

NASA/Hasselblad Astronaut's Photography Manual (1984) [pdf] - aaronbrethorst
http://www.hasselblad.com/media/2207875/astronauts_manual_singlepage_lr.pdf

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jrapdx3
The NASA Hasselblad was, and still is, an impressive piece of photographic
machinery. Hasselblads were used for a long time in the US space program, the
manual saying "since 1962" and obviously, well beyond 1984.

And indeed having been around in those years, the cameras proved their worth.
The images they captured were astonishing, looking like nothing else, in
essence a unique art form truly living up to its actual "other-worldliness".

I've often thought the photographs of the early space era are among the most
beautiful and haunting images of all time. The fascination with the photos and
the camera itself is certainly justified.

It was fun reading the pictorial advice contained in the manual, which stated
classic ideas anyone interested in photography has probably encountered many
times. Yet the lessons could still be profitably applied in the digital era. I
remember "exposing for the highlights" with transparency films, and even in
today's world often enough it's still a good idea.

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friendzis
Film and digital differ fundamentally in how they capture under/over-exposed
areas. You can overexpose film and still preserve some - it won't be all
white, while underexposed is... pitch black. With digital its different: once
you overexpose you get plain white and everything is gone. Underexposed areas
still contain some detail.

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aaronbrethorst
Digital and slide film are pretty similar in my experience. Color negative and
black and white negative film, on the other hand, definitely offer a lot more
opportunity for shadow and highlight recovery.

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joshvm
Interesting to see all the classic photography rules given in the context of
the space shuttle. Focusing for depth of field uses the example of the payload
bay, rather than a group of friends. Makes you feel a bit wistful, while we're
still sending people to space, no one will ever have the chance to use this
manual in quite the same way ever again.

It's interesting to see the kind of challenges you have when taking images up
there. I think there's a tendency to assume that it's incredibly easy - that
any snapshot will look amazing simply because it's space. In reality there are
plenty of situations where practicality wins over aesthetics and extremely
high dynamic range will cause problems. And of course that ultimately these
will be the best publicity photos that NASA has so they'd better be well
composed!

