Mike Bara says Apollo "camera negatives" were airbrushed

He said this on Strange Universe internet radio on 23rd August, quoting "whistleblower" Ken Johnston.

Here's how unreliable those two clowns are:

1) There were no camera negatives. The film used was reversal, not negative.

2) You cannot successfully airbrush a negative. The reason is simply that airbrushing can only increase density, not decrease it as you might want to do if, say, you wanted a blacker sky.

So you are advised that anything Mike Bara says or writes is highly liable to be untrue.

I'm at a loss as to who these people are.... I wonder if you could explain a bit more as to what the controversy is, exactly? Is it saying they airbrushed things in or out? You mention the sky and I thought that was a smoking gun about no stars and such too...until arriving in photography courses to learn the devils about contrast and lighting. lol... You can have a pretty star field or you can see anything on the Moon's surface...can't have both from the same shot as a natural product of settings, as I understand it now.

I'm just curious on this, since there isn't a link to follow? What are the specific claims for why the photos were modified on this one?

reply to post by Wrabbit2000

Ken Johnston is a former photo and data controller in the Lunar Receiving Lab. His job was to package up lunar rock samples for shipment to scientists, together with photo-prints of how and where they were collected. Thus he had several sets of the images shot by Apollo astronauts with the 70mm Hasselblad cameras. When he left NASA he kept a set of these prints and got in touch with the notoriously fallible Richard Hoagland. Hoagland and Mike Bara wrote a book which claimed, among other tall tales, that Johnston's photo collection revealed things that are not on the "official" versions of those photos, although they have been singularly unsuccessful at backing up that claim with actual examples.

Mike Bara is a former CAD-CAM technician who was laid off by Boeing a few years ago and found a new life writing incredibly inaccurate books, and appearing on laughably false TV shows.

Now, as to your key question -- what are they saying was being airbrushed out? They don't say. They'd prefer us to imagine, I guess. The whole radio show is here.

reply to post by Asertus

I get this impression that you don't take Mike Bara to be the ultimate authority in these matters? Don't hold back now though, tell us what you really think of him! j/k

I hadn't placed the names and still don't for personal memory..but I must have heard them across the many nights of Coast to Coast over the years. Hoagland though? Okay. That's all you had to say. Hoagie being part of it tells me everything and I'd just get comfy for a good entertaining story to follow and nothing that has resemblance to fact, in even a passing way.

I believe it was Hoagie who said U.S. exploration craft had been out to and closely examined Elenin on it's inbound leg, to discover we were all in for it somehow and doom on a stick was headed right for us to run us through or some such thing.

Umm.. It's always something out of the most fanciful Sci-Fi movies with some of the names out there. Sitting here as a middle age starving student, I'd sure like to know how being wrong pretty much 100% of the time, makes some of those folks the living they seem to get from it.

reply to post by Asertus


what ya expect with bara he hangs with hoagland,he had to learn from the master

Originally posted by Asertus
He said this on Strange Universe internet radio on 23rd August, quoting "whistleblower" Ken Johnston.

Here's how unreliable those two clowns are:

1) There were no camera negatives. The film used was reversal, not negative.

2) You cannot successfully airbrush a negative. The reason is simply that airbrushing can only increase density, not decrease it as you might want to do if, say, you wanted a blacker sky.

So you are advised that anything Mike Bara says or writes is highly liable to be untrue.

Please direct me to the information you are getting that the Hasselblad cameras and the Kodak 70mm film they were using was reversal (like a slide projector) and not negative.

Any of the mission press kits -- they're all online in .pdf format. But for real detail, this.

Not a Hoagland fan but ...

Problem with even addressing this type of thing is that 'air brushing' can mean just about anything in these contexts. The flow diagram looks sort of like this:

Painting on the image ====> airbrush
Negative compositing ==== > air brush
Photoshop ====> air brush
Photo stitch errors ====> air brush
Jpeg anomally ====> air brush
Excessive gaussian noise ====> air brush
CIA magical photo editing technology ====> air brush
MS paint ====> air brush
Crayons and texta ====> air brush
Sticky tape ====> air brush
Spilt coffee ====> air brush

Ironically it can be quite hard to isolate exactly how something was done, and it's one of the reasons that even the best have to say 'well it's probably nothing/this but I can't say 100%' which once it goes through the Hoagland-vocabulary-discombobulator comes out as, 'scientists were stumped.'

Sorry, I can't agree to that. Airbrushing means artfully spraying ink on something in order to enhance it in some way. In addition, none of the digital operations you mention were available to the NASA Public Affairs office during Apollo.

Originally posted by Asertus
Sorry, I can't agree to that.

Not saying I agree with it either. (post was sarcasm levelled at Hoagland et al)

What I'm saying is these persons use the word airbrushing to refer to just about anything on the planet. They still use the term airbrushing to refer to photos that are altered at the moment for example.

reply to post by Pinke


"the Hoagland-vocabulary-discombobulator" Now that is priceless

I'll bet even he would laugh at that one...

Hoagland makes for good sci-fi! He is entertaining, not informative.

well, considering the radiation made it impossible to take pictures on the moon, this is an odd claim


srsly people, make up your mind, lol