The conspiracists are so focused on claims that NASA falsified the lunar photos that they don't realize they too can be suspected of falsifying evidence.

One conspiracist web site shows the following two photos. The one on the top, it argues, is genuine, while the one on the bottom is alleged to be a forgery. The photo is of Apollo 12 astronaut Al Bean taken by commander Pete Conrad. Conspiracists allege that a third astronaut is visible in Bean's visor in the top photo, and was airbrushed out in the bottom photo.

Here is an enlargement of the visor area in the image containing the "extra" astronaut.

Near the center of the visor is the reflection of Pete Conrad, who is taking the picture. The reflection near the left edge is of an unknown astronaut, whom conspiracists say NASA had to remove from the photo to maintain that there were only two astronauts on the lunar surface.

I have several problems with this explanation.

First, the visor is almost perfectly spherical. I've seen and held many of these visors. A spherical reflector highly distorts images around the edges. That's why you can see very distorted reflections of Bean's right arm holding a specimen container, and Bean's chest camera at the bottom of the visor. Our mystery astronaut's reflection is actually farther toward the edge than these images, yet it's as well shaped as Conrad's reflection in the center. It's not distorted at all.

Second, the lighting is wrong. Conrad's shadow falls back behind him, and Bean is backlit. The highlight on Bean's visor is at the very edge. The highlight on Conrad's visor is near it's center. All the shadows in the image fall behind. Thus the light source is above and behind Bean. Yet the mystery astronaut is also backlit. His lighting doesn't match his shadow.

Third, the mystery astronaut is not very much of a mystery. The object at the mystery man's feet is the magnetometer from the ALSEP experiments. Below is part of the the NASA photo of Al Bean deploying the magnetometer earlier in the mission.

And here is that same picture, cropped and converted to black and white, shown side by side with the close-up of the allegedly original photo.

There is no question in my mind that the "extra" astronaut was copied from the ALSEP photo and pasted into the Bean photo in order to make it look like there are three astronauts. The only ones who would stand to gain from a photo containing three astronauts are the conspiracists, making it quite obvious who doctored this photo.

See here for additional discussion of the alleged inconsistencies of this photo.