The SpaceIL web site does not yet show or discuss the images, but on the social media blogs the members discuss how they didn't like the original photos so adjusted them and went as far as making their images grey scale. Similarly, the radio hams who have been downloading images from the camera the Chinese have in orbit on the far side adjusted their images to elimiminate the purple hue, and believed the purple was due to overexposure. An overexposed image would be white, and the purple is most likely an effect of the camera having boosted the gain way up in order to capture the extremely dark scene.
Cleaned up footage from Apollo 11 allows for a better understanding of the lighting conditions they encountered. One thing to notice is that the video from the Vidicon based camera has some ghosting, and this is due to the gain of the camera being high, resulting in persistence of the brighter objects. Aldrin asks command for exposure settings for shadow photography on the sequence camera (DAC)to take the footage from the lander. After a delay, command tells him "f/2 at 1/160". According to NASA info though the camera did not have a 1/160 setting, maybe he meant 1/60?
Here is the DAC footage:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d73jCthcAok
The image can be seen to brighten when he adjusts the settings.That indicates a very dark scene ad the lit surface appears blindingly bright. The film was also capable of being 'pushed' so could have been brightened during processing. Then he can be heard saying how he was having difficulty seeing, it was very dark in the shade. If the lunar surface was as bright as we are lead to believe though, then scattered light should have given sufficient illumination to be able to see quite well, and the DAC footage does show illumination of Armstrong and his back pack from scattered light. The ground must have been very dark indeed in the shadow.
This low light I believe is due to the time that they landed on the surface and their location. As NASA gained experience with and understanding of the strange nature of the lighting conditions, they improved their photos and video footage with every mission, and by A17 they really did an impressive job. Kubrick was advising no doubt. NASA also had learned enough to know where and at what times to be on the surface to have the best lighting conditions. So yes, the lighting on the near side can be quite bright, especially to astronauts who have been kept dark adapted during the 3 day trip.
"There is no dark side in the moon, really. Matter of fact, it's all dark."
A little voice at the end of Eclipse, Pink Floyd:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9xOl8qZ7tc
Waters was a good friend of Kubrick.
From the adjusted image it can be seen that the Sun must have been almost directly behind the camera and the backscatter at maximum, so the dark original image is very telling.
![Image](http://www3.telus.net/myworld/br-farside2.png)
Textbook big hex crater for sure.
The far side is darker than the near side as there is no Earthshine. It is even darker than I expected. This fact is unlikely to concern NASA though, it seems that even the scientific community will never question them, let alone the general public, who will go on believing that because the Moon appears so bright from Earth that it must be blindingly bright, and hot, on the surface.