It's kind of weird seeing crystal clear HD pictures of space objects. I think we just associate blurry black & white images with space, since most of the probes that we have currently exploring other planets and moons were launched before it was practical to include full-color HD cameras (and/or the requisite data transmission capacity) on space probes. (Similar to how people subjectively prefer 24 FPS for feature films.)
Hasselblads cameras was used in the Apollo missions. [1]
Twelve hasselblad cameras were left behind on the moons surface.
It was not that many years ago, around y2k or shortly thereafter if I remember correctly, that hasselblad finally decided that digital photography could match the picture quality their cameras achieved using traditional/analog film and started to manufacture digital options for their cameras.
When I look at the pictures from the moon I start to understand why they held a stiff upper lip for so many years.
IIRC there were some internal setbacks in the process towards digital Hasselblads when they changed owners a few times in the late 90's and early 00's. So it wasn't all stiff-upper-lip.
And when they did go digital, it was slightly ridiculous. I mean, the cheapest option of the H3DII which launched in 2007 had 50% more megapixels than the most expensive Canon or Nikon camera you could buy that year. With almost twice the sensor area of a full-format DSLR the pixel count wasn't for show either. One of those low-end H3DII bodies (without a lens) in OK condition goes for more than $2000 today.
This is true, but keep in mind that higher-resolution, bigger digital backs (in comparison with fully integrated dslr cameras) were already on the market.
Even so, Hasselblad lead that market for a time, then lost ground due to flagging innovation, bad decisions, etc.
As a photographer, I sometimes think my complete switch to digital might have been a mistake. I can't call myself a professional photohrapher because I make very little money off my pictures.
That said, I wish I didn't get rid of my old cameras, and 2.8 lenses. I wish I still had my BW darkroom still set up in my closet.
My pictures are all color now. They are technically fine, but my older pictures just look more interesting.
I'm a complete amateur at photography, but can you give me some details in the difference in outcomes between your BW setup and just passing your color pictures through a BW filter?
the fact that the government (NASA) used them, only proves they were settling to sell their equipment for less (it's usually more in invoice, but less when you account what you lost on red tape)
It was earlier than that. I remember a relative owning an Apple QuickTake in the mid 90s and Wikipedia reckons they went on sale in ’94: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_QuickTake . I personally had a Samsung digital camera in 1998; it took a max of 128Mb SmartMedia cards.
I sold cameras from 90-91 and we were selling the first DSLR during that period. Unfortunately, I don't remember the details, just that we referred to it as "The Brick" because it weighed 2-3 times as much as the next comparable SLR, cost even more, and the pictures weren't nearly as good.
I suppose in that case, they had the bandwidth to send the high-def pictures back to Earth, because they didn't need to transmit a digital picture via radio transmission, they simply brought the film back from the moon with them.
FWIW, a lot of the video from the first Apollo mission was low quality because they had to convert it from SSTV to NTSC by pointing a video camera at a monitor playing the live transmission.
I think a lot of the unreal quality of lunar photos is the lack of atmosphere removing many of the cues our visual system uses to perceive a scene, particularly depth perception. The clarity of these new, HD pictures only exacerbates that.
Is it ever practical to include full-colour cameras? If science and resolution is the priority, isn't it better to send scientific cameras with movable filters? In other words, are these pictures from a colour camera or are they, like most probe images, composites from multiple bw/g scientific images?
You're not gaining much from a Bayer filter over three separate exposures, so you're probably right. Ordinary full-color pictures have to be demosaiced anyway, and it's more complex than laying three colored exposures on top of each other.
With three exposures you get to use the full resolution of the camera for each channel, so you end up a more detailed image and fewer artifacts... unless something moves, in which case you'll get strange colored ghosts.
People hear that space images are composites, and therefore somehow conclude that they're "not real."- but all consumer digital color photography are digital composites thanks to Bayer (and Bayer-style) filters, white balance adjustment, sharpening and denoise that are all baked into your JPEGs before you see them.
It's hard to say what "real" is when it comes to space. The differences in contrast and brightness are so dramatic that the composites aren't anywhere near what you'd see if you were standing there looking out a window. Take the recent images from Pluto. A "real" version taken with a standard GoPro would be too dark to be worth looking at. Likewise, any image of the sun and all it's dramatic weather aren't anything like the blinding light of the "real" sun.
I'm waiting for someone to compare these composite images, with their possibly different colors, to the Apollo film images. How can they both be of the same place if the sand is a different color? Get ready for some new conspiracy theories.
The point you bring up is not confined to space imagery, the same considerations apply to earth-bound photography, for that matter, as true in the ancient days of film as today.
Back then every photographer knew that various color films of the same type would render scenes differently. Every manufacturing process produces biases in results, the color-forming dyes at the core of color films responded in subtly distinguishable ways reflecting their explicitly unique chemical compositions.
In the current digital era, vendors produce "image processing engines" that correspond to film chemistry and just as variable. Camera-makers advertise particular "color signatures" to help promote sales and brand loyalty.
Relevantly, witness the endless discussion in photo "gear forums" over which rendition is the most "correct". Arguably we could say "all of the above", a case could be made one is as accurate as another since there is no single standard measurement of "accuracy".
Bottom line is I wouldn't expect any given Hasselblad to produce two photos with the same color rendering when they're shot on different brands of film. Comparing the Apollo moon landscape with the Chinese digital images will inevitably show differences, but we couldn't really say which is closer to how it "really" looks.
There was better video once. The original public pictures came from pointing a broadcast TV camera at a slow-scan monitor, which is why they're so crappy. Better data was recorded at the tracking stations, directly from the downlink. Those tapes were archived. Efforts were made recently to find them. It now appears that when NASA had a shortage of 1" tape in the 1980s, the tapes were reused for Landsat imagery.[1]
You're forgetting about the other Apollo landing missions. The later ones have fantastic color video footage, remastered in full HD for episode 4 of the fantastic documentary series When We Left Earth.
The whole 6 part documentary series are worth watching for anyone remotely interested in space, but here's a small sample of the quality of the moon landing video footage:
https://kristofferR.com/files/moonlanding_footage_HD.mkv
Those are interesting, but the quality doesn't really seems to improve much, if at all, from the 70mm analog pictures taken with Hasselblads during the manned missions.
Almost. Typical V-series Hasselblad cameras use 120/220 magazines, but those provided too little film for too much weight, so the moon missions used 70mm bulk film. Actual negative size was still about 55mm x 55mm.
It was Ektachrome, E-3 process. All in all 36 mp of actual detail from those photos might be a bit optimistic, considering the harsh conditions (note that modern 36mp digital cameras don't reach 36mp of actual detail either, for various reasons, first of all bayer interpolation), but on second look these new ones are crummy. The amount of chroma noise is startling.
Not really; I actually own a film Hasselblad, I'm somewhat familiar with the issues. You can get really impressive figures by using film meant for document reproduction to shoot high contrast test targets, but this doesn't really translate to high resolution for real subjects. There are also significant problems with alignment, film planarity, grain (detail can still be gleaned even after grain starts being visible, but the signal to noise ratio gets progressively worse) etc. that further reduce theoretical resolution. For that kind of detail you need at least 4x5 inch large format.
I think it's a debated point. I have seen multiple folks comparing, with proper scanners, the resolution of medium formats vs digital pictures and found that the resolution of medium format was higher with quality films. If you use a bad scanner, if your film is of a poor grade, your experience will vary.
(sorry for the late reply) What you're saying is not strictly false, but it's also not very useful for practical photography. High grade "practical" color film (ektar 100, provia 100f, velvia 50), shot extremely carefully with a vacuum back and drum scanned wet will out-resolve high end 35mm digital but lose against modern medium format digital backs; 6x7 or 6x9 with extremely good lenses (mamiya 7 system, alpas) might beat last-gen digital backs in some scenarios. Impractical 3 iso bw microfilm copy film stock (techpan, chs 20) used to shot something standing extremely still with an adapted photolithography lens might win against medium format backs, except if you need color, but at that point you're actually competing against scanning backs for reproduction work and the scanning back is going to prevail.
Goes to show how absolutely fearless, or better yet brave, the men and women who fly into space are. Look at that pitch black sky, it gave me the willies. It must do something to the psyche of the average person for sure.
"They saw the staggering jewels of the night in their infinite dust and their minds sang with fear.
For a while they flew on, motionless against the starry sweep of the Galaxy, itself motionless against the infinite sweep of the Universe. And then they turned round.
“It’ll have to go,” the men of Krikkit said as they headed back for home. On the way back they sang a number of tuneful and reflective songs on the subjects of peace, justice, morality, culture, sport, family life and the obliteration of all other life forms."
Three cheers for Emily Lakdawalla and the Planetary Society. They do amazing work making this kind of astronomy accessible and understandable to the general public.
Even in something like a moon landing with space and power limitations, it's 2016. We have the technology to take video and at least store it and upload it later.
There is no real reason these couldn't be an HD video instead (or in addition to).
The impact ejecta rock (pyramid rock) looks like there are lines. Are those lines from erosion or sedimentation layers? I thought neither of these would happen without an atmosphere or water.
Curious - it renders quite normally here, on an iPad Air running iOS 9.3 beta 2 (13E5191d), plus Safari Adblock. Perhaps the issue's been fixed in the latest WebKit?
Also I wonder, if someone ever release HD pictures of the stuff the manned landings left behind, will people stop believing that moon landing was a Hoax?
I don't know what it is, but I've seen more and more moon hoax and flat earth stuff on the Internet today than I recall in the past. Perhaps it's observation bias, but it seems like it's more prevalent today than ever before.
I think it is unfair to compare moon hoax theories (which intuitively make sense) to flat-earth theories (which can be intuitively disproven by anyone taking a flight on an airplane).
For some it's a "protest belief." Few really believe Apollo was a hoax, but many more say so as a way of saying f u to the near cancellation of the space program and the general direction away from visionary things the country took since then.
I was personally told this once, and I also extrapolate it a bit from insight into the differences that often exist between actual and stated beliefs and how the latter serve more for social signaling. I generally find literalist interpretations of belief shallow.
And if you actually took them there and showed them the objects they will claim that those were put there after the fact. They will acknowledge that now we can go to the moon, but back then it was all fake.
There are already laser retroreflectors on the moon that a sufficiently powerful laser and sensor can detect. This is still not enough for people to stop believing it's a hoax.
I realize we're all trying to make fun of a strawman who doesn't believe in the purity of science, but that's an unfair characterization of the arguments made against the manned lunar landing.
Just taking a look at the Wikipedia page for the arguments gives you a good idea for the arguments made:
I would like more clarifications on the sort of arguments that allow for retroreflectors to legitimately be on the moon without the moon landing. I was not making fun of anyone; at most, I have frustration and confusion about how the belief of a hoax can exist in the face of repeatable verifiable proof that we put something on the moon.
The section on that wikipedia page on retroreflectors does not mention any theories that allows for it to be there, and glossing over the page a bit, it states that "the foremost idea is that the whole manned landing program was a hoax from start to end."
I would appreciate a discussion of any argument you have found that allows for retroreflectors.
The argument about retroreflectors is right there on the page, although it's buried if you don't have the arguments raised previously in the Wikipedia article.
The main argument is that the lunar landings weren't manned for one or more of the landings. And indeed, right there on the page, it says:
> Smaller retroreflectors were also put on the Moon by the Russians; they were attached to the unmanned lunar rovers Lunokhod 1 and Lunokhod 2.
The existence of the Russian retroreflectors shows reflectors could be deployed without human intervention.
And further:
> Lick Observatory attempted to detect from Apollo 11's retroreflector while Armstrong and Aldrin were still on the Moon but did not succeed until August 1, 1969.[197] The Apollo 14 astronauts deployed a retroreflector on February 5, 1971, and McDonald Observatory detected it the same day.
The argument here is that if the retroreflectors were deployed by Apollo 11, they should have been detectable within the day, not 10 days after their supposed human caused deployment.
Again, this is just the argument presented, not an endorsement.
Refuting crazy ideas is something extremely important, imo, especially if they are widely held. But you have to refute the best possible version of the argument (if there is one), not a straw man weakened version.
The "strongest" version is that we have landed many spacecraft on the moon (placing mirrors, artifacts, etc), but the human part was staged. I think a Chinese photo of clear and obvious _human_ presense on the moon actually would be a big deal as far as putting all the craziness to bed.
It's not like anyone can just go out with a laser pointer and verify the existence of the retroreflectors though, they're for use by observatories. Although even if there was a scientific way for the average man to independently verify the presence of items on the moon, the conspiracy theorists would probably still think of some BS reason to dispute it.
You get, on average, one photon back per laser shot. So you need a single-photon detector, a lock-in amplifier, a pulsed laser (50 or 60 Hz will give you a nice tone to listen for) and a reasonable size telescope. It's a really small signal. But it could be done by a high school physics class if they were good at scrounging apparatus.
Edited to add: the laser power needed is a few watts average, and the telescope aperture needed is probably 30cm at least, with a tracking mount. Without a picosecond laser, you're not going to be able to measure the distance accurately, but you could probably see a detectable line on a scatterplot or waterfall display.
Hard to speak generally over a large audience. I bet one qualification most would ask for would be that it come from a trustworthy, 3rd party's telescope or satellite. That could certainly sway many doubters. Out of curiosity, which pieces of evidence did you find compelling or how did you come to trust its source?
