frantone
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Bring Back Those Spectacular Rocket Launch Shots!
🕑 Added 2022-02-01 03:07:13 +0000 UTCI sure wish they'd put some money and time into getting spectacular launch shots again like they did so well in the Apollo and Shuttle days. Bring back high speed film I say! A little love goes a long way for posterity.
Comments
Dr Andy Hill
My lack of photography knowledge is so small that I don't even know if this is a stupid question. But isn't it possible to obtain the same footage with solid-state digital equipment?
Circuitmike
First things first: my GOD I would love to see shots like these of modern rockets? I'm curious why film is better for this application, though. Wouldn't something like a Phantom high-speed camera, perhaps modified for the extremely rough environment, be just as suitable? I know digital preservation is done poorly in far too many situations these days, but I've worked with digital archivists at a library at one point and learned a lot from them. It CAN be done well.
Chuck Sembroski
I worked on the Shuttle Program for a decade, straight out of school. Watching autosequence start gets me choked up every time. Thanks Fran!
David Peaker
Those close up slow motion films of Saturn 5 launches are absolutely gorgeous!
BobC
In the late '90's I worked on a video camera intended for use close to fast and violent processes, such as rocket launches, weapon tests, and automotive crash tests. It could capture at up to 100,000 fps while surviving repeated 100g impacts. One of our concerns was to preserve the output for posterity, so in addition to our proprietary raw format (the pixel data was conventional, but we added lots of propriety EXIF metadata), we also saved the video in MJPEG format rather than MPEG because MPEG was going through rapid evolution and often failed to preserve the ability to read earlier formats. MJPEG will never die!
