Apollo archiving project

nathantw · Sep 24, 2015

Was browsing Flickr photos and came across a bunch of Hasselblad photos that looked like they came from the moon. After closer inspection they were from the moon. Many of the photos I've never seen before. Apparently there's a project to archive the photos. You can see them here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/projectapolloarchive/page1

In this photo you can see the astronaut actually looking at the camera. https://www.flickr.com/photos/projectapolloarchive/21037481544/sizes/o/

480sparky · Sep 24, 2015

On a related note:

http://www.ehartwell.com/Apollo17/BlueMarblePhotography_Cameras.htm#cameras

Many of them are still up there.

Ko.Fe. · Sep 24, 2015

Amazing!

kb3lms · Sep 24, 2015

Pretty cool find, thanks for sharing.

Those guys really weren't photographers, were they?

resummerfield · Sep 24, 2015

Thanks for sharing!

GRHazelton · Sep 24, 2015

The Ultimate Hasselblad Hassle!

480sparky said:
On a related note:

http://www.ehartwell.com/Apollo17/BlueMarblePhotography_Cameras.htm#cameras

Many of them are still up there.

Watch for them on EBay, but beware the shipping charges!!!

mike c · Sep 24, 2015

Thats a lot of bracketing going on there, and for the most part the only color is in the stuff they brought with them, looks like every thing is shot with B&W film. The best ones look like they were shot with the light at low angles (mornings, afternoons).

RobC · Sep 24, 2015

They obviously forgot to teach the astronauts about composition and the zone system.

mike c · Sep 24, 2015

RobC said:
They obviously forgot to teach the astronauts about composition and the zone system.

I know they gave them photo lessens, but probably just for using the Hasselbald with the motor drive to document their experiments. A lot of the photo's there seems to be very low contrast or a lot flare, wonder if they got some of that moon dust on the lens, which might be very hard to brush or blow off, the stuff is supper fine and gets everywhere according too NASA releases.

bdial · Sep 24, 2015

They look a little like "our summer vacation" slides.
Awesome none the less.

Maybe some future Ansel Adams will get a chance to trek around the moon making art photos.

rbultman · Sep 24, 2015

The moon landings were faked. Geez people, wake up and smell the conspiracy!

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

Sirius Glass · Sep 24, 2015

They sure chose some nice photographic equipment for their work.

rbultman · Sep 24, 2015

APUGuser19 said:
For corn sakes.

:alien: hehehehehe

RobC · Sep 25, 2015

APUGuser19 said:
For corn sakes.

Is that a reference to "Capricorn One" ?

CropDusterMan · Sep 25, 2015

I've never met a dozen people who could keep a secret....let alone the hundreds and thousands who were involved in the NASA Lunar Program.
We went to the moon 9 times...NINE! (Apollo 8,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17) (Apollo 9 was an Earth orbit test of the LEM)

Why would we fake it 9 times?

rbultman · Sep 25, 2015

You forgot Apollo 18.

http://tinyurl.com/q5jr5l2

rbultman · Sep 25, 2015

I was trying to find an emoticon for pulling ones leg, but they don't have legs.

nathantw · Sep 25, 2015

rbultman said:
You forgot Apollo 18.

http://tinyurl.com/q5jr5l2

LOL. Don't forget the documentary movie by the same name "Apollo 18." It documents that particular mission.

nathantw · Sep 25, 2015

mike c said:
Thats a lot of bracketing going on there, and for the most part the only color is in the stuff they brought with them, looks like every thing is shot with B&W film. The best ones look like they were shot with the light at low angles (mornings, afternoons).

I was actually surprised when I saw color in the picture, especially when they showed the color test strip, because I thought they were all shot in black and white.

It was good to see their "mistakes" and not just all the good photos. As for their composition, I think they did a great job considering the camera was stuck on their chest and they didn't have a viewfinder to compose. There are shots I definitely have not seen before taken from the command module. I like this particular shot:

For all those people that said the landings were fake, I doubt they would take so many bad shots and post them. Also, there were some stars in the sky in a few photos, so that blows that argument.

rbultman · Sep 25, 2015

Here is another site describing the cameras and some of the training involved.

nathantw · Sep 25, 2015

rbultman said:
Here is another site describing the cameras and some of the training involved.

Hilarious that the sticker on the film back says "Remove darkslide before installing magazine." Uh, no. Remove darkslide before making exposure! Install darkslide when removing and installing magazine.

Also, if the lens had a polarizer on it, how did the astronauts remove reflections if they couldn't see the effect in the viewfinder?

Photo Engineer · Sep 25, 2015

All of the early missile and space photos are in danger of being lost. NASA and the USAF destroyed many of the early photos and some universities are now reaching out to former workers at the Cape for any photos that can be used to fill in the gaps.

OTOH, some institutions are totally disinterested in obtaining or owning "space" photos and thus they are gradually vanishing.

I have some of the early photos from the Cape, some of which you can see posted in my gallery. Interest there seems to be about average for the topic.

PE

jjphoto · Sep 25, 2015

Stunning stuff, although we all know Kubrick faked the moon landing and these photos are all fake too....

Kidding, just kidding.

One of the NASA photo manuals from about 1984. There's some really good advice there:

https://ia601403.us.archive.org/11/items/pdfy-CrPzRQE7YadZxwnF/astronauts_manual_singlepage_lr.pdf

Sirius Glass · Sep 25, 2015

Thank you for posting the manual.

nathantw · Sep 30, 2015

jjphoto said:
Stunning stuff, although we all know Kubrick faked the moon landing and these photos are all fake too....

Kidding, just kidding.

One of the NASA photo manuals from about 1984. There's some really good advice there:

https://ia601403.us.archive.org/11/items/pdfy-CrPzRQE7YadZxwnF/astronauts_manual_singlepage_lr.pdf

Thank you for that manual! It was good to look back at what the astronauts used. I guess in 1984 they were still using Hasselblad 500EL/M models with C-lenses.

Apollo archiving project

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