIN.

*emphasis added
 
dropzone said:
If I may indulge in the slightest moment of woo, in my life I've seen a pile of snapshots in my time and the best of the Moon photos are remarkably clear and good for being the products of amateurs.
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Bolding mine.

Mistakes were made by the "amateurs" when it came to documenting their trips to the moon. Most notably on Apollo 12. Al Bean pointed a color television camera directly at the sun while he was moving it and burned out the tubes. He also forgot to stowaway a camera mounted to the forward windows of the CM and was knocked out when the capsule splashed down. They also lost a timer they were going to use, so the two of them could be in the same shot.
 
As is said back home, "Ignorance fought."

ETA: I once heard there was an argument in Apollo 8 whether they should shoot what is now the classic Earthrise photo. Rank amateurs! ;)
 
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Yeah, but Al Bean saved Apollo 12 when it got hit by a lightning strike on launch, he was able to get the power back up and running.
 
Dr. Lao said:
Yeah, but Al Bean saved Apollo 12 when it got hit by a lightning strike on launch, he was able to get the power back up and running.
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Heh, awsome catch!

But in all fairness, it was EECOM John Aaron that made the now famous call, "Try SCE to aux". It was then Bean who was the only one to remember where the SCE switch was located.
 
dropzone said:
As is said back home, "Ignorance fought."

ETA: I once heard there was an argument in Apollo 8 whether they should shoot what is now the classic Earthrise photo. Rank amateurs! ;)
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From what I have heard they still argue (good naturedly) about who took the photo. Lovell claims he did, and Anders and Borman say they don't know who did, but they know it wasn't Lovell.

Bill Anders took most of the photos and most likely took "Earthrise."
 
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Tomblvd said:
Heh, awsome catch!

But in all fairness, it was EECOM John Aaron that made the now famous call, "Try SCE to aux". It was then Bean who was the only one to remember where the SCE switch was located.
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..and Bean was the only 'LM pilot' to have actually flown the thing on a mission.
 
geni said:
Largely dead anyway. The counter arguments and evidence is just too easy to find these days.
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Where is the easiest one-stop-shop to find them? A guy I work with just announced he's a moon-hoax believer.

Rolfe.
 
Rolfe said:
Where is the easiest one-stop-shop to find them? A guy I work with just announced he's a moon-hoax believer.

Rolfe.
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Here's a brief but informative discussion from a week ago about various debunking resources.

I'd suggest reading Clavius in order to educate yourself; Jay's writing is truly a treat, IMO. But for reasons noted in the thread, it might not be the best place to point some conspiracists at first. You might also enjoy the new debunking blog I mention in my post.
 
I must admit that during my first portstay in Los Angeles/Longbeach I was toying with the moonhoax idea.
The performance in Tacoma were more reassuring.
 
CptColumbo said:
So here's how my day went yesterday:

Went to work. Went to the Twins game, which they lost to the White Sox 8-7.

Oh, and met Buzz Aldrin.

He was signing his book at the Mall of America. No one was punched while I was there.
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Did you ask him what it was like to be the first man to land on Bart Sibrels jaw? ;)
 
Major Major said:
A new and different force has weighed in on this topic:

"Man on the Moon: A Colossal Hoax That Cost Billions of Dollars"

You see, the moon is 800,000 miles farther away from the Earth than the Sun is, so the astronauts couldn't possibly have traveled 94 million miles in such a short time and . . .

:blackcat:
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LOL. I read that neurologica blog post too. It's amazing what some people believe. Honestly, my eyes kept darting around the page to see if this was really an Onion satire than something serious..
 
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