I always thought that due to light polution in the cities, we cant get a good view of the night sky. Last time I checked their are no cities on the moon to interfer. The physical characteristics of the moon's atmosphere (as it were) should not have the same affect of distorting light as the Earths atmosphere does.
What you forget is that this wasn't a night sky on the moon. They did not land on the "dark side" of the moon. All those photos were taken during the daytime. Since there was no atmosphere, there was no refraction of light in the sky and there would have been stars visible to the naked eye. But because it was the daytime, the ground would have been brightly illuminated as it is on earth during the day. All those photos with "missing stars" show the ground as well as the sky. People weren't on the moon shooting pictures of only the sky. And that raises the issue of dynamic range that AlanF and I discussed already, in which the image contains both very bright and very dark sectors. Cameras generally lack the same dynamic range of the human eye and thus would either overexpose the bright areas in order to correctly expose the dark areas, or underexpose the dark areas in order to correctly expose the bright areas. Since they were there to shoot the ground, not the sky, the photos have correct exposures for the ground but underexpose the sky which is fine since it was already black aside from the stars. This is exactly what any photographer would expect in this circumstance. It's a basic issue of exposure. AlanF's comparison with stadium lighting is very appropriate because the ground is illuminated as brightly as it is during the day. And don't forget that there was also a sun shining in the sky on the moon.