The problem is that if you look at the wide range of photography and the quality it is just not feasible for astronauts (who have many other critical tasks to attend to) to make it happen.
This is not “passive photography”. One problem is that the astronaut gloves have very little dexterity to deal with tiny camera controls over lighting, direction etc.
The book I cited gets into the challenges of the Kodak cameras used—Kodak did everything they could to make it work but at the end of the day their experts knew that mediocre photos were the best could be hoped for—and there was a strong chance that many rolls of film would be damaged by radiation and temperature issues.
The large quantity of professional level clean pictures are not credible imho.
Why are you citeing a book that doesn’t know that the cameras were Hasselblads, not Kodak???
How can anything else in the book be believed if they got such a basic fact wrong?
You’re just totally wrong. The controls were NOT tiny. They were enlarged to deal with the gloves. Why would gloves interfere with “direction” as you say.You just point the camera in the direction you want to shoot.
This info isn’t from a book, it’s from a camer dealer’s website. Some information you might find interesting.
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/explora/photography/features/the-cameras-of-the-apollo-moon-missions
It they used Kodak cameras you might have a point.
They used modified Hasselblad Contex cameras for the lunar surface, as well as 16mm film cameras, and video feed.