[batista]

>I always assumed that the poor composition of the original AS11-40-5903 (and many other photos from the Moon which suffer from the same problem) was because every pixel was precious, so they didn't want the uniformly black sky to take up any larger fraction of the image area than necessary.

It wasn't pixels -- it was emulsion film.

Nor was it that precious. What would they do with a photo of more rock/equipment and less space?

I guess the photos was more for a documentation/publicity use than of actual scientific interest.

[brudgers]

The film was precious. Every gram of film had to be brought back into orbit by Eagle in lieu of some onboard instrument, backup system, additional fuel and air or sample from the surface.

[batista]

A kilogram of film is still too much film. And they have too many useless and bad photos taken so it doesn't seem good pictures was their priority.

[brudgers]

In my work, I shoot a lot of photographs when I visit a project site during design and construction. My priority is not composition or aesthetics, it's documentation so that I can answer questions which I didn't know I would have when I went so that I can avoid another trip.

They sent pilots, to the moon. They had a couple of hours. That's all. Film allowed them to collect a large amount of data which hundreds or thousands of scientists could later analyze.

Some rocks are more interesting than others. But it's better to have the scientists decide which to take a closer look at on the next landing.