Moon cam

[Clapton Pond]

I was watching a programme on the Apollo 11 moon landing earlier and screengrabbed this...



Any ideas as to what it might be, or what the case is made of? Or where I can get one?

And yes, I'm assuming the moon landing actually happened...

ian

[Will2]

I believe that was the 16mm movie camera.

My father was part of the team that built the video camera at Westinghouse Electric. Seems like normal size now but nothing like it existed until they created it. Video cameras were huge studio things that weighed a ton.

[Janne]

Any ideas as to what it might be, or what the case is made of? Or where I can get one?

A 6x6 Hasselblad loaded with Ektachrome.

[lastcoyote]

I wonder how do they keep the image in focus with the helmet on :?:

And how is the film survise under to hot and cold condition on moon without any protection... :?

[aj]

The handheld are the utter famous Hasselblad 6x6 cameras. Made their reputation there Standard components, specially configured, lubed and checked for the moon missions. At the end of every expedition the cameras were tossed away on the moon Of course keeping the cartridge on board. There was a special Kodak reversal emulsion composed to cope with the extreme contrast.

Check here http://www.honeysucklecreek.net/dvds/index.html about the clearest on earth made footage:

[Clapton Pond]

I believe that was the 16mm movie camera.

My father was part of the team that built the video camera at Westinghouse Electric. Seems like normal size now but nothing like it existed until they created it. Video cameras were huge studio things that weighed a ton.

Well, they're two different cameras, obviously. The video must have been the one that sent live TV pictures back to earth, but he's holding what looked like a Super 8 to me... I just had a mental image of their family cine film evenings...

"Here's Neil and Buzz at the barbecue, here they are at the beach, here they are at the Sea of Tranquility..." etc.

So, free Hasselblads on the moon, then...

ian

[ewanuno]

http://www.butkus.org/chinon/hasselblad ... 500_el.jpg[/img]

hasselblad 500el, unmodified. which is a medium format still camera.

i think that by the look of the picture nasa had a few cosmetic tweaks done to help it fit in with the missions fashion code.

i can just imagine the discussing it,

nasa engineer: "this is the best camera money can buy and fulfills all our technical criteria"

nasa manager: "what? we can't use that! dont you remember the style briefing?. Don't you know that people all over the world are going to watch this? we'll be the laughing stock, it looks like a F**king antique! you might as well go and take a box brownie"

nasa engineer: "well... we could, you know, bling it up a bit...."

[Scotness]

I thought I read somewhere they took Nizo's? (Perhaps Wernher von Braun's suggestion :lol: :lol: )

I might be wrong.....


Scot

[RichardB]

http://www.butkus.org/chinon/hasselblad ... 500_el.jpg[/img]

hasselblad 500el, unmodified. which is a medium format still camera.

i think that by the look of the picture nasa had a few cosmetic tweaks done to help it fit in with the missions fashion code.

i can just imagine the discussing it,

nasa engineer: "this is the best camera money can buy and fulfills all our technical criteria"

nasa manager: "what? we can't use that! dont you remember the style briefing?. Don't you know that people all over the world are going to watch this? we'll be the laughing stock, it looks like a F**king antique! you might as well go and take a box brownie"

nasa engineer: "well... we could, you know, bling it up a bit...."

Apparently they picked it because it was a simple design; and then afterwards went about stripping a load more parts from it, so it had the very basic elements it needed to work as a basic camera but be extremely lightweight and simple. Surprising that it was nothing to do with the 'quality' or 'elegance' of a Hasselblad at all, as you may first expect when hearing that they used them.

[konsti]

Or where I can get one?

http://www.westlicht-auction.com/index. ... 849&lang=3
though pretty expensive…

[Will2]

If you're interested in the still photography, check out this book.
http://www.michaellight.net/fullmoon/
The author went to the National Archives and scanned 1200 of the original negatives and transparencies at a very high res and produced this book and sells large prints.

Here's an interesting article on the video camera and the search for the original recordings that were higher res but had to be down graded to play on commercial TV of the time.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... Id=5578853

Here are the film cameras on Apollo 11...

[Actor]

So, free Hasselblads on the moon, then...

ian

If you're thinking of going up there and salvaging them then plan on spending $100,000,000,000.

Say the camera had a mass of 1kg (just to keep the numbers simple). 10kg of fuel would be needed to lift the camera back into lunar orbit to rendezvous with the command module. 100kg of fuel would be needed to lower that 10kg of fuel to the moon's surface. 10,000kg of fuel would be needed to lift that 100kg from the earth to lunar orbit. This is liquid hydrogen and oxygen, not cheap. Probably at least $100/kg. So you wind up spending $1,000,000 on fuel to bring a $1,000 camera back. A better economy is to leave the camera and bring back more moon rocks, which are priceless.

[Clapton Pond]

If you're thinking of going up there and salvaging them then plan on spending $100,000,000,000.
.

Bugger!

[granfer]

Now you have to make other plans for the weekend!!

[Nicholas Kovats]

Super 8 or standard 8 was actually documenting opening ceremony activites at the Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station: 1967–1981in Australia as part of the Apollo infrastructure, i.e.

http://www.honeysucklecreek.net/early_d ... index.html