On a related subject, most people don't know that a good portion of the photos taken by the astronauts actually didn't come out, or were outright botched, or are very sterile or bland shots that only an engineer or geologist could love. The iconic photos that people know of look so good is because those are the cream of the crop that by good fortune happened to come out looking really good, and so NASA and the press selected them to show to the public rather than the botched or bland ones.
Nope they just made those fake boring ones to add credibility to the other fake but sensational ones. I know this to be true because someone who also doesn't know that they don't understand anything that they're talking about said it and I believe them without even really thinking about it my self.
I did a lot of hobbyist digital photography and will attest that I have a lot more under/over-exposed photos during any shoot than keeper photos. I "bracket-expose" photos and bring in those into a Photoshop file to keep the desired areas to mask out to create a "perfect photo".
Even though Dave argues that the photo doesn't follow rules of composition, I actually think that the fact that it's so imperfect is what makes it so iconic. I love that the astronaut is awkwardly on the top of the frame, almost like the focus is the moon itself rather than the astronaut. It makes the lunar surface seem much more imposing and expansive, it also makes it seem like the astronaut just "happened to be there", like he wasn't supposed to be in the shot at all. And, honestly, that's exactly what happened. We were never supposed to be there, but we decided to plop ourselves in that unfamiliar environment that was not made for humans anyways. It gives a sort of poetic symbolism to the picture. I know it probably actually was not intended, but it's still cool that it ended up that way.
They did use a spotlight to illuminate the lunar surface. One that is 94.5 million miles away, 865,370 miles in diameter, with a luminosity of 3.846 × 10^26 watts. AKA, the Sun.
Your point about project managers is spot on, I work for a tech company and our project managers are not technical people. Often they have little or no idea what we're actually doing to get a project to hit its goals.
Fully agree. I'm an engineer and always have to cope with a PM that has absolutely no clue except about costs 🤣🤣🤣🤣 The common joke is that a project manager is the only person convinced that it takes 9 women to birth a child in one month.
@@claudevieaul1465 Having spent nearly 40 years as an engineer in the aerospace industry I was going to make the exact same comment, but you beat me to it. We even had a poster to that effect on the office wall.
Flat Earther looking at an Apollo mission photo: "It's too perfect, it must be fake." Flat Earther looking at footage from the ISS: "It's too glitchy, it must be fake."
@expattaffy1 Is a "flamingo" that is a specific visible strap the only evidence you can come up with to argue that they can't? Dave here already addressed your points and provided plenty of evidence. The effects shown in Apollo video/images are not possible with any known cinematography techniques of the time.
@expattaffy1 Started watching the first one and it's extraordinarily shoddy. You can't seem to stay on topic, and the breakup of your "response" is such that you play several minutes of his video and then make a general, often basic dismissive response. Just because he hasn't thrown together something similarly shoddy in response (yet) doesn't make you right and it won't change the fact that your editing style and argumentation style are abhorrent.
Or might it have something to do with the fact I told you I wasn't entertaining any more of your questions until you answered the 1 of mine - can you show us a working lighting setup that replicates these photos and videos ... Have you answered it yet?
@@Cha-Khia I have this vision of the power elites meeting in their super-secret underground HQ to lay out all the logistics, and expenses and security needed to fake the moon landings. They finally come to the conclusion that it would be cheaper and more achievable to just go go the moon.
NASA felt so sorry for the soviet union not catching the hoax, they repeated 6 more times to give them more opportunists The gave up after 7 tries because it was to expensive and figured they were just to dumb to catch on.
And fooled the world's best geologists and astrophysicists, writers and researchers, but not the high school dropouts who live in their parents' basements, and have time to keyboard all day.
@@brianarbenz7206i know one of those keyboard scientists personally. He claims that he has done the “research” to disprove the moon landings. What he means by “research” is reading blogs from other people that share his same opinion
I very much enjoyed this. To those who point their denying fingers at all the photos, I'd simply remind them that there is accompanying film. And for those who persist that the landings were all shot on a sound stage, I think Buzz Aldrin described this perfectly. He said: "...we drove the Lunar Rover pretty far, and all the time we were filming, the mountains in the distance never get any bigger. How big of a set would you have to have to be able to do that?" The fact is - miles... You can't see the bottom of those mountains because of curve (just like on Earth). And for a different angle, personally I like the LEM, but if I were filming a fake Moon Landing, I'd have created a much cooler looking vehicle.....
I don't believe Buzz said that as Apollo 11 never had a rover (not did they venture that far as it was the first landing) But your point is correct, the size of set required to replicate it would be enormous which is why the moon scenes in First Man film were shot ina quarry, and even that couldn't replicate the lighting or scenery And it's definitely hilarious to think that if they had no limits to design for a fake spacecraft, the LEM is what they would come up with 🤣
@@DaveMcKeegan Hi Dave, True - the interview with Aldrin where he said that was years after the Apollo missions and I believe he was speaking to the missions collectively (but then I saw this a long time ago). My own and favorite observation with the landings is "dust". The rover drives around on a very powdery surface and as the dust is kicked up, it just falls back down like iron filings. That is only possible in a vacuum.
@@daveh9521 Conspiracies will probably claim next that the studio was in a vacuum chamber 🤣 The lighting always seems to be the Achilles heal for any skeptic - challenge them to replicate the lighting setup and they go running for the hills But my absolute favourite is watching them try to claim the Soviets were in on it all as well 🤣
@@DaveMcKeegan The "studio" they filmed this in took a LONG time to build and it WAS in a vacuum chamber! The lighting source wasn't exactly unique and is easily replicated (it's actually quite simple too, when you boil it down), in fact they're everywhere these days, ubiquitous even. . . I mean, the moon took Billions (?) of years to make, it's devoid of an atmosphere and the sun is one of trillions (in our galaxy alone). Was that not clear? :P The video footage I've seen of them driving the rover was surreal, it was beautiful! And an EXCELLENT breakdown of the photo Dave, thank you
And why is there no photo of any astronaut filming this with the bulky 80kg t.v. cameras? and how did they transport these huge cameras in the lunar lander...and where did the electricity come from?!
I've seen people who make the argument that the lighting is all wrong on some of these photos. That the shadows cast by rocks don't match up with a single light source, arguing there must be studio lights rather than one studio light involved. But with studio lights you again have the problem of fallout and soft edges. And even with this picture having a lot of fallout, they still have sharp, black shadows. I believe the reason many of these people see these pictures as fake is that the pictures don't look normal. They feel off, alien to what pictures usually look like to us. Therefore they must be fake. Which really doesn't make sense to me. If a photograph looks alien, it makes more sense that it was produced in an alien environment than in a studio.
I think you're giving them too much credit, no matter how the pic looked they would claim it was fake. They came to the conclusion it was fake before they ever saw the photos.
I'm a photographer also. Hint: spotlight-directional, not diffuse light. Super Sharp Shadows (in studio: ruclips.net/video/G7CWn1iTPNg/видео.html ) And how about this material?: ruclips.net/video/7WAWY-DktT0/видео.html First plan, and the right side of a screen are totally bathed in the dark. Spotlight effect is behind the lander, exactly the opposite site you would like to see it, according to your intricate conspiracy. Moreover look at the shadow of an openwork antenna, the top of the shadow is lighter than the bottom of it, and the suit of the film extra do not cast spotlight effect. I can't await man finally land on the Moon.
@@aermoon- Go and look at your shadow one bright sunlit day Mr pHoToGrApHeR. You will see ONE super sharp shadow. That means ONE light source. As you see in ALL Apollo images. So, what single "studio spotlight" can light up the fore, mid AND background? The claim that Apollo footage and photographs were taken in a studio is demonstrable nonsense. You only get diffuse light outdoors when sunlight has been "diffused", by clouds for instance.
Let's remember that there was nothing even close to Photoshop in '69 or the '70s. We didn't have either the software of the hardware to display and edit images like these. Evans and Sutherland flight simulators, which were the pinnacle of graphics computing and display technology, used monochrome vector graphics displays. Any photo trickery at that time would have had to be done in the darkroom. The most skilled darkroom technicians couldn't have started with a picture taken on earth, and doctored it to mask out the sky, turn the ground grey, yet leave the gold and the red and blue in the flag and patches vibrant. The entire sky would have had to be painstakingly masked, as would all of the incredibly detailed shadows. Anyone who has done 3d rendering will know that the lighting produced using an HDR skydome is drastically different from one using just directional lights. With a skydome, shadows are softer, and much less black, surfaces facing up, which are not directly illuminated, have a blue cast, which makes those facing away from the sky appear to have a yellow cast. The skydome turns an image which looks artificially generated into a photo-realistic image. It would have been easier, and quicker, to send men to the moon, than have every single photo that was taken doctored. There were blue-screen techniques available at that time, that were used to composite images. However, look at any old movie where this was done, and it's laughably obvious, with everything on the edge of the mask having an obvious blue tinge. This is because of Fresnel reflection of the blue background, and you can't eliminate this in the darkroom. Regarding the (extremely subtle) falloff, don't forget that Aldrin's back and Armstrong's front are brilliant white, reflecting the intense sunlight into the immediate surroundings. This reflected light is also why we can actually see Aldrin's front, which is another lunar landing denier's pet complaint.
So true. There are SO many photos from the six landings. It would be very difficult to make convincing fakes even with today's photo editing tech. And it would be not just difficult, but impossible to create convincing fakes of the rover footage, even with today's tech - much less circa 1970!
There is one piece of unremarkable footage I saw years ago that proved that this could not have been faked. It only lasts for maybe a second, but it demonstrated something we couldn’t produce here. One of the astronauts was being filmed and he turned his body 90 degrees. As he did, his heel kicked up some dust. I know, unremarkable, but it’s how the dust behaved that really stands out. It carried the same momentum from start to finish, while also traveling higher, further, and without being dispersed by atmosphere. These are all things that are not possible on our planet, especially considering what you are seeing is an extremely fine powder like talcum or flour. Keep in mind also that no special effects existed at the time to replicate this, and the only conclusion is that the only way this is possible is in an environment with zero atmosphere and much less gravity.
👍🏼 exactly, inertia is in less gravity without atmosphere much longer, thats the reason why flag was moveing so long after manipulating with it, lunar dust behaviour is perfect example also
As an amateur photographer I found this really interesting to watch. I've often thought that of all the evidence that we went to the Moon, the photography (and movie film too - e.g. the way the dust is thrown up by lunar rovers) is in fact some of the best. People who have no experience of photography and/or have never tried to "fake" a photograph can easily come up with ludicrously implausible justifications for scepticism. I especially liked your comments about the hard, very dark shadows and the difficulty of lighting a large area without a diffuser. It's very clear to me that these photos are real.
The original scan tells the truth about the dangerous environment on the Moon. Buzz and Neil were walking on an uneven , slippery, dust laden surface. That's why they are the original Moon walk heroes. Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Mike Collins are the forever remembered Apollo 11 great astronauts. Thanks for the video.
Very nicely explained. When I saw _American Moon,_ what most amazed me was that these fashion photographers didn't know that perspective can make shadows converge. I wouldn't necessarily recommend watching it, because it's long and tedious, but there are some very good comment threads by many experts, who take the claims apart quite thoroughly. And of course some very silly comments by deniers. Keep up the good work. Cheers from rainy Vienna, Scott
Great video, bro! As a self-described "hard-core space geek", hearing people say that the moon landings never happened makes my blood boil! They just dismiss the hard work and amazing innovations of HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of people all working together to pull it off, just because they're too stupid and/or ignorant to understand how it was done. And the reason it is taking us so long to go back isn't because we don't have the technological ability or know-how, it is purely because of money. It is VERY expensive to go to the moon (Artemis 1 just went on a fly-by, no landing, and it cost over $4 BILLION), and without a motivator like beating the Russians during the Cold War, it is VERY hard to get the public to agree with that kind of cost. But anyway, awesome video, lots of great info to refute lies about the moon landings. You have earned yourself another subscriber, I expect great things from you!
Absolutely, NASA's budget of $54 Billion per annum is a paltry figure. And just because Don Pettit, Nasa astronaut and engineer, stated that 'we destroyed the technology and it's a painful process to build it back up again' doesn't mean a thing.
One thing that most people overlook is that light itself is invisible. When light strikes an object and bounces off it, then you see the object that it struck. Obvious to me, but when I point out this fact, people almost explode because they can't cope with logic.
I heard someone once say that the images “look too perfect” like you mentioned - but not in the sense of the composition or anything. They were saying that “how could they have had cameras that were so sharp and with so many pixels back in the 60’s? Videos in the 90’s look so blurry and had low resolution so how did they have pictures that look as sharp as our phone cameras now that have millions of pixels?”. Pixels. They are so ignorant of the world outside their bubble they didn’t even think or know about how FILM worked. Its always the case that “I don’t know how this could have happened therefore it didn’t” - like if I didn’t know why the sky is blue because I never learned, i’m not gonna claim that nobody can explain it and everybody is wrong and make up my own idea behind it, I would just look it up or read about it until I understand. And if they don’t understand the explanation, then it’s always that the explanation is wrong and everybody is wrong - which honestly shows a complete lack of intellectual maturity and that they never had the curiosity to learn and research
Hi Dave, ex-pro photographer for MoD here. I've always had an interest in the moon landing photographs but although I concluded that the astronauts had actually landed I was suspicious of several of them, this one included. Your explanation goes a very long way to explaining the concerns I had over it and, to be honest, I'd not factored in the reflection of light from the LEM creating a bright spot. Going on from this iconic photo to the main other one that I find 'odd' in terms of lighting and reflections, there is the other iconic photo of Buzz Aldrin coming down the ladder after just exiting the LEM. Obviously he is doing so in the LEM's shadow, but considering the exposure range of the colour films available now, let alone in the late 60's, I find the amount of detail in the small foil-covered areas that are in direct sunlight at the top of the picture (no atmosphere to diffuse it, so basically a searchlight) and therefore 'should' be totally overexposed, and the number and directions of shadows in the hatch, and possible other light sources with specular reflection on several different edges Aldrin's boot troublesome. This is something that has intrigued me for over 40 years, as I watched the landing live as an excited 12-year old in 1969. I'd love to hear your analysis if possible.
"Mythbusters" did a practical recreation of some photos done on the moon, with correct albedo for the moons surface, and they matched beautifully. It all makes sense, when you consider the unique conditions of the moon and the fact that it's really reflective (which is why you can see it so clearly at night). I think you'd find it interesting.
@John Blagden -- The photos of Aldrin on the ladder (there are 3 or 4 in a series) are fairly easy to explain. And especially the "hot spot" on his boot. Because simultaneous with Armstrong taking those photos, the video camera was running on both of them. In the video, you can see the extremely bright sunlight reflecting off of Armstrong's space suit toward Aldrin. One "hoax theory" promoter had the photo of Aldrin analyzed by an expert to supposedly find where the spotlight was for the secondary light source. They concluded from measuring the "hot spot" on the curvature of that boot that the spotlight must have been placed "20 centimeters to the right of the center of Armstrong's space suit." Well, jeepers, that's right in the middle of the right side of Armstrong's glaring white suit that's facing the sun. Exactly consistent with the same glare you can see in the video of that scene.
Well the moon's surface is also highly reflective (it's why it's so easily visible even in daylight). It's like taking a nighttime photograph of a scene full of snow and a heavy spotlight as the primary light source. They had to lower the exposure quite a bit otherwise the whole image would look all white. It's also why no stars are visible in the images. They're too dim to show up in low exposure shots. But yeah, the reason the Astronauts are visible in the LM's shadow is because every surface of every object in that shot reflects light easily. The lunar surface, the LM's aluminum coat, the space suits, etc.
If you look at the picture closely, you can indeed see that the bit of the vehicle in sunlight is in fact overexposed. The details you see are joints and gaps where the sun is shadowed, but the directly lit areas have caused some bloom to creep out, indicating that they're fairly bright. As for the specular reflection on Aldrin's boot, it's a bit tricky to understand, but my conclusion is that due to the surface structure of the boot, with vertical corrugated grooves, you get an anisotropic reflection effect, and what you're actually seeing as a specular reflection of a point is caused by the strip of light reflected off the ground between the LEM's shadow and the horizon. The grooves "smear out" the reflection along their length, and since Aldrin's legs are actually at a diagonal angle relative to the horizon, the specular reflection seems to get twisted to follow Aldrin's leg. This sort of optical effect isn't all *that* uncommon, and you can observe it easily by looking at brushed metal surfaces, such as the pots and pans you may have in your kitchen. The final oddity is how dark the terrain seems to be relative to Aldrin's suit. It's worth remembering that the spacesuit is white, whereas the surface of the Moon is dark grey. We don't realize how dark it is because from our vantage point on Earth, we usually see the Moon in full daylight while our surroundings are in the darkness of night! But this doesn't completely explain it. The terrain is also backlit to some extent, meaning that there are all sorts of tiny shadows behind each grain of sand that, although too small for the camera to resolve, nonetheless cause less light to be reflected back toward the camera. If you look closely at Aldrin, you can see that he's being lit from below by a diffuse light, and that he does not cast a shadow on the LEM, both of which are consistant with being lit up by light reflected off the ground.
Other topic ideas: Radiation, not just the V A belts, but the entire trip. Talk about the 5 different devices to measure and record exposure, types of radiation, dose, and Alan Bean’s memory. The “temperature extremes” including time of lunar day on the moon, thermosphere, materials, and how the sublimator worked. Lack of visible tracks from the Lunar Rover, and the rover in general.
As a wedding photographer who is constantly bouncing my flash off of white ceilings/walls, I immediately thought that the bright area behind Buzz was just the sun bouncing off his white suit back onto the ground
And then there are those of us who lived through that whole experience. My husband designed parts that went inside the Apollo modules. He worked with other engineers who actually designed the modules. He climbed into one being built and saw one after splashdown with only part of the heat shield left on it and salt water still inside. We watched the rockets take off in real time. We watched transmissions from the moon in near real time. We watched the splash downs in real time when they returned. (and the technology to fake those broadcasts didn’t really exist in ‘69). The astronauts put effing mirrors *on the moon* that were being used by engineers and scientists here on Earth for decades to track the moon’s recession. "They" would have spent a ‘gazillion’ dollars and fooled some of the smartest engineers and scientists in the world to pull off this conspiracy *or* tens of thousands of people would have had to have been in on it from 1969 to around 2010. Too bad they didn’t pay my husband off, eh? This conspiracy theory is only slightly less bonkers than the flat earth bs! Good video. Keep it up and thanks for doing this.
There are two main reasons every conspiracy theory falls apart: 1) The number of people needing to be involved quickly grows well beyond reasonable limits. In case of the moon landings, there would have had to have been literally thousands of people in the loop, including from other nations (the Soviet Union was tracking the rockets). And not a single one of them blew the whistle?? 2) Conspiracy theorists don't actually have an alternative narrative. They don't propose a coherent single sequence of events that fits together. All they know is, the official one is wrong. That's all they know for sure. As long as it's not the official accounts of the events, then it is viable as an option. If it's official, then it must - by definition - be a lie. Very reasonable.
@@smaakjeks When tasked, the conspiracy braindeads can only parrot the maybes of similarly deluded folk - Area 51, Nevada Desert, Stanley Kubrick - with not a shred of evidence. Flat Earth dropkicks function similarly - can't be a globe, but NEVER, EVER ask for actual physical evidence of their flat Earth that we can examine, or you're a shill, a NASA fanboy, etc, etc. Poor demented sods. Best avoided.
@@smaakjeks When you look at the roots, there is really only one conspiracy theory. That is, a person with minimal accomplishments in life feels the need to paint themselves as the hero in their own story. A hero who is in on the big secret and that all the smart, accomplished people are in reality only faking it. It is how they cope with their miserable little lives.
That's one of the things that makes me steam. So many people, so much money, so much training, research, people risking their lives and these little crotch brains laugh and point to things that are easily explainable. If they put in the effort. But of course hundreds of thousands of people all keep silent to fool a few deniers. Yeah, they have a pretty high opinion of themselves for sure, ugh.
No "Solar System" just level Earth. The Moon is a focused ionizing gas (Krypton) plasma map of level Earth - When the Sun is rapidly cycling near the 24th latitude South (~Dec. 01), we are freezing here in the North, so latitude and luminosity of our Sun 🌞determines where there is useable dry land at all. The prevailing objective description of the Raqia (Hebrew) or Void, is their must be a uniformly curved Toroid-E.M.F. or Ice Dome, far beyond the Moon's altitude (KR layer), to create the cata-caustic image of level Earth emerging at all. Some think our Earth EMF/Ice Dome is displacing ocean water, and some presume the physical Earth ends at the outer magnetic field (AKA Helio/Magnetopause). The "UN flag" or Gleeson Air Map of level Earth, only shows a few land masses (dark regions) as seen on the focused plasma 🌚 Moon. So the other regions likely aren't inhabitable by humans, much like our known Earth. The Precession of Equinox (~25,860 years) is the actual movement of our EMF/Dome around the total perceived surface of level Earth, (seen as Moon). This means their is always new land to be discovered, and older lands slowly falling to an Ice Age. The focused moon plasma is revealing the above sea level dark translucent regions, and the (kr) silver oceans surrounding level Earth's continents. We know this occurs at the Krypton (noble gas) altitude, due to the color. Our plasma Moon isn't telling us what may be luminated, thawed out, highly irradiated or remotely inhabitable, of the level Earth around us. 😙 RAJ 🌚
The brighter area on the ground is slightly angled toward the Sun. And, yes, there is light coming off the LM brightening some parts of the photo. The guy is a technician working on the mechanic and optics of the camera, and made is usable on the Moon. That don't mean that he ever used that camera on the field. That don't mean that he know how to operate a camera.
I like to tell moon landing denialists that Stanley Kubrick faked the moon landing, but since he was a perfectionist he insisted that NASA shoot all scenes on location.
There's no way this is a spotlight, even if you discard the elephant in the room that is Buz's shadow, the other shadows are all consistent, are parallel to each other and they have a very hard edge which you simply cannot accomplish with a spotlight. Only huge light sources can cast parallel shadows, such as the Sun, if it was a spotlight the shadows will fall towards the edges of the image, assuming the spotlight was somewhere above Buz because that's the only way you can get more light in the center and a falloff towards the edges. So if it was a spotlight the shadows will also fall from the center towards the edges of the photo and they will not be parallel. But that's not what we're seeing. The edge darkening on that photo looks a lot like vignette, however all the other photos dont have it. I dont know much about older analog cameras, but with newer ones you can control the vignetting. I dont know if that was the case with that particular camera they used on the Moon though. So I can't definitely say its vignette, but certainly looks like it.
Everyone knows that man never made it to the moon. If they had, they would have brought back the cheese, but instead all they have to show for it is a bunch of rocks.
Absolutely true! When I want beautiful backlighting for portraits I always find a location with a dark area behind the subject to emphasise the hair glow and a bright wall behind me, lit by the sun to give a big fill light. The LM’s surfaces would be almost too reflective giving overly bright ‘fill’ in this shot!
The part of the ground with more light can also be due to the fact of the inclination of the terrain being different from the inclination of other areas (degree of slope), so it becomes more reflective (brighter) into the camera
@@jsbrads1 Look at the photo, the ground is uneven and just a very few degrees of slope are enough to direct the light in different angles towards the camera. If you use a reflector to fill a person when shooting in backlight, you will see how twisting your arms just one inch makes the reflector work or not on the person
@@virtualworldsbyloff I hear ya, but the circular nature of the light fall off seems to support my theory, stated in a comment: I have a completely different take, based on oblique angles. _ _ _ 👀 if the light source is above and in front of an observer 45 degrees, then the light reflecting of the ground about 6 feet in front of you is reflected perfectly, but ground further away from you (is getting the same sun light) but the reflection is not as good resulting in you seeing less light. Also in the scene with the rover, that is obviously overexposed and basically all you are seeing is white.
Good morning. I just want to remind you, real quick, about Buzz Aldrin's Crotch. Envision Buzz Aldrin's Crotch! Good, okay now go about your day again.
Back when these things were happening, ham radio operators were listening into the communications between the astronauts and NASA. Doing so required some pretty specific equipment and techniques that made the source of the astronauts' signals pretty clear. I was once asked if the government could have faked the source of those signals and my answer was "yes by putting a transmitter on the moon".
Brilliant analysis addressing some of the arguments made in American Moon. Well done. Reflection from the LM producing the spotlight effect makes perfect sense.
As an artist and a photography dabbler, I would argue that the image IS perfect BECAUSE of the fact that it doesn’t follow all of these rules you’re talking about. Who says we need a straight horizon? Who says we HAVE to follow the rule of thirds? Not having a straight horizon is actually better imo because it helps distinguish this from earth. Here on earth, we know the horizon to be straight. And while it is also straight on the moon, having it crooked just feels more extraterrestrial. It gives it a more ominous and mysterious vibe. Perfect for such an iconic photo of the moon. The rule of thirds is a rule of thumb to help inexperienced photographers take more interesting photos. I love that this “rule” has caught on because now selfies and amateur shot photos are suddenly improved by not centering everything. But actually, that is why I love that this image isn’t following the rule of thirds either. It’s not exactly where you expect it to be, so the image is already more interesting. Secondly, angling the camera down cuts out a lot of the sky where it’s just black. The moon and ground is much much much much more interesting content than the pitch black sky. I would say that’s a way better composition than if buzz was just in the middle of the image. So while these things are not how studios and professional photographers would generally take a photo, the fact that it doesn’t follow all of these rules makes it so much better to me. It’s way more artistic than sitting down and restricting yourself to a bunch of rules, the focusing issue obviously doesn’t add to the image quality to me, but like you said, it’s not enough to ruin the image
In a space suit, carrying a camera with no viewfinder or auto exposure and focus makes for difficulty in getting perfect photos. But they did a pretty good job considering what they had to work with. As for the light source, the Sun is much larger than the moon and the light will be coming in straight, not diffused as it does on Earth, especially on overcast days.
Another great video. I have used that same photo to say it may be iconic but it was not perfect in its original form. I tell people go and look at all the Apollo Lunar EVA photos on flicker. They are all there and just raw scans. The great, good and not so good. But again great work!!
He is talking a load of crap/ Ask him why there is no aerial on this Buzz Aldrin, JUST REMEMBER NO AERIAL MEANS NO RADIO, MEANS NO COMMUNICATION, MEANS NOT ON THE MOON
@@expattaffy1954 WOW!!!! guess you did not watch the whole video or not pay attention. Look at the original scan of this photo. Armstrong cut off the top of the backpack. Thus you do not see the aerial. NASA cropped the original and added more black space to the top of the photo so Aldrin would be more centered. Look at other photos you see the aerial. In fact it has been claimed by some claiming hoax that the aerial is actually the wire lifting the astronauts. More rubbish.
@expattaffy1 Oh I am waiting breathless for this fantasy video you have been talking about. I am sure it will be like a slice of Swiss cheese. With holes big enough to drive a NASA crawler through.
@expattaffy1 Of course Flicker was not around in the 60s. Neither was Photoshop. These images are for the most part raw scans. Photoshop may have been the software they were scanned to. The only corrects would have been Light/Dark/Contrast. You really have no idea what you are talking about. I am not sure why you keep talking when you know so little. You and the Apollo Detectives deserve each other.
Those get "hand-waved" away by the deniers too. They will say things like film speed is slowed down, sped up or whatever. And when you point out that the particles are falling with 1/6 the acceleration they will reverse their "explanation". You CAN'T fix stupid! And once someone has been bamboozled, it is almost impossible to convince them that they have been.
I shoot a hasselblad in bright Sun and get super dark shadows in B&W... f/8 @ 1/500 ISO 200.... the thing is there is NO ATMOSPHERE... light gets diffused in our atmosphere... those moon shots are eerie in the lack of diffusion
I read that the image we see at 00:13 is being proposed as the design for one side of the new American $20 note due in 2028. JFK to be on the other side, which I thought was nice.
The fun part is that all conspiracy theorist is an expert on photography and they can see that it is a 'fake' and point out all kind of mistakes and flaws, so if they know about those misstankes then they should be able to recreate a photo like that but without the "mistakes", but it is like they can not even ge close to it and everytime they try they never publish the result.
@@ReValveiT_01 Some conspiracy theorist are just angry and prefer to think everything is lie, could be smart enough to understand they are wrong but they are too emotional to change there mind. A portion of conspiracy theorist are simply too stupid to figure out that in fact they are not smarter than majority of population as the conspiracy gurus makes them feel like
A poorly composed photograph of a man in a strange white outfit that looks like deep-sea diving suit, standing in an endless desert of black sand, a gaping abyss of absolute nothingness behind him where the sky should be, a strange metal contraption that looks like a kitbash of random junk reflected in his gold visor... if the argument were 'these photos are spooky, they give me the creeps, this doesn't make sense to me, it doesn't seem like it should be possible', that would make sense to me - but ironically, the deniers seem to think these incredibly eerie and uncanny photos look too... _normal_
@@maxfan1591 looking at photos from the moon, I genuinely feel like I'm seeing something I'm not supposed to - not in an _intruding on a private moment_ sense, but in a _trespassing on holy ground_ sense, like if a lay person were to enter somewhere like the Holy of Holies or the Kaaba.
I thought about reflecting sunlight from the lander before you mentioned it. Since the larger areas of the lander are semi-matte (and those foils are quite crumpled), and being a light source much larger than the astronaut, this light would be rather diffuse and cast no visible shadow. I first thought about vignetting of the (slightly) wide angle lens, but this would be visible in the other shots too; and I would think that this lens was designed to be as perfect as possible (I don't know if it's a retrofocus lens where the vignetting due to the angle of the light hitting the film is less pronounced). On the other hand - vignetting gets more visible in underexposed shots, so it might have contributed to the overall look.
Whilst not disagreeing with anything the presenter says, remember that this was done with film cameras. The prints are made in the darkroom. If you look for the original, unaltered print of Aldrin, it looks very flat. In the darkroom, a darkroom technician can use two techniques: dodging and burning in. These techniques are used to brighten and dim selected areas of the print. This produces the iconic print with which we are all familiar. These techniques require a great deal of expertise to use. In the modern era, working with a digital photo, you can use Photoshop to produce the same effect. Guess what Adobe call these techniques? Right - Dodging and Burning in.
What I love about the moonlanding deniers is their utter simplicity: "If I don't understand how they did it then they coud not have done it and then that proves that whatever I think about it is the actual truth, 100%" No matter how you look at it, this project involved tens of thousands of people so the idea that every body is in on the secret is not possible. No amout of threats are going to keep 10.00 people silent for 60 years. If they are not all in on the secret then that means they all think they are really building a rocket which means they will do actual research and tests and actually build a rocket that can fly. The only way that they can build a rocket thinking that it can fly when it actually can't, if is there is a way to intercept *ALL* test data, every photo taken, every film made, all telemetry, all eyes looking through binoculars and telescopes.... everything. and replace it with something that looks like it worked when it actually didn't. And perhaps most problematically, you have to invisibly intercept every launched vehicle, make it disappear, transmit a fake image and telemetry that *EXACTLY* maches what would happen down to the smallest details, flawlessly, until the moment of re-entry and then seamlessly swap the actual craft back in, but now aged and damaged exactly as it would be if it had actually been to space. Oh, and get the russians to pretend they saw you do it and admit you won the race to the moon. Even if all this was possible it's an untennable position because once you show that you can go to the moon people are going to want to do more space stuff and you have to keep intercepting it all and faking the data just to keep up the pretense that you went to the moon? Are they seriously suggesting that *all* data coming from space is faked by NASA just so the USA can keep saying they went to the moon? Nobody on the entire planet ever managed to slip through the net? They've been simulate space with 100% accuracy ever since the 20's when they started this hole rocket business?
The brainless flat Earthers have a similar belief - that Antarctica is a giant ice wall around their pizza world, guarded by NASA warships who will fire on anybody venturing below 60 degrees South. Without considering the thousands of ships required to patrol the supposed 60,000 mile perimeter, just how the hundreds of thousands of sailors have managed to keep stum since goodness knows how long ago is not something that occurs to their tiny minds. Theirs is a perfect world where whatever they dream up actually is real, and all criticism of their fantasy is the work of Satan (yes, their bibles are invoked regularly).
I have another possible cause for what appears to be 'fall off' of the soil brightness around Aldrin in the photo. During descent of the LM, the final approach was a drift to the spacecraft's left, ultimately causing all 3 of the surface probes (visible in the Aldrin photo) to bend to the right, away from the direction of travel. The area in which Aldrin is standing was exposed to the engine exhaust as the LM was in its final approach to landing. (Note the direction of the bent surface probe in the foreground.) That engine exhaust scoured the surface in the area that Aldrin was standing, changing (e.g. smoothing) the surface appearance. There are some photo evidence, taken from orbiters, of this happening for several moon landings and in the areas of recent Mars soft-landers.
@@notanymore9471 No telemetry or data was completely erased, that's one of the most misrepresented claims. NTSC recordings of Apollo 11 exist and have always existed, only the original SSTV tapes were likely overwritten some time later. What do you think how could they have released the remastered version if they had nothing from Apollo 11? Both original and copied recordings from all other missions all the way to Apollo 17 exist, so any argument about "lost data" is null and void when nothing was actually truly lost, not like it would prove anything anyway.
This is a great series. I would like to see one just covering the terrain (lurain?). You could cover why the horizon looks so close. Deniers say is the back of the stage, but it’s really the lack of atmospheric perspective. Also the letter C rock, and the supposed same hills in seen in the background of photos taken at different locations. Some people also say there are a lack of craters.
What causes the curious texture on the regolith just to the left of the LM's pad? It looks like the impression that crinkly plastic sheeting leaves on fine dust. Did the LM bounce?
Fun fact: photographers use the "rules" of photography to teach ourselves how to think about composition and nothing else. If you look at any great photographer, you'll quickly notice that none of them follow the rules
@@aedrykwe literally brought suvaneers (how the fuck do you spell that word!?) back from the moon. We can't bring back moon rocks from a fake moon landing. Check.
Excellent video. I think there's one more point to make about apparent fall-off. The area in the bottom-left of the 'Man on the Moon' photo has been disturbed by the astronauts walking around on it and kicking the surface dust around. The lunar soil underneath is much darker than the top layer which has been exposed to unfiltered sunlight and the solar wind for millions of years. The hoaxnuts are essentially comparing this area to the area directly behind Aldrin. Parts of the uneven ground right behind him are clearly tilted more towards the sun and will catch more light per m^2 than other areas in the photo, and this accentuates the difference with the disturbed area. A spotlight would certainly cause more fall-off towards the horizon, and we don't see that. You can use photogrammetry to show that rocks near the horizon are dozens of metres away. So how can the area right in front of 'spotlight illuminated' Aldrin be darker than areas dozens of metres away? And if you look at photos taken after the EVA through Buzz's LM window you can really see how disturbed areas are far darker than undisturbed areas. Regarding the clip of Hasselblad's Jan Lundberg - this was from the execrable film by David Percy many years ago. It was obvious in the film that Lundberg was shown a low-gen high-contrast print not the original scan.
You forgot to mention another important aspect. Thousands of photos were taken. Only a few were published. Most were too bad to be published, I mean, not even editing would make them good enough. So the fact that photo is so good is just probability... if I give someone a phone with a broken screen, and they take 12 photos of me, i suppose at least a few will have me in a good enough angle
I am not a flat earther, but here's a way you can get a black background with the out of focus objects. You could put a very black board or cloth behind each object, then the focus would blend into black appropriately, and you could still cut out around the edge of the black backboard
I'm not a professional photographer but I can take some pretty good pictures. I know that lighting is everything. Some of my favorite pictures I took of my children were on a beach at sunset. Some of the pictures have nice orange sunlight lighting their faces while some others the light was reflected in the sky and clouds in such a way that they don't even look like on a beach outdoors but rather inside of a room totally illuminated with fluorescent lights. While there was no atmosphere on the moon to reflect light around there sure was a lot of light colored ground. Even just the sun shining on the photographers white suit at close range would make it look like a huge spotlight on him. They had to use arc welding type shields, that no atmosphere sun was brutally intense. With the sun like a giant arc lamp in the sky and no air to break it up I bet it made for the most difficult photo lighting session ever.
About the project manager not necessarily being a photographer; that's true. You'd think we'd put people in positions they actually know, bit not always. Like the manager of my local Confucius Institute, who doesn't speak Chinese. Or probably most famous example, politicians who have no expertise in what they are minister of, or never even having studied politics.
I have to clear out the flat of my father, and we have decades of National Geographics from the 1960s and 70s or so, and by pure chance I came across exactly that December 1969 issue (annd there are many more photos inside)
It was awhile back, but I recall that the lighting would be possible, but the setup would have likely cost more to develop and install than actually going to the moon.
Excellent work, I had thought that the area of ground Buzz was standing in was just naturally brighter, but reflection of light from the LM is a compelling explanation.
@@Jan_Strzelecki Interesting point, the light would be quite diffuse, would it show? I am still unsure, the bright area seems to have been scoured and may be raised so catching more sunlight. Will need to look more closely.
@@DaveMcKeegan Turning up the saturation on 5902 and 5903does seem to show some gold highlighting. I also tend to wonder if we are not seeing some effect on the surface structure due to the rocket as it came down to land. We are looking generally NE of the LM, the direction I believe it came from after Armstrong's manoeuvring.
Me listening to him teach me new and interesting facts about the moon landing: "Very cool, internet man 😎👍." His dog: "Who the fuk are you talking to!?"
Conspiracy folk: This image is too perfect to be taken on the moon Sane people: It is not perfect Conspiracy folk: The image is not perfect because they wanted us to think it was taken on the moon
It is not possible to light such a large area with only one spot. It would have to be very far away to create almost parallel shadows, which means it would have to be incredibly strong. Using more that one spot will automatically create multiple shadows for every object. If you know nothing, you have to believe everything.
Very interesting in-depth look at a famous photo. Regardless of one's stance on whether or not the moon landings were real or not this is a very good dissection of this iconic photo😀😊
My first thought when seeing this was, one of the most basic enlargement techniques in the film photography days was dodging some areas in order to brighten them. Since I believe they were using Ektachrome film, which is slide film, I guess brightening an area would technically be burning, but that's beside the point. I would be interested to see, it the original negative actually has the same falloff.
One of the FE ers once discribed a picture of NASA in terms of "pixels" and stuff. But: am i correct that during that time pixels weren 't even a thing?
Interesting to contrast the moon photos with the more recent images from the Perseverance rover on Mars. The quality of light is very different where there is an atmosphere.
But the Mars ones still look different in their way compared to Earth photos. The sheer clarity of the Apollo photos taken from the (near) zero atmosphere conditions of the Moon are one of the ways to confirm that they're the real deal (and, hilariously, the reason deniers think they look fake)!
Ive seen the argument in some comments on this channel that "they must be fake. You can't see the stars." I just realized... The sun is out. I feel kind stupid for taking a couple hours to realize this glaring lack of logic
I know you were just speaking in a technical sense, but personally, I think the crooked horizon adds to the photo. It makes the whole thing seem a bit foreign and unstable, two things which I think fit well for a photo taken on the moon. I'd be disappointed to see a photo where everything just seems normal and perfect. It would be kind of boring that way. Though on the point about the rule of thirds, I do agree because thirds generally are just more aesthetically pleasing regardless of where you are.
There’s also the specular hit on the regolith (which is formed of minerals, rock and glass), from the direct light from the sun at the rear-right. (Think of sun on the ocean, which although is much more reflective, illustrates the principle.) This is a very minor contribution, and is drowned-out by the LEM reflective/bounce light, but it is at least an element that would preclude a flat even surface when shooting toward the sun.
I remember when I as a kid searched these same pictures on the official nasa website and tried messing with several things like changing contrast or just using the paint bucket in mspaint to fill in. There are definitely **some** hard edges when you do that, but that literally is data compression artifacts. You can also uncover actual stars in at least some of the images, but to see them I had to tilt the monitor, thank god for horrible viewing angles on 2000's hardware. I never saw anybody else uncover the stars on any of the pictures, but I know for a fact they're there. Very few but definitely present.
There are indeed a few stars in some of the photos; I've seen them too. And speaking of Apollo and stars, oh my: Al Worden, Command Module pilot for Apollo 15, in his book _Falling To Earth,_ described the incredible tapestries of stars he could see from the CM while in orbit on his own. I found that passage in the book incredibly moving.
Turning up the contrast even more on the Buzz photo shows a very serious amount of fall off, where the background goes very dark. BTW, why does a manned mission to the moon keep getting pushed back? I remember hearing 2020, then 2025, and now I believe it is 2030.
"why does a manned mission to the moon keep getting pushed back?" Money, mostly. The US Congress is not nearly as willing to fund Artemis as it was Apollo. NASA's budget peaked at 4.5% of the federal budget in 1966. Since 1975 it's been less than 1%, and it's currently less than 0.5%.
So you figured out how levels work in photography, did you? As explained in the video, there isn't any fall off at all. The increased light in the foreground is due to the reflective nature of the GIANT METAL SPACECRAFT SITTING RIGHT BEHIND THEM! Increasing the contrast isn't going to do anything to counteract that, rather, it amplifies the difference between light and shadow. Tell us you know absolutely nothing about photography without telling us you know nothing about photography.
How did they manage to underexpose the shot. Was it overcast that day? Those cameras were fixed at 30 of sec at F5.6 of very similar so how the F-stop did they manage to underexpose it?
Can anyone tell me why the Hasselblad cameras used on the moon had crosshairs on the lens, given that the astronauts were not using the viewfinder? I’ve never understood why this was the case.
@SuperTramp ????? Really? You ask this? This has been explained MANY MANY times and YOU can find it out yourself through a process called... wait for it... GOOGLING!
If the moon is an Earth selfie plasma reflection anomaly in the plasma firmament(like looking at your face reflection on a pond/water), how exactly does one land and walk on a hologram? Perhaps the Earth is much larger than what we've been told it is.
I've seen those claims that it was a "reflection" based on trying to match up the continents and lunar mares. I had one question for them: "Have you ever used a mirror? your reflection should be reversed."
I have a completely different take, based on oblique angles. _ _ _ 👀 if the light source is above and in front of an observer 45 degrees, then the light reflecting of the ground about 6 feet in front of you is reflected perfectly, but ground further away from you (is getting the same sun light) but the reflection is not as good resulting in you seeing less light. Also in the scene with the rover, that is obviously overexposed and basically all you are seeing is white. Also as an engineer, I can build cameras without understanding optics, photography, lighting, etc. hd
The reason why you have the 'dropoff' is explained by the direction of the shadows.. The sun is high in the sky, and Buzz is facing roughly in the direction of the sun. What you're seeing is the direct speculative light off of the particles in the lunar regolith. In most other pictures -- generally taken not directly towards the sun, you're only getting diffuse reflection off of the ground. To put it another way, if you put a large mirror flat on the ground in that image, what you would find is that the reflection of the sun would be right in the middle of the 'hot spot'. Buzz is being lit by the direct reflection off of the LEM, and getting nice rim lighting from the sun behind him. With all of the complaints you have about the composition and exposure of the shot, from a lighting perspective and the fact that Neil got himself properly framed and exposed in Buzz's visor, there really is a lot that *is* 'perfect' about this shot, given that it's a hip shot with no viewfinder or exposure meter.
I think the falloff is due to the far side of the white space suit being in direct sunlight. His suit is a big reflector that blasts reflected sunlight in all directions creating a very localized hot-spot and light falloff. That hot spot will even follow the astronaut around. You don't need to bring the LEM into the equation. And the lunar regolith has bizarre optical qualities to begin with. The particles are so hard-edged and jagged that their reflective qualities are unlike what we're familiar with here on earth with all the weathering and oxidation that occurs all the time. This results in a non-Lambertian surface reflectance in which every point on the surface is reflecting the same amount of light back at the viewer. It's why photos of the full moon look unnaturally flatly lit with the same brightness from the center facing the viewer to the limb facing 90 degrees away. You can see the same effect in the Apollo moon photos on the hills in the distance, they're so flatly lit its hard to tell the geometry of what you're looking at.
I'm wondering if it makes sense to analyze the lighting characteristics in a retouched version of the photo (such as at ruclips.net/video/EstpDPPhBjE/видео.html). Wouldn't it make more sense to use an unretouched photo (such as at ruclips.net/video/EstpDPPhBjE/видео.html), since that shows all of the light from the different sources in their raw (no pun intended) form?
Watching these videos one has to ask why if the landings were faked and they had gone to the trouble of staging it all, surely the overwhelming objective would be to ensure these "errors" were addressed so as to eliminate or at least minimise the ability to spot or point them out.Much like continuity on a movie set you don't want someone in a Shakespeare play to be wearing a watch, glaringly obvious mistakes such as leaving the studio door open so that a draught would make the flag wave or as here having multiple light sources instead of just one....the sun would nullify the appearance of authenticity of it.
I don’t understand the part about the top of the backpack being cropped off and needing to be added back in. None of the images you show has it cut off.
I agree with your assessment of why the Apollo photos look the way they do. Keep up the calm well-reasoned work. I think you should have skipped the whole 1/3rd rule discussion which contributes nothing to the basic question of whether the photos were faked. Moreover, in my opinion, religiously following the 1/3rd rule is the mark of a novice. The face-on view of the astronaut is accidently well framed to show more of the footprints and less of the featureless black sky. Most of my photos contain less than 20% sky because the real content is usually below the horizon. Or they may include 80% sky because that is the most interesting content.
It's known as the "inverse square law". The amount of light hitting an object drops to a quarter if you double the distance. After all, the same amount of light comes from the source, but now have to cover 4 times as much area. Triple the distance, you get one ninth the light. And so on. This is the foremost proof that the moon landings can't have been fake. In the wide area shots, the amount of light is the same across the entire picture, with no high or low spots of light. The only way that could be the case would be if the light source is so very far away that the inverse square law no longer applies, because the same amount of light falls over the entire surface.
Dave, there is a video by Nvidea that goes over these same details, and creates a digital copy, and prove its real. A spotlight would leave his name tag in his shadow. I'll try and get this link to nvidea shared. I don't have it on the device I'm using
On a related subject, most people don't know that a good portion of the photos taken by the astronauts actually didn't come out, or were outright botched, or are very sterile or bland shots that only an engineer or geologist could love. The iconic photos that people know of look so good is because those are the cream of the crop that by good fortune happened to come out looking really good, and so NASA and the press selected them to show to the public rather than the botched or bland ones.
Nope they just made those fake boring ones to add credibility to the other fake but sensational ones.
I know this to be true because someone who also doesn't know that they don't understand anything that they're talking about said it and I believe them without even really thinking about it my self.
I did a lot of hobbyist digital photography and will attest that I have a lot more under/over-exposed photos during any shoot than keeper photos. I "bracket-expose" photos and bring in those into a Photoshop file to keep the desired areas to mask out to create a "perfect photo".
@@karateman1988 Looks we have another Moon looney in the discussion.
@@riproar11 i can't tell if moon looney means someone who believes in the fact that we landed on the moon or a moon landing denier.
I want to see all of those photos smh
2:08 I actually like the fact the horizon isn't perfect; it feels, human with the way it was taken like it wasn't planned or set up.
Could you imagine someone taking a picture on the moon these days ? 😂😂
Baaaahaaahaaa classic.
I think it also makes it feel more like he is on an alien world rather than earth.
Even though Dave argues that the photo doesn't follow rules of composition, I actually think that the fact that it's so imperfect is what makes it so iconic.
I love that the astronaut is awkwardly on the top of the frame, almost like the focus is the moon itself rather than the astronaut. It makes the lunar surface seem much more imposing and expansive, it also makes it seem like the astronaut just "happened to be there", like he wasn't supposed to be in the shot at all.
And, honestly, that's exactly what happened. We were never supposed to be there, but we decided to plop ourselves in that unfamiliar environment that was not made for humans anyways. It gives a sort of poetic symbolism to the picture. I know it probably actually was not intended, but it's still cool that it ended up that way.
They did use a spotlight to illuminate the lunar surface. One that is 94.5 million miles away, 865,370 miles in diameter, with a luminosity of 3.846 × 10^26 watts.
AKA, the Sun.
the Sun isn't a spotlight. it emits radiation in all directions equally
@@victorfinberg8595 as far as the Earth/Moon is concerned the photons are arriving in a parallel line, aka a spotlight
So explain how they carried such a large and heavy spotlight to the moon then? Checkmate roundies.
@@MTLeoLil FUCK
Go BIG or go home...😉
Your point about project managers is spot on, I work for a tech company and our project managers are not technical people. Often they have little or no idea what we're actually doing to get a project to hit its goals.
Fully agree. I'm an engineer and always have to cope with a PM that has absolutely no clue except about costs 🤣🤣🤣🤣
The common joke is that a project manager is the only person convinced that it takes 9 women to birth a child in one month.
@@claudevieaul1465 Having spent nearly 40 years as an engineer in the aerospace industry I was going to make the exact same comment, but you beat me to it. We even had a poster to that effect on the office wall.
@@claudevieaul1465 That's how it is in companies.
Flat Earther looking at an Apollo mission photo: "It's too perfect, it must be fake."
Flat Earther looking at footage from the ISS: "It's too glitchy, it must be fake."
They always find another excuse to stay in their fantasy bubble.
@expattaffy1 Is a "flamingo" that is a specific visible strap the only evidence you can come up with to argue that they can't?
Dave here already addressed your points and provided plenty of evidence. The effects shown in Apollo video/images are not possible with any known cinematography techniques of the time.
@expattaffy1 Started watching the first one and it's extraordinarily shoddy. You can't seem to stay on topic, and the breakup of your "response" is such that you play several minutes of his video and then make a general, often basic dismissive response. Just because he hasn't thrown together something similarly shoddy in response (yet) doesn't make you right and it won't change the fact that your editing style and argumentation style are abhorrent.
Or might it have something to do with the fact I told you I wasn't entertaining any more of your questions until you answered the 1 of mine - can you show us a working lighting setup that replicates these photos and videos ... Have you answered it yet?
@@DaveMcKeegan Howdy, Dave! Keep up the great work. Love your channel.
They staged the moonwalk on the only place where it would appear as though they were on the moon - the moon.
I think Bill Whittle also said something very similar in his "What we saw" documentary on the lunar landing.
Nuh uh
@@Cha-Khia I have this vision of the power elites meeting in their super-secret underground HQ to lay out all the logistics, and expenses and security needed to fake the moon landings. They finally come to the conclusion that it would be cheaper and more achievable to just go go the moon.
@@JudasMaccabeus1 Yuh huh.
@@tbotalpha8133 no
So NASA fooled the soviet union but not Johnny in a basement in Arkansas...
Yes, of course. Those poeple think they are smarter than everybody else on the earth for more than 50 years.
NASA felt so sorry for the soviet union not catching the hoax, they repeated 6 more times to give them more opportunists The gave up after 7 tries because it was to expensive and figured they were just to dumb to catch on.
And fooled the world's best geologists and astrophysicists, writers and researchers, but not the high school dropouts who live in their parents' basements, and have time to keyboard all day.
@@brianarbenz7206i know one of those keyboard scientists personally. He claims that he has done the “research” to disprove the moon landings. What he means by “research” is reading blogs from other people that share his same opinion
You don't understand how special Johnny is.
I very much enjoyed this. To those who point their denying fingers at all the photos, I'd simply remind them that there is accompanying film. And for those who persist that the landings were all shot on a sound stage, I think Buzz Aldrin described this perfectly. He said: "...we drove the Lunar Rover pretty far, and all the time we were filming, the mountains in the distance never get any bigger. How big of a set would you have to have to be able to do that?" The fact is - miles... You can't see the bottom of those mountains because of curve (just like on Earth). And for a different angle, personally I like the LEM, but if I were filming a fake Moon Landing, I'd have created a much cooler looking vehicle.....
I don't believe Buzz said that as Apollo 11 never had a rover (not did they venture that far as it was the first landing)
But your point is correct, the size of set required to replicate it would be enormous which is why the moon scenes in First Man film were shot ina quarry, and even that couldn't replicate the lighting or scenery
And it's definitely hilarious to think that if they had no limits to design for a fake spacecraft, the LEM is what they would come up with 🤣
@@DaveMcKeegan Hi Dave,
True - the interview with Aldrin where he said that was years after the Apollo missions and I believe he was speaking to the missions collectively (but then I saw this a long time ago).
My own and favorite observation with the landings is "dust". The rover drives around on a very powdery surface and as the dust is kicked up, it just falls back down like iron filings. That is only possible in a vacuum.
@@daveh9521 Conspiracies will probably claim next that the studio was in a vacuum chamber 🤣
The lighting always seems to be the Achilles heal for any skeptic - challenge them to replicate the lighting setup and they go running for the hills
But my absolute favourite is watching them try to claim the Soviets were in on it all as well 🤣
@@DaveMcKeegan The "studio" they filmed this in took a LONG time to build and it WAS in a vacuum chamber! The lighting source wasn't exactly unique and is easily replicated (it's actually quite simple too, when you boil it down), in fact they're everywhere these days, ubiquitous even.
.
.
I mean, the moon took Billions (?) of years to make, it's devoid of an atmosphere and the sun is one of trillions (in our galaxy alone). Was that not clear? :P
The video footage I've seen of them driving the rover was surreal, it was beautiful!
And an EXCELLENT breakdown of the photo Dave, thank you
And why is there no photo of any astronaut filming this with the bulky 80kg t.v. cameras? and how did they transport these huge cameras in the lunar lander...and where did the electricity come from?!
"Dammit Jim! I'm an astronaut not a photographer!!"
You're a fakernaut 🤣🤣🤣
I've seen people who make the argument that the lighting is all wrong on some of these photos. That the shadows cast by rocks don't match up with a single light source, arguing there must be studio lights rather than one studio light involved.
But with studio lights you again have the problem of fallout and soft edges. And even with this picture having a lot of fallout, they still have sharp, black shadows.
I believe the reason many of these people see these pictures as fake is that the pictures don't look normal. They feel off, alien to what pictures usually look like to us. Therefore they must be fake. Which really doesn't make sense to me.
If a photograph looks alien, it makes more sense that it was produced in an alien environment than in a studio.
I think you're giving them too much credit, no matter how the pic looked they would claim it was fake. They came to the conclusion it was fake before they ever saw the photos.
@@Str8GasGenetics
I can't disagree with that.
I'm a photographer also. Hint: spotlight-directional, not diffuse light.
Super Sharp Shadows (in studio: ruclips.net/video/G7CWn1iTPNg/видео.html )
And how about this material?:
ruclips.net/video/7WAWY-DktT0/видео.html
First plan, and the right side of a screen are totally bathed in the dark.
Spotlight effect is behind the lander, exactly the opposite site you would like to see it, according to your intricate conspiracy.
Moreover look at the shadow of an openwork antenna, the top of the shadow is lighter than the bottom of it, and the suit of the film extra do not cast spotlight effect.
I can't await man finally land on the Moon.
@@aermoon- It's already happened, genius.
@@aermoon- Go and look at your shadow one bright sunlit day Mr pHoToGrApHeR. You will see ONE super sharp shadow. That means ONE light source. As you see in ALL Apollo images. So, what single "studio spotlight" can light up the fore, mid AND background? The claim that Apollo footage and photographs were taken in a studio is demonstrable nonsense.
You only get diffuse light outdoors when sunlight has been "diffused", by clouds for instance.
The flerfs love to say "It looks too good to be real" as much as they love to say "It looks too bad to be real".
They are the very very eksperts on what's "real". 😜
There's no accounting for fuckwittery.
Let's remember that there was nothing even close to Photoshop in '69 or the '70s. We didn't have either the software of the hardware to display and edit images like these. Evans and Sutherland flight simulators, which were the pinnacle of graphics computing and display technology, used monochrome vector graphics displays. Any photo trickery at that time would have had to be done in the darkroom. The most skilled darkroom technicians couldn't have started with a picture taken on earth, and doctored it to mask out the sky, turn the ground grey, yet leave the gold and the red and blue in the flag and patches vibrant. The entire sky would have had to be painstakingly masked, as would all of the incredibly detailed shadows. Anyone who has done 3d rendering will know that the lighting produced using an HDR skydome is drastically different from one using just directional lights. With a skydome, shadows are softer, and much less black, surfaces facing up, which are not directly illuminated, have a blue cast, which makes those facing away from the sky appear to have a yellow cast. The skydome turns an image which looks artificially generated into a photo-realistic image.
It would have been easier, and quicker, to send men to the moon, than have every single photo that was taken doctored. There were blue-screen techniques available at that time, that were used to composite images. However, look at any old movie where this was done, and it's laughably obvious, with everything on the edge of the mask having an obvious blue tinge. This is because of Fresnel reflection of the blue background, and you can't eliminate this in the darkroom.
Regarding the (extremely subtle) falloff, don't forget that Aldrin's back and Armstrong's front are brilliant white, reflecting the intense sunlight into the immediate surroundings. This reflected light is also why we can actually see Aldrin's front, which is another lunar landing denier's pet complaint.
So true. There are SO many photos from the six landings. It would be very difficult to make convincing fakes even with today's photo editing tech. And it would be not just difficult, but impossible to create convincing fakes of the rover footage, even with today's tech - much less circa 1970!
There is one piece of unremarkable footage I saw years ago that proved that this could not have been faked. It only lasts for maybe a second, but it demonstrated something we couldn’t produce here. One of the astronauts was being filmed and he turned his body 90 degrees. As he did, his heel kicked up some dust. I know, unremarkable, but it’s how the dust behaved that really stands out. It carried the same momentum from start to finish, while also traveling higher, further, and without being dispersed by atmosphere. These are all things that are not possible on our planet, especially considering what you are seeing is an extremely fine powder like talcum or flour. Keep in mind also that no special effects existed at the time to replicate this, and the only conclusion is that the only way this is possible is in an environment with zero atmosphere and much less gravity.
👍🏼 exactly, inertia is in less gravity without atmosphere much longer, thats the reason why flag was moveing so long after manipulating with it, lunar dust behaviour is perfect example also
As an amateur photographer I found this really interesting to watch. I've often thought that of all the evidence that we went to the Moon, the photography (and movie film too - e.g. the way the dust is thrown up by lunar rovers) is in fact some of the best. People who have no experience of photography and/or have never tried to "fake" a photograph can easily come up with ludicrously implausible justifications for scepticism. I especially liked your comments about the hard, very dark shadows and the difficulty of lighting a large area without a diffuser. It's very clear to me that these photos are real.
The original scan tells the truth about the dangerous environment on the Moon. Buzz and Neil were walking on an uneven , slippery, dust laden surface. That's why they are the original Moon walk heroes. Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Mike Collins are the forever remembered Apollo 11 great astronauts. Thanks for the video.
Very nicely explained. When I saw _American Moon,_ what most amazed me was that these fashion photographers didn't know that perspective can make shadows converge. I wouldn't necessarily recommend watching it, because it's long and tedious, but there are some very good comment threads by many experts, who take the claims apart quite thoroughly. And of course some very silly comments by deniers.
Keep up the good work. Cheers from rainy Vienna, Scott
Great video, bro! As a self-described "hard-core space geek", hearing people say that the moon landings never happened makes my blood boil! They just dismiss the hard work and amazing innovations of HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of people all working together to pull it off, just because they're too stupid and/or ignorant to understand how it was done. And the reason it is taking us so long to go back isn't because we don't have the technological ability or know-how, it is purely because of money. It is VERY expensive to go to the moon (Artemis 1 just went on a fly-by, no landing, and it cost over $4 BILLION), and without a motivator like beating the Russians during the Cold War, it is VERY hard to get the public to agree with that kind of cost. But anyway, awesome video, lots of great info to refute lies about the moon landings. You have earned yourself another subscriber, I expect great things from you!
Absolutely, NASA's budget of $54 Billion per annum is a paltry figure.
And just because Don Pettit, Nasa astronaut and engineer, stated that 'we destroyed the technology and it's a painful process to build it back up again' doesn't mean a thing.
Hearing people say it was faked makes your blood boil?? What about the numerous instances where Buzz Aldrin said that the moon landings were faked?
Always staying respectful in your explanations.
Thanks.
One thing that most people overlook is that light itself is invisible. When light strikes an object and bounces off it, then you see the object that it struck. Obvious to me, but when I point out this fact, people almost explode because they can't cope with logic.
I heard someone once say that the images “look too perfect” like you mentioned - but not in the sense of the composition or anything. They were saying that “how could they have had cameras that were so sharp and with so many pixels back in the 60’s? Videos in the 90’s look so blurry and had low resolution so how did they have pictures that look as sharp as our phone cameras now that have millions of pixels?”. Pixels. They are so ignorant of the world outside their bubble they didn’t even think or know about how FILM worked. Its always the case that “I don’t know how this could have happened therefore it didn’t” - like if I didn’t know why the sky is blue because I never learned, i’m not gonna claim that nobody can explain it and everybody is wrong and make up my own idea behind it, I would just look it up or read about it until I understand. And if they don’t understand the explanation, then it’s always that the explanation is wrong and everybody is wrong - which honestly shows a complete lack of intellectual maturity and that they never had the curiosity to learn and research
Hi Dave, ex-pro photographer for MoD here. I've always had an interest in the moon landing photographs but although I concluded that the astronauts had actually landed I was suspicious of several of them, this one included. Your explanation goes a very long way to explaining the concerns I had over it and, to be honest, I'd not factored in the reflection of light from the LEM creating a bright spot.
Going on from this iconic photo to the main other one that I find 'odd' in terms of lighting and reflections, there is the other iconic photo of Buzz Aldrin coming down the ladder after just exiting the LEM. Obviously he is doing so in the LEM's shadow, but considering the exposure range of the colour films available now, let alone in the late 60's, I find the amount of detail in the small foil-covered areas that are in direct sunlight at the top of the picture (no atmosphere to diffuse it, so basically a searchlight) and therefore 'should' be totally overexposed, and the number and directions of shadows in the hatch, and possible other light sources with specular reflection on several different edges Aldrin's boot troublesome.
This is something that has intrigued me for over 40 years, as I watched the landing live as an excited 12-year old in 1969. I'd love to hear your analysis if possible.
it's studio dust
"Mythbusters" did a practical recreation of some photos done on the moon, with correct albedo for the moons surface, and they matched beautifully. It all makes sense, when you consider the unique conditions of the moon and the fact that it's really reflective (which is why you can see it so clearly at night). I think you'd find it interesting.
@John Blagden -- The photos of Aldrin on the ladder (there are 3 or 4 in a series) are fairly easy to explain. And especially the "hot spot" on his boot. Because simultaneous with Armstrong taking those photos, the video camera was running on both of them. In the video, you can see the extremely bright sunlight reflecting off of Armstrong's space suit toward Aldrin.
One "hoax theory" promoter had the photo of Aldrin analyzed by an expert to supposedly find where the spotlight was for the secondary light source. They concluded from measuring the "hot spot" on the curvature of that boot that the spotlight must have been placed "20 centimeters to the right of the center of Armstrong's space suit."
Well, jeepers, that's right in the middle of the right side of Armstrong's glaring white suit that's facing the sun. Exactly consistent with the same glare you can see in the video of that scene.
Well the moon's surface is also highly reflective (it's why it's so easily visible even in daylight).
It's like taking a nighttime photograph of a scene full of snow and a heavy spotlight as the primary light source.
They had to lower the exposure quite a bit otherwise the whole image would look all white. It's also why no stars are visible in the images. They're too dim to show up in low exposure shots.
But yeah, the reason the Astronauts are visible in the LM's shadow is because every surface of every object in that shot reflects light easily. The lunar surface, the LM's aluminum coat, the space suits, etc.
If you look at the picture closely, you can indeed see that the bit of the vehicle in sunlight is in fact overexposed. The details you see are joints and gaps where the sun is shadowed, but the directly lit areas have caused some bloom to creep out, indicating that they're fairly bright.
As for the specular reflection on Aldrin's boot, it's a bit tricky to understand, but my conclusion is that due to the surface structure of the boot, with vertical corrugated grooves, you get an anisotropic reflection effect, and what you're actually seeing as a specular reflection of a point is caused by the strip of light reflected off the ground between the LEM's shadow and the horizon. The grooves "smear out" the reflection along their length, and since Aldrin's legs are actually at a diagonal angle relative to the horizon, the specular reflection seems to get twisted to follow Aldrin's leg. This sort of optical effect isn't all *that* uncommon, and you can observe it easily by looking at brushed metal surfaces, such as the pots and pans you may have in your kitchen.
The final oddity is how dark the terrain seems to be relative to Aldrin's suit. It's worth remembering that the spacesuit is white, whereas the surface of the Moon is dark grey. We don't realize how dark it is because from our vantage point on Earth, we usually see the Moon in full daylight while our surroundings are in the darkness of night! But this doesn't completely explain it. The terrain is also backlit to some extent, meaning that there are all sorts of tiny shadows behind each grain of sand that, although too small for the camera to resolve, nonetheless cause less light to be reflected back toward the camera. If you look closely at Aldrin, you can see that he's being lit from below by a diffuse light, and that he does not cast a shadow on the LEM, both of which are consistant with being lit up by light reflected off the ground.
Other topic ideas:
Radiation, not just the V A belts, but the entire trip. Talk about the 5 different devices to measure and record exposure, types of radiation, dose, and Alan Bean’s memory.
The “temperature extremes” including time of lunar day on the moon, thermosphere, materials, and how the sublimator worked.
Lack of visible tracks from the Lunar Rover, and the rover in general.
As a wedding photographer who is constantly bouncing my flash off of white ceilings/walls, I immediately thought that the bright area behind Buzz was just the sun bouncing off his white suit back onto the ground
Ditto. Graphic artist here, indirect light is one of the first things they teach us.
I thought your post was going to claim Neil and Buzz were married on the moon!
@@brianarbenz7206 I mean I cannot confirm or deny if that happened 👀
@@ChrisBrayPhotos i want to get married on the Moon.
Actually Mars would be cooler!
@@LisaAnn777Pluto would be coolest. Ha.
And then there are those of us who lived through that whole experience. My husband designed parts that went inside the Apollo modules. He worked with other engineers who actually designed the modules. He climbed into one being built and saw one after splashdown with only part of the heat shield left on it and salt water still inside. We watched the rockets take off in real time. We watched transmissions from the moon in near real time. We watched the splash downs in real time when they returned. (and the technology to fake those broadcasts didn’t really exist in ‘69). The astronauts put effing mirrors *on the moon* that were being used by engineers and scientists here on Earth for decades to track the moon’s recession. "They" would have spent a ‘gazillion’ dollars and fooled some of the smartest engineers and scientists in the world to pull off this conspiracy *or* tens of thousands of people would have had to have been in on it from 1969 to around 2010. Too bad they didn’t pay my husband off, eh?
This conspiracy theory is only slightly less bonkers than the flat earth bs!
Good video. Keep it up and thanks for doing this.
There are two main reasons every conspiracy theory falls apart:
1) The number of people needing to be involved quickly grows well beyond reasonable limits. In case of the moon landings, there would have had to have been literally thousands of people in the loop, including from other nations (the Soviet Union was tracking the rockets). And not a single one of them blew the whistle??
2) Conspiracy theorists don't actually have an alternative narrative. They don't propose a coherent single sequence of events that fits together. All they know is, the official one is wrong. That's all they know for sure. As long as it's not the official accounts of the events, then it is viable as an option. If it's official, then it must - by definition - be a lie. Very reasonable.
@@smaakjeks Hundreds of thousands. The program itself within the US employed and involved something like 400k I think, if not more.
@@smaakjeks When tasked, the conspiracy braindeads can only parrot the maybes of similarly deluded folk - Area 51, Nevada Desert, Stanley Kubrick - with not a shred of evidence. Flat Earth dropkicks function similarly - can't be a globe, but NEVER, EVER ask for actual physical evidence of their flat Earth that we can examine, or you're a shill, a NASA fanboy, etc, etc. Poor demented sods. Best avoided.
@@smaakjeks When you look at the roots, there is really only one conspiracy theory. That is, a person with minimal accomplishments in life feels the need to paint themselves as the hero in their own story. A hero who is in on the big secret and that all the smart, accomplished people are in reality only faking it. It is how they cope with their miserable little lives.
That's one of the things that makes me steam. So many people, so much money, so much training, research, people risking their lives and these little crotch brains laugh and point to things that are easily explainable. If they put in the effort. But of course hundreds of thousands of people all keep silent to fool a few deniers. Yeah, they have a pretty high opinion of themselves for sure, ugh.
Yes! It was lit by the biggest spot light in the solar system =]
No "Solar System" just level Earth. The Moon is a focused ionizing gas (Krypton) plasma map of level Earth - When the Sun is rapidly cycling near the 24th latitude South (~Dec. 01), we are freezing here in the North, so latitude and luminosity of our Sun 🌞determines where there is useable dry land at all. The prevailing objective description of the Raqia (Hebrew) or Void, is their must be a uniformly curved Toroid-E.M.F. or Ice Dome, far beyond the Moon's altitude (KR layer), to create the cata-caustic image of level Earth emerging at all. Some think our Earth EMF/Ice Dome is displacing ocean water, and some presume the physical Earth ends at the outer magnetic field (AKA Helio/Magnetopause).
The "UN flag" or Gleeson Air Map of level Earth, only shows a few land masses (dark regions) as seen on the focused plasma 🌚 Moon. So the other regions likely aren't inhabitable by humans, much like our known Earth. The Precession of Equinox (~25,860 years) is the actual movement of our EMF/Dome around the total perceived surface of level Earth, (seen as Moon). This means their is always new land to be discovered, and older lands slowly falling to an Ice Age. The focused moon plasma is revealing the above sea level dark translucent regions, and the (kr) silver oceans surrounding level Earth's continents. We know this occurs at the Krypton (noble gas) altitude, due to the color. Our plasma Moon isn't telling us what may be luminated, thawed out, highly irradiated or remotely inhabitable, of the level Earth around us. 😙 RAJ 🌚
The brighter area on the ground is slightly angled toward the Sun. And, yes, there is light coming off the LM brightening some parts of the photo.
The guy is a technician working on the mechanic and optics of the camera, and made is usable on the Moon. That don't mean that he ever used that camera on the field. That don't mean that he know how to operate a camera.
I like to tell moon landing denialists that Stanley Kubrick faked the moon landing, but since he was a perfectionist he insisted that NASA shoot all scenes on location.
There's no way this is a spotlight, even if you discard the elephant in the room that is Buz's shadow, the other shadows are all consistent, are parallel to each other and they have a very hard edge which you simply cannot accomplish with a spotlight. Only huge light sources can cast parallel shadows, such as the Sun, if it was a spotlight the shadows will fall towards the edges of the image, assuming the spotlight was somewhere above Buz because that's the only way you can get more light in the center and a falloff towards the edges. So if it was a spotlight the shadows will also fall from the center towards the edges of the photo and they will not be parallel. But that's not what we're seeing.
The edge darkening on that photo looks a lot like vignette, however all the other photos dont have it. I dont know much about older analog cameras, but with newer ones you can control the vignetting. I dont know if that was the case with that particular camera they used on the Moon though. So I can't definitely say its vignette, but certainly looks like it.
Everyone knows that man never made it to the moon. If they had, they would have brought back the cheese, but instead all they have to show for it is a bunch of rocks.
I have to admit: I started watching your channel just for the dog. Adorable.
Absolutely true! When I want beautiful backlighting for portraits I always find a location with a dark area behind the subject to emphasise the hair glow and a bright wall behind me, lit by the sun to give a big fill light. The LM’s surfaces would be almost too reflective giving overly bright ‘fill’ in this shot!
The part of the ground with more light can also be due to the fact of the inclination of the terrain being different from the inclination of other areas (degree of slope), so it becomes more reflective (brighter) into the camera
It is pretty flat in this area.
@@jsbrads1 Look at the photo, the ground is uneven and just a very few degrees of slope are enough to direct the light in different angles towards the camera. If you use a reflector to fill a person when shooting in backlight, you will see how twisting your arms just one inch makes the reflector work or not on the person
@@virtualworldsbyloff I hear ya, but the circular nature of the light fall off seems to support my theory, stated in a comment: I have a completely different take, based on oblique angles.
_ _ _ 👀 if the light source is above and in front of an observer 45 degrees, then the light reflecting of the ground about 6 feet in front of you is reflected perfectly, but ground further away from you (is getting the same sun light) but the reflection is not as good resulting in you seeing less light.
Also in the scene with the rover, that is obviously overexposed and basically all you are seeing is white.
@expattaffy1 Very insightful...
When I woke up this morning, I would have put good money on getting through the entire day without hearing anyone say "Buzz Aldrin's crotch".
Good morning. I just want to remind you, real quick, about Buzz Aldrin's Crotch.
Envision Buzz Aldrin's Crotch! Good, okay now go about your day again.
Back when these things were happening, ham radio operators were listening into the communications between the astronauts and NASA. Doing so required some pretty specific equipment and techniques that made the source of the astronauts' signals pretty clear. I was once asked if the government could have faked the source of those signals and my answer was "yes by putting a transmitter on the moon".
When Pete Conrad and Alan Bean went to the moon in Apollo 12, they saw no evidence that Neil and Buzz had ever been there!
@@brianarbenz1329 they were on a different part of the moon?
@@zacharybauer7398 My post was a joke.
@@brianarbenz1329 My apology, I have fallen victim to Poe’s law. It was dumb enough that I could see a moon landing denier saying it.
People feel the otherworldliness of these photos, not being able to understand it, they claim them to be fake.
Brilliant analysis addressing some of the arguments made in American Moon. Well done. Reflection from the LM producing the spotlight effect makes perfect sense.
As an artist and a photography dabbler, I would argue that the image IS perfect BECAUSE of the fact that it doesn’t follow all of these rules you’re talking about. Who says we need a straight horizon? Who says we HAVE to follow the rule of thirds?
Not having a straight horizon is actually better imo because it helps distinguish this from earth. Here on earth, we know the horizon to be straight. And while it is also straight on the moon, having it crooked just feels more extraterrestrial. It gives it a more ominous and mysterious vibe. Perfect for such an iconic photo of the moon.
The rule of thirds is a rule of thumb to help inexperienced photographers take more interesting photos. I love that this “rule” has caught on because now selfies and amateur shot photos are suddenly improved by not centering everything. But actually, that is why I love that this image isn’t following the rule of thirds either. It’s not exactly where you expect it to be, so the image is already more interesting. Secondly, angling the camera down cuts out a lot of the sky where it’s just black. The moon and ground is much much much much more interesting content than the pitch black sky. I would say that’s a way better composition than if buzz was just in the middle of the image.
So while these things are not how studios and professional photographers would generally take a photo, the fact that it doesn’t follow all of these rules makes it so much better to me. It’s way more artistic than sitting down and restricting yourself to a bunch of rules, the focusing issue obviously doesn’t add to the image quality to me, but like you said, it’s not enough to ruin the image
In a space suit, carrying a camera with no viewfinder or auto exposure and focus makes for difficulty in getting perfect photos. But they did a pretty good job considering what they had to work with. As for the light source, the Sun is much larger than the moon and the light will be coming in straight, not diffused as it does on Earth, especially on overcast days.
Another great video. I have used that same photo to say it may be iconic but it was not perfect in its original form. I tell people go and look at all the Apollo Lunar EVA photos on flicker. They are all there and just raw scans. The great, good and not so good. But again great work!!
He is talking a load of crap/ Ask him why there is no aerial on this Buzz Aldrin, JUST REMEMBER
NO AERIAL MEANS NO RADIO, MEANS NO COMMUNICATION, MEANS NOT ON THE MOON
@@expattaffy1954 WOW!!!! guess you did not watch the whole video or not pay attention. Look at the original scan of this photo. Armstrong cut off the top of the backpack. Thus you do not see the aerial. NASA cropped the original and added more black space to the top of the photo so Aldrin would be more centered. Look at other photos you see the aerial. In fact it has been claimed by some claiming hoax that the aerial is actually the wire lifting the astronauts. More rubbish.
@expattaffy1 Oh I am waiting breathless for this fantasy video you have been talking about. I am sure it will be like a slice of Swiss cheese. With holes big enough to drive a NASA crawler through.
@expattaffy1 Of course Flicker was not around in the 60s. Neither was Photoshop. These images are for the most part raw scans. Photoshop may have been the software they were scanned to. The only corrects would have been Light/Dark/Contrast. You really have no idea what you are talking about. I am not sure why you keep talking when you know so little. You and the Apollo Detectives deserve each other.
They're not raw scans on Flickr. March to the Moon has the raw scans, allegedly.
Rooster tails from the rover is concrete proof it was on the moon.
Those get "hand-waved" away by the deniers too. They will say things like film speed is slowed down, sped up or whatever. And when you point out that the particles are falling with 1/6 the acceleration they will reverse their "explanation".
You CAN'T fix stupid! And once someone has been bamboozled, it is almost impossible to convince them that they have been.
I shoot a hasselblad in bright Sun and get super dark shadows in B&W... f/8 @ 1/500 ISO 200.... the thing is there is NO ATMOSPHERE... light gets diffused in our atmosphere... those moon shots are eerie in the lack of diffusion
The astronauts did say how there were shadows which were so black, you couldn't see into them.
I read that the image we see at 00:13 is being proposed as the design for one side of the new American $20 note due in 2028. JFK to be on the other side, which I thought was nice.
That could very well end up being the year of Artemis III landing, as I think 2026 and 2027 are not that likely, would be a nice fit.
The fun part is that all conspiracy theorist is an expert on photography and they can see that it is a 'fake' and point out all kind of mistakes and flaws, so if they know about those misstankes then they should be able to recreate a photo like that but without the "mistakes", but it is like they can not even ge close to it and everytime they try they never publish the result.
Conspiracy theorist are experts at everything. Flat earthers in particular, were born with all knowledge.
Well. So they think.
Never argue with idiots they will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.
The Dunning-Kroeger effect is strong with conspiracy nuts.
@@gorillaau It's entirely the cause.
@@ReValveiT_01 Some conspiracy theorist are just angry and prefer to think everything is lie, could be smart enough to understand they are wrong but they are too emotional to change there mind. A portion of conspiracy theorist are simply too stupid to figure out that in fact they are not smarter than majority of population as the conspiracy gurus makes them feel like
A poorly composed photograph of a man in a strange white outfit that looks like deep-sea diving suit, standing in an endless desert of black sand, a gaping abyss of absolute nothingness behind him where the sky should be, a strange metal contraption that looks like a kitbash of random junk reflected in his gold visor... if the argument were 'these photos are spooky, they give me the creeps, this doesn't make sense to me, it doesn't seem like it should be possible', that would make sense to me - but ironically, the deniers seem to think these incredibly eerie and uncanny photos look too... _normal_
Yeah, it's funny how photos taken on the surface of the Moon look unearthly...
@@maxfan1591 looking at photos from the moon, I genuinely feel like I'm seeing something I'm not supposed to - not in an _intruding on a private moment_ sense, but in a _trespassing on holy ground_ sense, like if a lay person were to enter somewhere like the Holy of Holies or the Kaaba.
@@notoriouswhitemoth Interesting thought. A couple of the Apollo astronauts certainly had intensely spiritual experiences while on the Moon.
I thought about reflecting sunlight from the lander before you mentioned it. Since the larger areas of the lander are semi-matte (and those foils are quite crumpled), and being a light source much larger than the astronaut, this light would be rather diffuse and cast no visible shadow. I first thought about vignetting of the (slightly) wide angle lens, but this would be visible in the other shots too; and I would think that this lens was designed to be as perfect as possible (I don't know if it's a retrofocus lens where the vignetting due to the angle of the light hitting the film is less pronounced). On the other hand - vignetting gets more visible in underexposed shots, so it might have contributed to the overall look.
Funny how so many tards seem to think the insulation and foils etc are the body of the lander.
@@ohasis8331 They have no idea how things are built, and what matters or doesn't matter.
Reflected light from the white spacesuit and from the Earth.
We don't just have pictures, we also have film.
Whilst not disagreeing with anything the presenter says, remember that this was done with film cameras. The prints are made in the darkroom. If you look for the original, unaltered print of Aldrin, it looks very flat. In the darkroom, a darkroom technician can use two techniques: dodging and burning in. These techniques are used to brighten and dim selected areas of the print. This produces the iconic print with which we are all familiar.
These techniques require a great deal of expertise to use. In the modern era, working with a digital photo, you can use Photoshop to produce the same effect. Guess what Adobe call these techniques? Right - Dodging and Burning in.
What I love about the moonlanding deniers is their utter simplicity: "If I don't understand how they did it then they coud not have done it and then that proves that whatever I think about it is the actual truth, 100%"
No matter how you look at it, this project involved tens of thousands of people so the idea that every body is in on the secret is not possible. No amout of threats are going to keep 10.00 people silent for 60 years.
If they are not all in on the secret then that means they all think they are really building a rocket which means they will do actual research and tests and actually build a rocket that can fly.
The only way that they can build a rocket thinking that it can fly when it actually can't, if is there is a way to intercept *ALL* test data, every photo taken, every film made, all telemetry, all eyes looking through binoculars and telescopes.... everything. and replace it with something that looks like it worked when it actually didn't.
And perhaps most problematically, you have to invisibly intercept every launched vehicle, make it disappear, transmit a fake image and telemetry that *EXACTLY* maches what would happen down to the smallest details, flawlessly, until the moment of re-entry and then seamlessly swap the actual craft back in, but now aged and damaged exactly as it would be if it had actually been to space.
Oh, and get the russians to pretend they saw you do it and admit you won the race to the moon.
Even if all this was possible it's an untennable position because once you show that you can go to the moon people are going to want to do more space stuff and you have to keep intercepting it all and faking the data just to keep up the pretense that you went to the moon? Are they seriously suggesting that *all* data coming from space is faked by NASA just so the USA can keep saying they went to the moon? Nobody on the entire planet ever managed to slip through the net? They've been simulate space with 100% accuracy ever since the 20's when they started this hole rocket business?
The brainless flat Earthers have a similar belief - that Antarctica is a giant ice wall around their pizza world, guarded by NASA warships who will fire on anybody venturing below 60 degrees South. Without considering the thousands of ships required to patrol the supposed 60,000 mile perimeter, just how the hundreds of thousands of sailors have managed to keep stum since goodness knows how long ago is not something that occurs to their tiny minds. Theirs is a perfect world where whatever they dream up actually is real, and all criticism of their fantasy is the work of Satan (yes, their bibles are invoked regularly).
I have another possible cause for what appears to be 'fall off' of the soil brightness around Aldrin in the photo. During descent of the LM, the final approach was a drift to the spacecraft's left, ultimately causing all 3 of the surface probes (visible in the Aldrin photo) to bend to the right, away from the direction of travel. The area in which Aldrin is standing was exposed to the engine exhaust as the LM was in its final approach to landing. (Note the direction of the bent surface probe in the foreground.) That engine exhaust scoured the surface in the area that Aldrin was standing, changing (e.g. smoothing) the surface appearance. There are some photo evidence, taken from orbiters, of this happening for several moon landings and in the areas of recent Mars soft-landers.
...and how would they, after removing the blue sky, remove the blue on all reflective surfaces?
It would be quicker and easier to just go to the moon 🤣
@@DaveMcKeegan 😂
That's a great point.
A studio? Tell me this , why would they destroy the telemetry unless it was proof of a crime?
@@notanymore9471 No telemetry or data was completely erased, that's one of the most misrepresented claims. NTSC recordings of Apollo 11 exist and have always existed, only the original SSTV tapes were likely overwritten some time later. What do you think how could they have released the remastered version if they had nothing from Apollo 11? Both original and copied recordings from all other missions all the way to Apollo 17 exist, so any argument about "lost data" is null and void when nothing was actually truly lost, not like it would prove anything anyway.
This is a great series. I would like to see one just covering the terrain (lurain?). You could cover why the horizon looks so close. Deniers say is the back of the stage, but it’s really the lack of atmospheric perspective.
Also the letter C rock, and the supposed same hills in seen in the background of photos taken at different locations. Some people also say there are a lack of craters.
"lurain" is awesome.
Photographs don't have pixels. They are only limited to pixels when you digitize them. Photos are better than any digital pixels in existence.
Thank you Mr McKeegan, very well put. :)
Thank you Mr Bailey 😊
What causes the curious texture on the regolith just to the left of the LM's pad? It looks like the impression that crinkly plastic sheeting leaves on fine dust. Did the LM bounce?
Fun fact: photographers use the "rules" of photography to teach ourselves how to think about composition and nothing else. If you look at any great photographer, you'll quickly notice that none of them follow the rules
You learn the rules so you know when you break them!
"it just looks good"
Nan Goldin put it well "my worst photos are compostionally perfect"
In 1969, he’ll even up into the 80’s or 90’s they didn’t have the technology to fake these shots.
Dave you are a hero amongst us mere mortals. Please keep crushing these "theories" that have absolutely NO foundation to stand on😫
The biggest proof these are real is we installed reflectors up there that any amateur astronomer can hit with lasers. How did they get there then?
Don't ask a denier - they have trouble chewing gum and walking simultaneously.
Laser will bounce off the moon surface. The Soviets did the laser bounceback experiment before anyone even allegedly put a mirror up there.
@@aedrykwe literally brought suvaneers (how the fuck do you spell that word!?) back from the moon. We can't bring back moon rocks from a fake moon landing. Check.
Excellent video.
I think there's one more point to make about apparent fall-off. The area in the bottom-left of the 'Man on the Moon' photo has been disturbed by the astronauts walking around on it and kicking the surface dust around. The lunar soil underneath is much darker than the top layer which has been exposed to unfiltered sunlight and the solar wind for millions of years. The hoaxnuts are essentially comparing this area to the area directly behind Aldrin. Parts of the uneven ground right behind him are clearly tilted more towards the sun and will catch more light per m^2 than other areas in the photo, and this accentuates the difference with the disturbed area. A spotlight would certainly cause more fall-off towards the horizon, and we don't see that. You can use photogrammetry to show that rocks near the horizon are dozens of metres away. So how can the area right in front of 'spotlight illuminated' Aldrin be darker than areas dozens of metres away? And if you look at photos taken after the EVA through Buzz's LM window you can really see how disturbed areas are far darker than undisturbed areas.
Regarding the clip of Hasselblad's Jan Lundberg - this was from the execrable film by David Percy many years ago. It was obvious in the film that Lundberg was shown a low-gen high-contrast print not the original scan.
@Fred the 47th Coined by Astrobrant2
You forgot to mention another important aspect. Thousands of photos were taken. Only a few were published. Most were too bad to be published, I mean, not even editing would make them good enough.
So the fact that photo is so good is just probability... if I give someone a phone with a broken screen, and they take 12 photos of me, i suppose at least a few will have me in a good enough angle
I am not a flat earther, but here's a way you can get a black background with the out of focus objects.
You could put a very black board or cloth behind each object, then the focus would blend into black appropriately, and you could still cut out around the edge of the black backboard
I'm not a professional photographer but I can take some pretty good pictures. I know that lighting is everything.
Some of my favorite pictures I took of my children were on a beach at sunset. Some of the pictures have nice orange sunlight lighting their faces while some others the light was reflected in the sky and clouds in such a way that they don't even look like on a beach outdoors but rather inside of a room totally illuminated with fluorescent lights.
While there was no atmosphere on the moon to reflect light around there sure
was a lot of light colored ground.
Even just the sun shining on the photographers white suit at close range would make it look like a huge spotlight on him.
They had to use arc welding type shields, that no atmosphere sun was brutally intense.
With the sun like a giant arc lamp in the sky and no air to break it up I bet it made for the most difficult photo lighting session ever.
About the project manager not necessarily being a photographer; that's true. You'd think we'd put people in positions they actually know, bit not always. Like the manager of my local Confucius Institute, who doesn't speak Chinese. Or probably most famous example, politicians who have no expertise in what they are minister of, or never even having studied politics.
I have to clear out the flat of my father, and we have decades of National Geographics from the 1960s and 70s or so, and by pure chance I came across exactly that December 1969 issue (annd there are many more photos inside)
It was awhile back, but I recall that the lighting would be possible, but the setup would have likely cost more to develop and install than actually going to the moon.
Excellent work, I had thought that the area of ground Buzz was standing in was just naturally brighter, but reflection of light from the LM is a compelling explanation.
Just out of curiosity, wouldn't it have a gold tint? Well, partially?
@@Jan_Strzelecki Interesting point, the light would be quite diffuse, would it show? I am still unsure, the bright area seems to have been scoured and may be raised so catching more sunlight. Will need to look more closely.
@@Jan_Strzelecki Buzz is not looking particularly gold tinted and he is standing nearby the LM. Or is there a tint?
There looks to be a hint of gold tint on the inside edge of his right leg.
@@DaveMcKeegan Turning up the saturation on 5902 and 5903does seem to show some gold highlighting. I also tend to wonder if we are not seeing some effect on the surface structure due to the rocket as it came down to land. We are looking generally NE of the LM, the direction I believe it came from after Armstrong's manoeuvring.
Me listening to him teach me new and interesting facts about the moon landing:
"Very cool, internet man 😎👍."
His dog:
"Who the fuk are you talking to!?"
Conspiracy folk: This image is too perfect to be taken on the moon
Sane people: It is not perfect
Conspiracy folk: The image is not perfect because they wanted us to think it was taken on the moon
NASA wanted the fake Moon landing photos and videos to look as real as possible, so they insisted on shooting on location.
It is not possible to light such a large area with only one spot. It would have to be very far away to create almost parallel shadows, which means it would have to be incredibly strong. Using more that one spot will automatically create multiple shadows for every object.
If you know nothing, you have to believe everything.
Very interesting in-depth look at a famous photo. Regardless of one's stance on whether or not the moon landings were real or not this is a very good dissection of this iconic photo😀😊
The moon landing was real. There can be no two opinions, because the deniers either deliberately lie or do not realize how stupid they actually are.
My first thought when seeing this was, one of the most basic enlargement techniques in the film photography days was dodging some areas in order to brighten them.
Since I believe they were using Ektachrome film, which is slide film, I guess brightening an area would technically be burning, but that's beside the point. I would be interested to see, it the original negative actually has the same falloff.
You can see the original (AS11-40-5903) at Gateway to Astronaut Photography On Earth, or Flickr Project Apollo archive…
15:43 “It’s almost impossible…” Now-it’s almost impossible now. It was completely impossible 20 years ago. Now try it in 1969.
One of the FE ers once discribed a picture of NASA in terms of "pixels" and stuff. But: am i correct that during that time pixels weren 't even a thing?
I thought the astronauts had SOME training in photography but they had to know so many other things that it was not their primary subject.
Interesting to contrast the moon photos with the more recent images from the Perseverance rover on Mars. The quality of light is very different where there is an atmosphere.
But the Mars ones still look different in their way compared to Earth photos.
The sheer clarity of the Apollo photos taken from the (near) zero atmosphere conditions of the Moon are one of the ways to confirm that they're the real deal (and, hilariously, the reason deniers think they look fake)!
Ive seen the argument in some comments on this channel that "they must be fake. You can't see the stars."
I just realized... The sun is out. I feel kind stupid for taking a couple hours to realize this glaring lack of logic
I know you were just speaking in a technical sense, but personally, I think the crooked horizon adds to the photo. It makes the whole thing seem a bit foreign and unstable, two things which I think fit well for a photo taken on the moon. I'd be disappointed to see a photo where everything just seems normal and perfect. It would be kind of boring that way.
Though on the point about the rule of thirds, I do agree because thirds generally are just more aesthetically pleasing regardless of where you are.
The dust on the ground is quite sharp because it does not get worn down by wind or anything. Does that affect things in interesting ways?
Apparently, it chews up almost everything it touches, and would probably give you cancer. If you meant the light, I dunno.
There’s also the specular hit on the regolith (which is formed of minerals, rock and glass), from the direct light from the sun at the rear-right. (Think of sun on the ocean, which although is much more reflective, illustrates the principle.)
This is a very minor contribution, and is drowned-out by the LEM reflective/bounce light, but it is at least an element that would preclude a flat even surface when shooting toward the sun.
I remember when I as a kid searched these same pictures on the official nasa website and tried messing with several things like changing contrast or just using the paint bucket in mspaint to fill in. There are definitely **some** hard edges when you do that, but that literally is data compression artifacts.
You can also uncover actual stars in at least some of the images, but to see them I had to tilt the monitor, thank god for horrible viewing angles on 2000's hardware.
I never saw anybody else uncover the stars on any of the pictures, but I know for a fact they're there. Very few but definitely present.
There are indeed a few stars in some of the photos; I've seen them too.
And speaking of Apollo and stars, oh my: Al Worden, Command Module pilot for Apollo 15, in his book _Falling To Earth,_ described the incredible tapestries of stars he could see from the CM while in orbit on his own. I found that passage in the book incredibly moving.
Very good my friend! Loved the video
Turning up the contrast even more on the Buzz photo shows a very serious amount of fall off, where the background goes very dark. BTW, why does a manned mission to the moon keep getting pushed back? I remember hearing 2020, then 2025, and now I believe it is 2030.
"why does a manned mission to the moon keep getting pushed back?"
Money, mostly. The US Congress is not nearly as willing to fund Artemis as it was Apollo. NASA's budget peaked at 4.5% of the federal budget in 1966. Since 1975 it's been less than 1%, and it's currently less than 0.5%.
So you figured out how levels work in photography, did you? As explained in the video, there isn't any fall off at all. The increased light in the foreground is due to the reflective nature of the GIANT METAL SPACECRAFT SITTING RIGHT BEHIND THEM! Increasing the contrast isn't going to do anything to counteract that, rather, it amplifies the difference between light and shadow.
Tell us you know absolutely nothing about photography without telling us you know nothing about photography.
@@syphon583 I've forgotten more about photography than you will ever know. Tell us YOU know nothing about photography...
How did they manage to underexpose the shot. Was it overcast that day? Those cameras were fixed at 30 of sec at F5.6 of very similar so how the F-stop did they manage to underexpose it?
Do you understand that even the moon has day- and nighttime? Light exposure isn’t the same for every time of the day.
Can anyone tell me why the Hasselblad cameras used on the moon had crosshairs on the lens, given that the astronauts were not using the viewfinder? I’ve never understood why this was the case.
The crosshairs were not for aiming, but to detect and correct photo distortions due to processing and handling.
And the crosshatches were not on the lens, they were on a Réseau plate between the camera body and the film.
Also, knowing the distance between crosshairs, angles, sizes and distances between things could be computed.
@SuperTramp ????? Really? You ask this?
This has been explained MANY MANY times and YOU can find it out yourself through a process called... wait for it... GOOGLING!
What a fine doggy!! English Springer Spaniel, if I am not mistaken. Had one as a child, named Blaze.
Very good vulgarisation Bravo!
I love that dog.
The back of buzz's suit is a massive white reflector woth the sun right on it lighting up the ground behond him, it's not that complex
Actually, it's impossible for the conspiracy nuts.
But please consider the photographer does not have full access to the viewfinder…. I also believe the picture is doctored!
If the moon is an Earth selfie plasma reflection anomaly in the plasma firmament(like looking at your face reflection on a pond/water), how exactly does one land and walk on a hologram? Perhaps the Earth is much larger than what we've been told it is.
_If the moon is an Earth selfie plasma reflection anomaly_
It's not.
I've seen those claims that it was a "reflection" based on trying to match up the continents and lunar mares. I had one question for them: "Have you ever used a mirror? your reflection should be reversed."
@@kevinskinner4986 It's _double_ mirror! Duh! 😉
I have a completely different take, based on oblique angles.
_ _ _ 👀 if the light source is above and in front of an observer 45 degrees, then the light reflecting of the ground about 6 feet in front of you is reflected perfectly, but ground further away from you (is getting the same sun light) but the reflection is not as good resulting in you seeing less light.
Also in the scene with the rover, that is obviously overexposed and basically all you are seeing is white.
Also as an engineer, I can build cameras without understanding optics, photography, lighting, etc. hd
The reason why you have the 'dropoff' is explained by the direction of the shadows.. The sun is high in the sky, and Buzz is facing roughly in the direction of the sun. What you're seeing is the direct speculative light off of the particles in the lunar regolith. In most other pictures -- generally taken not directly towards the sun, you're only getting diffuse reflection off of the ground.
To put it another way, if you put a large mirror flat on the ground in that image, what you would find is that the reflection of the sun would be right in the middle of the 'hot spot'.
Buzz is being lit by the direct reflection off of the LEM, and getting nice rim lighting from the sun behind him. With all of the complaints you have about the composition and exposure of the shot, from a lighting perspective and the fact that Neil got himself properly framed and exposed in Buzz's visor, there really is a lot that *is* 'perfect' about this shot, given that it's a hip shot with no viewfinder or exposure meter.
It's pretty easy to get yourself framed in a spherical mirror
I think the falloff is due to the far side of the white space suit being in direct sunlight. His suit is a big reflector that blasts reflected sunlight in all directions creating a very localized hot-spot and light falloff. That hot spot will even follow the astronaut around. You don't need to bring the LEM into the equation.
And the lunar regolith has bizarre optical qualities to begin with. The particles are so hard-edged and jagged that their reflective qualities are unlike what we're familiar with here on earth with all the weathering and oxidation that occurs all the time. This results in a non-Lambertian surface reflectance in which every point on the surface is reflecting the same amount of light back at the viewer. It's why photos of the full moon look unnaturally flatly lit with the same brightness from the center facing the viewer to the limb facing 90 degrees away. You can see the same effect in the Apollo moon photos on the hills in the distance, they're so flatly lit its hard to tell the geometry of what you're looking at.
I'm wondering if it makes sense to analyze the lighting characteristics in a retouched version of the photo (such as at ruclips.net/video/EstpDPPhBjE/видео.html). Wouldn't it make more sense to use an unretouched photo (such as at ruclips.net/video/EstpDPPhBjE/видео.html), since that shows all of the light from the different sources in their raw (no pun intended) form?
Watching these videos one has to ask why if the landings were faked and they had gone to the trouble of staging it all, surely the overwhelming objective would be to ensure these "errors" were addressed so as to eliminate or at least minimise the ability to spot or point them out.Much like continuity on a movie set you don't want someone in a Shakespeare play to be wearing a watch, glaringly obvious mistakes such as leaving the studio door open so that a draught would make the flag wave or as here having multiple light sources instead of just one....the sun would nullify the appearance of authenticity of it.
I don’t understand the part about the top of the backpack being cropped off and needing to be added back in. None of the images you show has it cut off.
The very first image of Aldrin Dave shows has the very top of his backpack cut off, along with the antenna.
Also analyzed in an episode of Mythbusters.
Mythbusters also explained the motion of the flag, and that was likewise derided by the conspiracy morons.
I agree with your assessment of why the Apollo photos look the way they do. Keep up the calm well-reasoned work.
I think you should have skipped the whole 1/3rd rule discussion which contributes nothing to the basic question of whether the photos were faked. Moreover, in my opinion, religiously following the 1/3rd rule is the mark of a novice. The face-on view of the astronaut is accidently well framed to show more of the footprints and less of the featureless black sky. Most of my photos contain less than 20% sky because the real content is usually below the horizon. Or they may include 80% sky because that is the most interesting content.
It's known as the "inverse square law". The amount of light hitting an object drops to a quarter if you double the distance. After all, the same amount of light comes from the source, but now have to cover 4 times as much area. Triple the distance, you get one ninth the light. And so on.
This is the foremost proof that the moon landings can't have been fake. In the wide area shots, the amount of light is the same across the entire picture, with no high or low spots of light. The only way that could be the case would be if the light source is so very far away that the inverse square law no longer applies, because the same amount of light falls over the entire surface.
Dave, there is a video by Nvidea that goes over these same details, and creates a digital copy, and prove its real. A spotlight would leave his name tag in his shadow.
I'll try and get this link to nvidea shared. I don't have it on the device I'm using
Found my new favorite rabbit hole 🤣