The claim in the American Moon documentary is that some of the photos show that they were taken in a studio with spotlights, and by extension on earth in a studio, because of the way the light falls off in the photos. The premise being that, given how far away the sun is, the entire landscape of the moon should be equally lit.
“From the documentary, “when the sun illuminates a large a large flat expanse, the light reaches every visible point with the same intensity. Whether we observers an area closer to us or in the distance the luminosity of the ground is practically the same everywhere”
Example from the documentary:
One example of light falloff from the Apollo photos is as11_40_5875.jpg shown here:
An illustration of what they mean from the documentary:
So they claim that the light should evenly covering the landscape as shown in this example here:
Does anyone know how to explain the light falloff in these moon photos?
They do address common suggestions like heiligenschein which is a spotlight effect that happens when the sun is directly behind the photographer. But as they put it in the documentary ... Read even more