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Moon hoax - not seen this debunked?

Seismosaurus

Philosopher
Seismosaurus
Joined
Mar 15, 2003
Messages
6,092
Okay, I think the moon hoax conspiracy guys are amongst the nuttier out there, but I came across one preaching this clip and I can't find an explanation for it myself.

It's footage from Apollo 14 which shows the two astronauts working away when something waves into the frame. It's claimed to be the cameraman's arm, proving a third person on the moon - or that the footage wasn't filmed on the moon.

Being logical about it, that can't be an arm. In fact it doesn't move like I'd expect an arm to move, it looks like some sort of loose hanging cover blowing up in a gust. Obviously that's not the case, but just what is it?

 
Seismosaurus said:
Okay, I think the moon hoax conspiracy guys are amongst the nuttier out there, but I came across one preaching this clip and I can't find an explanation for it myself.

It's footage from Apollo 14 which shows the two astronauts working away when something waves into the frame. It's claimed to be the cameraman's arm, proving a third person on the moon - or that the footage wasn't filmed on the moon.

Being logical about it, that can't be an arm. In fact it doesn't move like I'd expect an arm to move, it looks like some sort of loose hanging cover blowing up in a gust. Obviously that's not the case, but just what is it?

Click to expand...

http://next.nasa.gov/alsj/a14/a14TVCablePulls.html

The astronaut snagged the cable with his boot. Look at the picture half way down, it runs straight to the LM. Look also at the tell tale shake of the camera as it happens.

Here's a much better clip showing the actual cable clearly visible....
http://next.nasa.gov/alsj/a14/a14_camera_nudge.mov
 
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Okay at the risk of dragging this out, here's another claim the same guy is posting. I've abstracted it as much as possible to avoid that rule about posting chunks from other sites :

I did a rough estimate of the number of Apollo photos... 12 astronauts while on the Moon's surface took a TOTAL of 5771 exposures.

The time they had on the moon in total : 4834 minutes.

That requires the taking of a photo 50 seconds, even if all they did was take photos.

Any professional photographer will tell you it cannot be done. Virtually every photo was a different scene or in a different place, requiring travel. As much as 30 miles travel was required to reach some of the photo sites. Extra care had to be taken shooting some stereo pairs and panoramas. Each picture was taken without a viewfinder, using manual camera settings, with no automatic metering, while wearing a bulky spacesuit and stiff clumsy gloves.
Click to expand...

So... BS again?
 
So ALL of the 5771 exposure were some distance apart? How did this person determine that? Also, is it not possible that there were bursts of picture taking, followed by inactivity? Further, I would try to get independent verification of those numbers; much like the 9/11 Ctists, HBs have a propensity towards dishonesty.
 
heh... let's factor in the number of astronauts and the number of cameras used, and this appeal to incredulity starts looking a bit flat.

As for the shooting rate, I could crank through a roll of film in my strictly manual FM2 in around a minute if things got interesting...
 
Virtually every photo was a different scene or in a different place, requiring travel.
Click to expand...
Not true. Many, many photos were taken in the same area only a few seconds apart. The most cursory review of the image libraries would show it is a baseless claim.

As much as 30 miles travel was required to reach some of the photo sites.
Click to expand...
Not true. I don't know where he got that number but it sounds like it is the total distance traversed during all 3 EVAs of each J mission, which included many stops along the way.

Extra care had to be taken shooting some stereo pairs and panoramas.
Click to expand...
Not true. The "extra care" taken during the stereo pairs was to take a picture, move a few inches to the side, and take another picture. A panorama requires the same level of "extra care", i.e., none.

Each picture was taken without a viewfinder, using manual camera settings, with no automatic metering, while wearing a bulky spacesuit and stiff clumsy gloves.
Click to expand...
Not true. The gloves were not clumsy.
 
In college I had a job shooting "party pix" at fraternity and sorority parties. It sucked. One night I showed up at a "toga" party that had started early and people were stupid drunk. I wanted to get the heck out so I shot 9 rolls of film (38 frames -- took training an practice to load the camera that tight) in 45 minutes.

Like the astronauts, I had a power winder, preset exposure and several marked focus distances on the lens barrel.

This "too many pix" claim is old news. Click at the ALSJ link in my sig and look at the image archives for one of the missions.

Apollo 11 has hardly any pictures from the EVA.

The missions that used Lunar Rovers have craploads -- to the point that some people have made "video" clips using the still pictures taken by the guy not driving. Hundreds of boring pictures of boring terrain, all seemingly identical.

Bleah. :eye-poppi

Proof, if anything, that the guys on the moon were typical American tourists fascinated by the view out the window of the car.
 
The futherest any crew went from the LM was 4.7 miles, and that was Apollo 17. Only 4 of the crews, 14, 15, 16, and 17 left the immediate area of the LM, and 14 did so on foot, getting perhaps a mile from the LM.

Numerous photos were taken while travelling on the LRV between stations as well, the LMP snapping them as the CDR drove. Check out the rolls from 15, 16 and 17 and you'll find rolls of film taken onboard the rover.

It doesn't take long to point and shoot, and thats what the crew did. You can see them taking photos in the TV footage, and it doesn't take them all that long at all. A panorama of eight shots could easily be executed in just 40 secs, leaving them free to take none for the next 6 mins. Take two panoramas over 3 minutes and that gives you a little over 10 minutes to do other things. If one takes two shots of the other withing 50 secs, then the other need not be taking images at all.

If you ask a professional photographer, ask one that works out of doors. They'll tell you that with a electric camera (which is what the Astronauts had) you can shot as fast and the camera winds on, and that taking a series of shots quickly is not that hard.

For those with issues on the stereo pairs you do it this way. Take a picture, take a step to your left/right and take a second picture. For an eight shot panorama, take a picture, turn 45 degrees to your left, take a picture, repeat until you face the direction you started. Neither technique requires a lot of skill and can be done quickly.

As to the how view finder and manual settings things. The astrounauts practiced using the camera for months before the missions, carrying the cameras everywhere and taking images, then having them developed and critiqued to make them better. They didn't just start trying to use them on the day they landed. Settings were preset into rings that had tabs on them and when turned would click into place on the presets. All they needed to know was a rough guide of which to use, and often you could hear them asking to double check, getting exposure and f-stop setting from Houston before taking the shot. In some cases they took multiple shots with different settings in the hope of getting one that worked well.
 
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Seismosaurus said:
Okay at the risk of dragging this out, here's another claim the same guy is posting. I've abstracted it as much as possible to avoid that rule about posting chunks from other sites :



So... BS again?
Click to expand...

BS.

As a for-instance; "extra care in shooting panoramas?" As if. What, does he think the astronauts were trying to stitch them in-camera? No; the astronaut would turn in place, snapping a picture roughly every 15 degrees, until he came back to where he started. In a couple of locations, they did that twice in a row.

For important technical bits they shot multiples, too. If he had looked at the actual record he would have noticed this.

Its a sad, old hoax claim, and you should be happy you haven't encountered it before -- unlike us poor souls in the trenches, who are getting tired of hearing that one.
 
The "too many photos for the time allotted" is an old Jack White claim. I remember someone from the Education Forum effectively showed how wrong Jack was (as he always is). I'll see if I can find it.
 
It seemed nonsensical to me. I go to air shows, and even in the days when I used film cameras I could easily shoot through five or six rolls of 36 each in the space of a couple of hours - and that was very much taking my time and picking shots to conserve film, if I were just trying to document everything it would be trivial to take hundreds.

One thing he's trying to claim is that the cameras used were awkward and slow to operate, especially in space suits. But from what I have read they were actually pretty standard cameras, albeit with some custom modifications that did little to impact on their functionality. They also carried film cartridges that shot 160 colour frame or 200 black and white each, so it's not like they were having to stop to reload after every couple of shots.
 
Yes...he is just guessing about them being awkward.

One thing about Jack White is he will frequently make assertions backed up by "I am a professional photographer and I know this."

Apparently, however, he is a professional photographer with no understanding of linear perspective, no experience in journalistic photography (where you don't have the luxury to take time with your settings), or even much understanding of the fill light one assumes he must have used in studio.

His failure to understand linear perspective is particularly amusing. He got lectured by a congressman once (while testifying to committee about JFK -- his argument was that there was more than one rifle involved, because the rifle appeared different lengths when measured in different photographs!)

So Jack's main error here is thinking of the act of photography as lifting a camera, setting all the manual adjustments to optimal settings, getting a good finder picture, stabilizing, then snapping. It has very little to do with recording ongoing exploration and scientific experiments with a wide lens and fast film and a camera hanging from a bracket right below eye level -- literally squeeze the release, maybe every now and then flip the paddle around to one of the three preset exposure notches (which were largely as simple as "up-sun" versus "down-sun.")
 
By the by, Jack is certainly not a modern studio photographer. I attended a lecture and demonstration; in the half hour of the demonstration they took over 200 frames -- 20-30 frames per se-up and a over a dozen set-ups.

In one way shooting on the Moon WAS like studio photography. Most studio photographers don't have to haul out the light meter with each setup. They know from trial and error the best exposure settings with the lights they are using. The lights don't change from day-to-day, so all they really have to do is adjust a little for the subject.

On the Moon, there is no weather, no atmosphere, no seasons. Just raw sunlight, at an easily calculated angle to the ground. From moment to moment or from day to day the exposure settings remain essentially the same. Now throw in film with a good latitude and a developer that is willing to push and pull and remember you are trying to capture a record of events, not a dresden-doll complexion...
 
Not that it makes that much difference, but some of the close up stereo pictures (rocks and ground ) were taken with a specially built 35mm stereo camera. Two pictures with one click. Only of a three inch square though. :)
 
When I was looking through the surface journal it seemed to me that they took the photographs in bursts. They'd document everything clicking off photos as fast as the mechanism would let them and then get on with what they were doing.
 
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