Models Go to the Moon

[ewahl]

In 1969 I became the proud owner of a brand new Nikkormat FTN SLR 35mm camera. I bought a set of close-up screw-on lens rings that could be used in any combination with the standard 50mm lens. With through-the-lens focusing, I had a new level of technical ability to photograph my models.

 

Enjoy this trip to the Moon and back in December 1969 with the Revell 1/48 Apollo Command/Service Module (original issue kit). Look at the shots and speculate how I achieved them in some posts below. I'll share how it was done after you post some guesses.

 

Ed

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[jcorley]

Ed,

 

It looks to me that you simply posed the model in front of the posters that were all over my room! How did you get in?!?!

 

I guess that mostly because the entire model is never seen. The first shot shows mot of the kit, except for the part which went onto the display stand. A photog who knows enough to step down the f-stop to a pinhole (f/22 or similar) knows the field of focus will be very deep and not much will be lost. #2 is the only one with significant focus issues and the length of the model is the culprit IMO.

[Mark Deliduka]

Man, these are cool Ed! You are a man ahead of your time!

[ewahl]

Thanks, Jim and Mark,

 

In 1969, Life magazine had the exclusive rights to publish pictures taken by the astronauts on the Moon missions. There had only been a couple by then. Obviously, those pictures became the backgrounds for the Revell 1/48 kit of the Apollo CSM.

 

The printed page in the magazine of the blackness of space turned out to be a mixture of many colors that would show up when rephotographed. So, with a couple of issues of the magazine, I cut out all of the Moon and Earth images and pasted them onto black construction paper. This destroyed any stars that might have been in the background of space.

 

Jim was right. I shot these on my kitchen table. Using my maximum f-stop for the greatest depth of field, I had the model placed directly on the background sheet. I used a single tensor light as the light source. I positioned the light so that the shadows on the model would be in the same direction as on the lunar or earth surface below. I used a time exposure based on a light meter calculation for the ASA 400 Kodak Tri-X Pan film I used. The trick then was to line up the model with the image below in such a way that the model's shadow did not fall across the landscape in the photo. The model was either on its nose or engine except for the side shot. The one shot with the LEM was with the real LEM on the background page with the lunar surface.

 

Today, we would easily identify the shots as fakes. Back then, everyone was in awe of the fact that men had actually reached the Moon and took pictures of magnificent clarity from angles never before seen. Few people knew that Revell had issued models, so those images with the model were openly accepted as real. I would then ask who was out there taking those pictures of the CSM if the astronauts could not take spacewalks without tethers. That question would get them thinking, and sooner or later they realized they had been had.

 

I bought (and still have) a set of NASA's official color slides, so today I could probably produce some very convincing fake pictures in Photoshop along with a better model build. You real space guys and gals know what the aftermarkets can provide to yield a correct-looking model.

 

Thanks for looking.

 

Ed

[TimHortman]

Thank you Ed for posting these - it's great that you thought to do this & they did turn out very well!