Bruce Hoult wrote:
In article .com,
" wrote:

As I recall, only negatives were returned to the press, not the film.
One must admit that this procedure allowed time for "enhancing" and/or
retouching of the press photos, whether or not such was actually done.

lolol

There apears to be a slight .. uh ... gap in your photographic
knowledge, which renders your whole point ridiculous and invalid.

I've never thought of myself as an omni, far from it. I'll admit to not
knowing as much as I should about film writers in general. In
particular, I have not researched the film writer in use at the Lunar
Planetary Institute in 1986. Any insight you can provide in that area
would be helpful. See:

http://history.nasa.gov/rogersrep/v3n17b.htm

For the next link, scroll down to page [N18] 4. Enhancement Systems:

http://history.nasa.gov/rogersrep/v3appn.htm#n5

Even if the film writer in use by NASA (shown/discussed as part of the
VAST system) had no film-output capability, it's my understanding that
Technicolor was able to reproduce for NASA both "enhanced" positives
and "enhanced" negatives (from original film and from masters). I
believe I was sent at least one of those from KSC (in response to a
FOIA request for a copy where I specified *no* enhancements). Fill me
in though; I'm never too old to learn.

The bottom line is that I have put one of the press photos under the
magnifying glass, in more ways than one. I consider what I have found
from that analysis to be of exceptional value to my understanding of
the origin of the 51-L lift-off smoke under discussion here.

Challenger's Ghost