Bright Buzz in 5869: I was wrong.

[AstroBrant]

I'm sure you're all familiar with the ongoing controversy over how bright Buzz appears in AS11-40-5869. In the NVIDIA video comments, Wunder Blunder started a thread that has gotten lots of responses. I noticed that GoneToPlaid gave a link to a raw scan which did not have any brightness enhancement. I knew that the ALSJ had a notation that some photos have been brightened somewhat to reveal dark details better, but I didn't realize how much. Here is a copy of the picture from ALSJ:



And here's a copy of the picture GTP gave the link to:


Wow! That is a huge difference! Of course, how bright Buzz appears in the original photo depends on the exposure settings. I am assuming that digital brightening of the picture has the same effect as a longer exposure or wider aperture, but I can understand why people like Percy, Sibrel, and WunderBlunder think that first picture is way too bright. If they saw the second one, they might not find it too easy to criticize.

The NVIDIA people used a different photo, http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a11/AS11-40-5868.jpg but the same arguments apply. The secondary lighting by Neil's suit is almost moot, considering the fact that these pictures were already brightened for ALSJ. It also explains why their carefully programmed replication didn't get as bright as 5868 in ALSJ.

Bottom line, whenever we see people pointing out these bright pictures, they should be shown the raw scan without gamma enhancement. Here is a portion of what GTP wrote, including the link to the picture:

"And instead of using one of NASA's processed verions of the actual photo, you could have instead downloaded and then correctly color balanced NASA ISD's photograph which is from a raw scan of the actual flight film. Had you done so and correctly color balanced ISD's raw scan, then you would have derived the following correctly color balanced photo which doesn't also have any additional gamma correction applied in order to create a more visually pleasing photo, unlike the photo which you used. Following is a link to my color balanced version of NASA ISD's raw scan of AS11-40-5869:

http://apollo.mem-tek.com/ISD_highres_AS11/roll_40/AS11-40-5869_Counter_Jarrah/CURVE_AS11-40-5869_4060x3970.jpg "

[onebigmonkey]

Interesting stuff.

The first thing I looked at after reading this was reach for contemporary versions of the images I have in books and so on, and photo of Buzz on the ladder I have in my Life magazine special is noticeably brighter with the ALSJ copies.

Swings and roundabouts!

I've noticed marked differences in the raw scans available at the Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth and the many other versions of the photographs on line, and my first course of action on downloading them is to adjust the levels to bring out more detail.

The bottom line is that the lunar surface reflects light, and the nature of that surface means it's not always in a straight line. Anyone who doubts that it is bright enough to illuminate an object in the shade has clearly never looked at it through a telescope.

[raven]

I wonder which is closer to what the astronauts saw. A camera will often take pictures that show things quite differently from how the human eye sees them.

[Nowhere Man]

It depends on how dark-adapted their eyes were at any given moment, and whether their sunscreen visors were up or down.

Fred

[gwiz]

It depends on how dark-adapted their eyes were at any given moment, and whether their sunscreen visors were up or down.

Fred

It's the sort of tweaking that we can all do now we are in the digital age, but even in the old days you could play around with the printing process to get the brightness and contrast you wanted.  I don't have any problem with this, the fact is that the human eye can deal with a much greater brightness range than a picture can provide, so different versions of a picture can provide better matches to different parts of the scene.

[smartcooky]

The bottom line is that the lunar surface reflects light, and the nature of that surface means it's not always in a straight line. Anyone who doubts that it is bright enough to illuminate an object in the shade has clearly never looked at it through a telescope.

Anyone who goes out into a remote rural area on a clear night at full moon will notice that the the lunar surface is bright enough to illuminate objects from a distance of 384,000 km.

Even Venus (millions of km away even at its closest) illuminates objects in pitch darkness, and casts shadows

-
http://www.digitalsky.org.uk/venus/shadow-of-venus.html

[onebigmonkey]

The bottom line is that the lunar surface reflects light, and the nature of that surface means it's not always in a straight line. Anyone who doubts that it is bright enough to illuminate an object in the shade has clearly never looked at it through a telescope.

Anyone who goes out into a remote rural area on a clear night at full moon will notice that the the lunar surface is bright enough to illuminate objects from a distance of 384,000 km.

Even Venus (millions of km away even at its closest) illuminates objects in pitch darkness, and casts shadows

-
http://www.digitalsky.org.uk/venus/shadow-of-venus.html

That's amazing - I never knew that!

My inference, btw, comes from my own experience with a telescope, where I found that moonlight could actually be painful!