Remember that was super slow motion (high shutter speed), reflected off a mirror to the camera that was housed in a flame/heat proof enclosure with a clear mica opening for the camera lens to look thru.
That'd be the 10mm lens and 500fps. Most modern digital cameras that aren't something specialized (like a Phantom) top out at 120fps while the really good ones can do about 240fps. Combine that with the larger lenses & you just don't quite have that same sense of scale and power even with a more powerful launch like Starship.
one thing I really love about that shot is as the rocket rises, there's a clear boundary where the dark engine bell ends and the orange fire begins. But looking just a little closer, you can see that's NOT the engine bell, the bell is quite a bit farther up. So there's this region of exhaust that's almost black as it erupts from the bell. And then at a very specific and even point, it switches on a dime to orange fire.
@@nathanfisher6925 That's the film of unburned kerosene fuel that coats the inside of the nozzles to keep them from melting. F1's burn fuel-rich to protect themselves from their own heat.
Ya I saw the Houston Sat5 while it was still outside in the early 90's. Big, Bold, Beautiful .. especially those F1's. Funny thing is I was just outside Waco not that long before the ATF/FBI slaughtered the Branch Davidians. Memorable trip
Saw the Saturn V at Johnson and it’s inside laying down with each stage separated a bit. What a magnificent sight!!! Standing in the back (1st stage) the scale of the F1 is unbelievable!!!!
As a photographer this was interesting to watch. One more challenge digital cameras have is a much larger sensitivity to infrared than film. This shows the hot exhaust even brighter than it already is. This can easily be seen if you try to take a picture of a bonfire etc with your phone
@@wumpoleflack Phones already have it. To prevent accidental/on purpose involuntary porn seeing through thin clothing that is opaque in visible and semi-transparent in near-IR. Consumer cameras like the Canon DSLRs were often available in 2 versions, one that had an IR filter for a more faithful to the human eye color gamut, and an 'astronomy' version without a filter that could see the entire spectrum available to the sensor.
Even not as a photographer this was interesting to watch. And I don't need to be a photographer to understand what I can clearly discern with my own eyes. 🙄
dSLRs have IR filters, unlike cell phone cameras which not only pinch pennies but are trying to be flat so they avoid having more layers than necessary.
The first time I saw a shuttle launch I was amazed at how different it looked to the images I was used to on tv and film. The exhaust plume is intensely red, not orange or white like it is shown here. It was like looking at a road flare.
@stargazer7644 Agree! I had the same experience watching STS-34 from the Causeway. Definitely more like two molten gold flames than anything captured on film!
I remember watching the Gemini and Apollo launches as a kid. Later, when working at NASA as an adult, I saw multiple shuttle launches. One of the things I remember about the mover is that you could feel the pulsing of the hydraulic pumps as it moved the shuttle through your feet. That and the feeling of your internal organs being pounded by the infrasound waves from a shuttle launch are unlike anything I'd felt before or since.
I watched a couple from a beach across the water. Even at 7-8 miles away don't bother hollering at your buddy, you couldn't yell loud enough to even hear yourself when the sound hit.
@@yourhandlehere1 I was lucky enough to watch all but one from the causeway on the Canaveral (USAF) side. The other one I was on duty in the LCC and couldn't see it in person.
@@HikaruKatayamma The last one I got to see was a night launch and it lit up Orlando like daylight. I couldn't make it out but found the highest point I could, a bridge downtown.
Glad im not the only person to wonder if all the recent launches with their big 'media show' and live streams are actually filmed with a Logitech webcam from 2006.
Terrific video. For those who haven't seen it, the 2019 documentary 'Apollo 11' shows just how good the footage is, especially after it has been digital restored to remove all the scratches it has acquired over the years. If you see it advertised on the big screen - go see it! And for stills, 'Apollo Remastered' by Andy Saunders shows just how much more information can be recovered from under and over exposed film. There are images in the book that simply take your breath away. It's not cheap - but any child of the Space Age will love it. Now a question - where is all the high quality Soviet footage from the Space Race? All of it looks like garbage. The Soviets had access to some of the best lenses in the world through Zeiss and they could obviously 'acquire' Western film stock. And yet, everything we see looks terrible. Are we only seeing copies of copies of copies of the originals, and is there a mountain of stunning footage of Sergei Korolev, Vostok and the N1 rocket sitting in an archive somewhere?
@Stefan Krzemiński It was used before, for Moonwalk One documentary from 1972, but its quality there was nowhere near now and they scaled it down to 35 mm.
Some years ago, a friend-who-knows-stuff told me that the Navy went digital, got rid of their darkrooms. And, that aircraft carriers ended up getting their darkrooms back. Cuz there's just stuff that film can do.
Key thing - Those old lenses that NASA was using still would NUKE anything being made today - We arent seeing optics being made specifically for the government's scientific research as often anymore - theyre being made for consumers today in mass produced factories - often with far less rigorous quality control than what these lenses that captured this footage had going for them. Also, analogue film is FAR better at rendering highlights than digital sensors are - which are better at shadow detail and rendering the darker areas of a photo than with film, so these shots are much easier to gain detail with from film, since they are such bright subjects (you notice the space shuttle launches are far less detailed not only because the SRB's are so bright but also because they were often taken using multiple sensor CCD video cameras.
As someone in the field of optics, that statement on lenses is simply not true. Optics have never been more advanced, and that extends to camera systems too. Of course, cheap is default, and I have no idea what they are using to film rocket launches, but saying more advanced and higher quality lenses than the ones nasa used is just wrong.
I do think it’s worth mentioning that there was footage similar to shuttle for the Artemis 1 launch. I think it’s on film considering has the little red number counters just like shuttle too. It’s here on RUclips if you look for it.
It´s not only the dynamic range of the cameras, it´s also the mounting. The old Saturn V footage with cameras as close as 5 meters to the F1 engines are rocksteady. When you watch the footage of SLS... it´s not the rolling shutter, it´s the wobbling of the whole camera and it´s mounting.
Excellent video. High speed film cameras were indeed used on Artemis. One problem with using film today is lack of places to process the film. During Shuttle, and previous missions, the photo contractor for NASA and the Air Force at the Cape had their own motion picture and still film processing labs. A massive operation. That went away after the Shuttle program ended.
Getting miles of movie film processed is dramatically easier than getting a few rolls from a still camera processed. Movie film is still a huge industry compared to the consumer side.
@@patreekotime4578 True, but in manned spaceflight they want a quick turnaround to look at potential damage to the spacecraft. This is the reason they had labs on site at the Cape.
This is BS. Processing film is pretty simple. Even in WWII we had reconaisance aircraft that developed the footage while in the air and landed with it developed. You make it sound like what could be done in an airplane 80 years ago now is suddenly hard to do on the ground! What is wrong with you?
@@lqr824 I didn't say it was hard to do. They needed a quick turnaround of thousands of feet of film during Apollo and Shuttle. That's why they had labs on site.
Did they also use Kodak in Titusville? The building is still on US 1 and it looks like it’s from the 60’s. It’s been abandoned for at least a decade, I would bet they developed film there as well.
To answer the RED question: Shooting in RED RAW format makes the ISO just metadata. So for example, if you set your ISO to 800 and your shot is significantly overexposed, you can just change the ISO to 200 (or whatever you’d like) in post as if you shot it that way to begin with. It has no effect on quality. But in saying that, that still doesn’t affect dynamic range and will change your overall exposure. I’ve not tried dynamically ramp up or down the ISO during the clip (like an auto exposure), and I’m not sure if that’s even possible. RED footage has incredible quality and dynamic range, but film will always be able to hold better detail in highlights without affecting your mid-tones. Also there’s 70mm film footage of the Apollo 11 launch which just blows every camera/format out of the water.
You just use multiple sensors with ND filters and beam splitters, assemble resulting footage in software, and get all the DR you want. You're throwing around camera buzzwords like you know what you're talking about but clearly you know nothing about photography.
@@lqr824 digital you still get blown whites (albeit much better nowadays). Also the image is too clean in regard to noise and frame rates. Film still has the edge
@@peanuts2105 There is no digital that will blow out with sufficient ND. Read my comment before responding and if you don't understand, respond with a question and I will be happy to explain it to you. You probably have no idea how fast high-speed digital photography can go.
@@lqr824 Lmao "camera buzzwords" and I "know nothing" 😂 I'm a professional cinematographer, have shot on both film and digital cinema cameras, and own a RED my dude. Also, using multiple sensors with ND filters, beam splitters etc, sounds like an absolutely ridiculous and borderline stupid way to "exposure bracket". Firstly, the RED can exposure bracket in-camera without the need of convoluted, bulky, custom hardware . It can also be done in post-production thanks to the R3D format. Secondly, we're talking about how digital sensors do not hold dynamic range in the highlights compared to film negative (but digital holds better in the shadows/low-light) - you can technically exposure bracket on film too which makes your argument totally irrelevant. So back to the point of non-exposure bracketing (EB significantly changes the look of your shot and introduces other issues anyway), you can ND filter all you want... all you're doing is reducing your exposure. A ND filter doesn't magically reduce highlights while preserving everything else 😂 But of course, you would know all of that if you knew what you were talking about :)
@@111BR > multiple sensors with ND filters, beam splitters etc, sounds like an absolutely ridiculous and borderline stupid way to "exposure bracket". Firstly, the RED can exposure bracket in-camera without the need of convoluted, bulky, custom hardware The RED products haven't been around as long as NASA, and the REDS would melt or explode from the heat, so you're going to be doing a shitload of custom fab for this shoot. RED is also not necessarily the most cost-effective solution either, and NASA probably likes having extremely high frame rates the RED can't manage. I bet you anything NASA's not using RED. How much money you got? I will bet you your entire net worth that NASA does not shoot the majority of its launch footage with RED's. I think they had a RED on the ISS for a while but why bother when cheap R5's and the like can shoot 8k now. > Firstly, the RED can exposure bracket in-camera without the need of convoluted, bulky, custom hardware . It can also be done in post-production thanks to the R3D format. Not over an infinite range of exposure. This freaking rocket exhaust, Billy, and half the launches are at night. > you can technically exposure bracket on film too which makes your argument totally irrelevant. 1) no shit, Sherlock, I pointed that out days ago in this very comment section, so search for my earlier comment to that effect. 2) the fact that you can use my method for film hardly means it CANNOT be used digitally, and that was the main point of contention. I NEVER said multiple exposure ranges could be simultaneously captured by digital but not by film. But in response to the misinformed video, my main point was only that you could capture as much DR as you needed with digital sensors even back in the 70s. It's not a question of needing to wait for some improvement. The sensors ALWAYS could do it. There was no time we had sensors but COULDN'T do it. > EB significantly changes the look of your shot and introduces other issues anyway Not necessarily. It depends. In my example of post processing, for example, you could have the processing software automatically assign the brightest area to max output value, or use an absolute maximum value. Then you could simply map then next 6-12 stops linearly down to zero, do an S curve, or even vary scaling over the picture a la HDR. So your output can be high contrast, low contrast, variable contrast, compress a lot into Zone II and VII, pretty much whatever you want, in a few lines of code. I write digital signal processing code, which I imagine you'll say you have a PhD in next...
Just wanted to mention, we still do use film for engineering cameras on Artemis-1 and some people were able to make them public fairly recently on Twitter. Don't remember who though.
@FrankyPi Well yes, but it was only made public this rapidly because someone asked for them, a bit of the footage has to go through a few people first to ensure ITAR content is blurred out. Not to mention, yes NASA does a great job at publicizing it's content, bit it only really makes public on its own fruition what it believes the public wants to see, anything extra needs to be requested
I've worked in the film industry for almost 20 years now and I can assure you this is not a shortcoming of digital technology. There absolutely exist sensors that can handle that much dynamic range and overexposure no problem. There has to be some other reason the Artemis and SpaceX shots look so mediocre. One possibility is that they record in some high dynamic range format and it's been 'downsampled' incorrectly to some normal colour space like rec709 for web use. .Also judging by the image i'd say there are using some not exactly high quality (picture wise) lenses due to the high amount of chromatic abberation present.
That Artemis launch, I thought it was a low dynamic rec709 too. They probably could have state of the art cameras newest have 15-16f stop range. Film especially 16mm maybe it has high resolution but always has a softness issue. 16mm could have HD resolution but a modern camera could look sharper because there's no gaussian diffusion before photons hit sensor.
Arri has a new camera with even more dynamic range than the RED, but highlight rolloff is always a tricky deal because luma once it peaks it goes white and on film there are always shifts in the chemical crystals no matter how intense the light source is. this not only allows the rolloff to have information and a linear falloff but also contaminates the clipped or over exposed parts with texture and the fundamental colour. This information gets lost or sharpened in digital, loosing halation and going ugly and pure white is the result.
Bayer sensors have the problem that only 50% of the incoming light is dedicated to the red and blue channels and the other 50% is coded/ receptive to green. An example would be a 60 megapixel camera sensor where 30mp receives green, 15mp for blue and 15mp for red. Shadows are cooler/ blue and highlights are warmer/ red, everything else just sits in the middle which is why 50% of a digital cameras sensor is dedicated to the green channel. Interpolation is used to make a "best guess" estimate of what the colors should actually be. The more resolution to work with the better/ more accurate that guess will be. A tri-linear sensor from the 90's is still better for full RGB capture, the downside is they can't be used for single shot purposes.
@@dtibor5903 did you even read my comment? Or was this a reply to another comment? If not, then what is wrong with my explanation since you don’t seem to get that this is about dynamic range and not a basic and subjective comparison about what’s better or not. What a salad of concepts you are making..
> Arri has a new camera with even more dynamic range than the RED It doesn't matter what the camera's dynamic range is because you can simply use more than one camera with half-silvered beam splitters and neutral density filters.
As far as the rolling shutter issue, Red has a series of lens mounts called "motion mounts" that are essentially LCD gates. A transparent screen between the lens and sensor goes opaque to gate the full image which then gives the sensor time to offload the sensor while not exposed to light. It also can go semi opaque to act like a neutral density filter. This does nothing to extend the dynamic range of the camera / sensor, but it is something you can dynamically control without effecting what the lens is projecting onto the sensor (like riding the iris does). Red is already working with NASA so I'm sure if this technology could be put to good use it already would be.
I miss the previous technology, CCD, especially because it doesn't have the rolling shutter problem at all. Two prosumer DV cameras I used extensively until about 2011 had three CCDs (R, G, and B) - they were large cameras and only recorded SD, but the image quality was good. But apparently everything is CMOS now in the HD era.
@@hbp_ That would be a good trade in some circumstances (not rocket launches, of course - we need all the dynamic range we can get for that). But I have never owned any CMOS cameras (video or still) that had GS as an option. I guess that's not surprising - I don't shop at the pro level (I'm more of a "prosumer").
I love how you make a topic that I would never even bother to research myself (because I have very little interest in cameras and photography) so fascinating!!
In reviewing many old aerial survey photos I was disappointed that only the 1950’s ones were very sharp - you could still make out individual trees and rocks from 20,000 ft. It was said that survey companies were then using surplus military recon lenses from WW2 - apparently were not later on.
You are very right about digital cameras not being able to handler over exposure as well as film. In photography we have two rules for exposure on film and digital that goes; when in doubt underexpose on digital and overexpose on film. On digital though, you are able to recover much more data from underexposed pictures.
That also has to do with the dynamic range compression on digital, at least if you’re shooting video & very likely not a raw format. The dynamic range is garbage with compressed digital video.
I suspect it’s a deliberate design strategy. I once saw a Nikon vs Hassleblad test, and the Nikon had much better shadow detail, but highlights were blown out. With the Hasselblad, it was the opposite, one could recover detail in highlights, but not shadows.
@@honeysucklecat No, it's the inherent nature of how the medium works. Film is logarithmic: think of raindrops falling on a checkerboard. A square is either wet or dry, period. Incoming rain falls randomly, but the first 10 drops probably hit dry squares. But once half the squares are wet, half the falling drops land on already-wet squares so don't do anything. So the same number of drops that caused 32 squares to become wet now only causes an additional 16 squares to become wet -- *not* the other 32. The next batch only wets another 8 squares, and so on. Digital counts linerarly, so the overexposure maxes out the count and that's it. But, on the dark side, it's much more sensitive and counts about as many photons as it's possible to catch. Modern sensors are very close to the limiting quantum efficiency.
@@JohnDlugosz I just wish they could capture full RGB in a single frame. The highlights and shadows suffer for it due to the limitations of a Bayer sensor.
As a photographer/cinematographer, I'd like to suggest that there's some important digital settings that can be changed to actually capture very close to what film used to for rocket launches. 1) Autoexposure Bias (AE): The difference we see in these 16mm shots is mainly due to auto exposure preference leaning very heavily on a setting that doesn't allow over exposure at all, so they will darken enough to expose the exhaust on the SRBs. The digital examples are using an AE setting that ignores extremely bright parts and tries to keep recognized objects in frame at a reasonable exposure. So they will not darken enough or at all in these scenarios. A digital camera set to the same AE setting that the 16mm shots were set to would look very similar, as sky at midday is already very bright and relatively similar in brightness to the exhaust (compared to the night sky). 2) Frames Per Second to Exposure Time relationship: Most 'proper' video will strive to show a smidge of motion blur instead of showing a perfectly 'frozen' image in each frame because it looks more cinematic. This means that your exposure time (per frame) must be close to the same amount of time each frame of film is in front of the lens, but not much faster. The 16mm 500fps shots show some motion blur which means that the Exposure time is close to 1/500s. This is important because the digital systems shown in this video are not capturing 500fps, probably 50 or 60fps, so their Exposure Time when set on Auto Exposure will likely be around the same 1/500 or less. This makes the footage look cheezy and choppy compared to the original 16mm shots. The exposure time is much much less than each digital frame's time on screen. Because this is not the case on the original 16mm shots, they come across to us as "cinematic" and "epic", instead of cheesy. 2b)If we compared similar digital high fps launch shots, during the day (I wonder if they exist?), we would also see the sky darken to expose the exhaust, and there would be no overexposure like in the digital examples we see here, or at least a lot less.
Filmmaker here: just a heads up: RED famously markets their camera's with (way) higher dynamic range then they actually have. RED is not to be trusted, ARRI's estimates of their new alexa35 has 17 stops of dynamic range that has been confirmed by other testers. I also shoot quite a bit on 16mm and can confirm that film has absolutly amazing latitude!
That’s not really “dynamic range” so much as “static range stops”, isn’t it now? The point Paul made in this video is that they dynamic range at a given exposure setting is greater on film than a modern digital sensor. And relatedly that the digital clipping of overexposed highlights is a severe shortcoming on digital that the operator has to anticipate when setting up for a shot.
It doesn't matter. This video's completely wrong. You can get 300 stops DR if you need it! Just use half-silver mirrors and ND filters, and combine resulting exposures in software. I could write the software in 45 minutes. It's not complicated. It's hard to believe RED is lying: you can't lie about anything in the movie industry. You can't even call an f/1.4 lens an f/1.4 if it actually transmits T/1.5. It has to be accurate. I assume RED is simply using a different definition of DR than you are.
@@fosterlewis7360 i'm using the language Paul used, talking about RED's claim about 17stops of dynamic range which is a false claim by RED. Secondly, I'd say that actually now the Alexa35 might surpass Film's dynamic range, because the highlights are extremely well retained, and digital's dynamic range of underexposure has been way better then film for more then 15 years now. mind you, this is coming from a cameraman (me) how just now came home after picking up my processed s16mm filmrolls after shooting two shoots on film. And I also shoot digital. Also I have never heard of static range stops!
I'd highly recommend looking up the alexa35... That camera is finally "there" when it comes to film, but, its about 100k us dollars so i'm not sure if any company wants to put them close to a spacerocket :)
I guess, the reason for the difference between film and digital images is that for CCD sensors at least there is a linear relation between exposure time/intensity and signal level (up to saturation), while for film it is kind of logarithmic (almost linear in log-plot) although limited, something like ~1-exp(-t) I guess. I.e. for digital images an object twice as bright will be appear twice as bright in the image, while on film it will appear less than twice as bright. Hence you can "fit" a wider range of brightnesses into the image without over-/under exposure. To be more specific, I assume that with each time step less and less chemicals are available for reaction, so less chemicals are likely to interact with photons in the next time step size and so on i.e. less significant change in intensity in the image.
@@phillipbanes5484 if the "bucket" size up to saturation for each physical pixel is high enough, that can be. But then those videos of the rocket launches are using digital sensors that don't have more dynamic range or the post processing wasn't good.
Great to see your content again Paul. Rocketry is one of my most favourite topics and I still get chills watching original Apollo footage, like you do. I'm British too, and waw born 5 years after Armstrong and Aldrin landed on the Moon. I take pride in the knowledge that many of the brains that contributed to Apollo and other programmes were also from these shores. To this day, Moonwalk One is my favourite movie of all time and I really enjoyed seeing some of the footage it used, in your film, together with a similarly unusual and 'of its time' musical score. Thanks so much!
Absolutely fantastic. I have used both film and digital cameras for years and the digital white point as I call it has alway been an issue over traditional film. Also black and white film has a superb dynamic range of tone, especially glass plates which are over 100 years old.
Very interesting, as always, Paul. Amazing that those original Apollo shots weren't available immediately and were 'discovered' quite some time afterwards and became some of the most iconic material from the entire program.
Film has *amazing* dynamic range. I worked as a darkroom guy for a small newspaper when I was younger and the reporters would bring back film from nighttime sporting events that, when developed, the negative looked like a clear piece of film. However, when enlarged and printed using the old techniques, a usable image almost always could be recovered. Post-processing and exposure-stretching can be done from the negative that takes a few bits of dynamic range and expands it to a nearly full dynamic range again - albeit with some graininess. Great video and I'm glad that folks are still pointing out how much further digital needs to go before it can truly replace film. Cheers! p.s.: Next, do CRT dynamic range vs. modern LCD/LED/OLED screens - the dynamic range of 'old' analog electronics is still quite amazing.
When it comes to dark images, modern CMOS sensors basically count every photon. Or rather, something like 92% due to the limiting "quantum efficiency". That is, it does better than film, and as good as anything *can* do. It's on over exposure that film wins: the inherently logarithmic nature of analog media means that each doubling of the light will manage to hit a few more silver halide crystals. With buckets that count photons, you need to double the counter capacity to add one stop.
The human eye is pretty good at what it can do, too, even though it's a single-element Huygens-type of focal length ~22 mm with an automatic variable aperture.
@@RideAcrossTheRiver Because it has two seperate sets of sensors, one set optimized for bright light and color, and a second set for low light. The human eye is also only sharp at one point, but can scan so quickly and do compositing so quickly that the amassed composite image in the brain can be sharp across different focal ranges and show detail across a wide range of lighting conditions. The human brain is the ultimate HDR/image stitching machine.
@@patreekotime4578 Here's a good test: when Venus or Jupiter are at favourable distance, check them out in a low-contrast dusk (or dawn) sky. See if your eyes can perceive a 'dot' rather than a point!
@@patreekotime4578 I have a question for you. There is no satisfactory answer on the Internet to this question - I know - i looked! l If you could convert the analogue human eye to digital megapixels how many megapixels can the human eye see in - assuming of course such a direct conversion was possible?
This is a great explanation of the technical differences between film and digital and why that makes it harder, but the old footage also just has great composition.
As I'm a bit of a film technology nerd. 35mm is still used in modern film making because of the large dynamic range; film noise, incredible depth of field and detail. For example Breaking Bad was shot on 35mm which makes perfect sense with the intense contrast of those beautiful desert shots - bright sun and shadows
Any updates on this, are any current TV or movie productions still using 35mm? I know a few years ago people like Quentin Tarantino were still holding on but I wonder if anyone now is still using film. I'm sure there are still some independent films created in 35mm but I wonder if any studio movies or TV shows.
@Steve Pemberton independent films might struggle to get the funding as film is pretty expensive process. I'll have to do research to see if anyone is using 35mm or even 70mm
Seeing that shot of a V2 taking off in the context of Saturn V development, brings home how incredible the rapid development of rocketry at that time was - just over 25 years from the first successful V2s to Appolo 11. That's like getting a supersonic jet from New York to New Zealand in 1928 - 25 years after the Wright Brothers' first flight!
My gramma went from riding in a covered wagon to a Central Montana homestead for the first time to watching every second of the Apollo missions on her own tv... in sub 40 years. 🤯
I think you missed the most important advantage of digital cameras: the images are real time. No film to recover and develope, far less things that can go wrong.
True, but quality matters when the purpose is serious investigation, science and engineering, not just snap shots and selfies. I think you missed the whole point of what was said. 🙄
I have a Pentax K1000SE 35 millimetre camera. It takes photographs superior to any digital camera. For photographs of the 2024 solar eclipse, I did not even consider any digital camera. I took my father's old Pentax camera out and took incredible photographs.
A potentially big issue is whether or not the special film needed for these cameras is even produced anymore. Quentin Tarantino for example on his last film that he shot with real film, had trouble acquiring enough of it.A potentially big issue is whether or not the special film needed for these cameras is even produced anymore. Quentin Tarantino for example on his last film that he shot with real film, had trouble acquiring enough of it.
Didn't the Saturn 5 test flights (Apollo 7 particularly) have film cameras mounted in interstage sections, or were they in other parts of the rocket? The recovery of the images was possibly a little more tricky than a realtime digital stream, but it's pretty incredible how they did recover the film once ejected from the rocket. Not to mention the mind-blowing quality (and subject). Was there much 70mm film taken of launches? I'm certain I've seen some that was said to be 70mm (or some other large format).
35mm was commonly used for NASA launches, but not for the very high speed film rates. As Droid said, !6mm Photosonic cameras up to 500 frames per second (for a slow-motion look) but 35mm usually only up to about 125 fps. I don't know it but I quite expect 70mm - maybe even IMAX - might be used for especially glorious shots in some cases. There was another type of film camera - polygonal scanning prism - for frame rates up in the thousands per second for scientific/engineering analysis. Rather poor image quality, probably not often seen by the public.
I LOVE THE OLD FILMS! The lighting is just right, the slomo gripping. And now, for the 1st time, I can watch that in HD because I have a newer display, now.
Film is definitely superior to digital for certain niche applications such as this. One benefit of digital, however, is that you can livestream HD digital video from the launchpad in real time. With film you can't see it until it gets processed. In the Apollo days they had analog TV cameras for real time broadcast but none that close to the pad. Looking at the comments here it seems NASA is still using film after all, so they get the best of both technologies.
It's good seeing the shuttle pull away diagonally from the tower as it ascends in the first few seconds. When travelling in polar regions, I always slightly overexposed film otherwise snow/ice looked grey. Not for slide film as I found it could not cope so well as print film. Still miss the days of film despite the convenience of digital. The higher cost meant every shot mattered.
It’s easier to up-rez and clarify 35mm film, frame by frame than video. Depending on quality of the film formula -and it’s storage. I have worked in the film and broadcast industry full time for 43 years. I restore footage now forensically for various agencies daily 🎥 Wonderful channel !
I had some fun with a Fairchild 70mm aerial camera. The 70mm format would be staggering to use on one of these launches, it could be projected clearly onto a massive vertical flat plane.
SLS did have film cameras rolling but some got very blown out. The footage was released only a week or two ago, hopefully even better quality to come too!
No doubt NASA ever considered the artistic beauty of all those high speed films, especially those of the Saturn V. Thanks Paul, this was really interesting! 👍👍
@@thecoldglassofwatershow They had saved the original SSTV tapes of Apollo 11 EVA, those were likely overwritten later, but NTSC copies have always existed so the only difference is that those are a bit worse quality. They did remaster it for 50th anniversary. The original SSTV broadcast from Apollo 11 is worse quality than in the later missions, which are available, they upgraded their bandwidth capabilities and TV cameras, so the TV camera footage of Apollo 15-17 has more detail and is in color.
NASA spent millions on cameras and put them everywhere. They filmed from planes, helicopters and those “bright eyes”. One of my favorite shots was a Mercury Redstone launch from a helicopter at a high altitude. It’s a rare shot that’s hard to find, but it’s amazing. In other words, NASA really made a herculean effort to capture great footage. No one these days wants to spend that much money on filming launches. But the current Go Pros mounted on the side of rockets is really good.
Don’t forget that the main reason behind the race into space in the 1960s was, at the end of the day, a propaganda contest between the USA and the USSR and as such, the quality and quantity of images was a meaningful issue.
There ARE special digital cameras that were used when TESTING the SRB's that were able to retain contrast in both shadows and the exhaust itself. Might have been too expensive to risk that close to the fulln rocket, though. Otherwise not sure why they wouldn't be used there, too.
When I see that Apollo footage, I always hear the Sunrise fanfare from Richard Strauss's Also sprach Zarathustra, the 2001 Space Odyssey theme. It's too much grandeur for words. I was an Apollo kid, and when we had an Apollo mission up there, the moon looked magical. I stared at it, still trying to wrap my head around it, even during Apollo 17. We were there!
It's worth comparing the movie Grand Prix (1966) with modern Formula One coverage. The movie managed the same quality of footage just without the live transmission capability, for the same reasons mentioned here. The shuttle launch footage narrated by the engineers is facinating with all the detail revealed by the cameras.
Amazing video. As a film photographer and lover of movies shot on film I'm so happy that you talked about the technical properties of film in such detail. I think using high end digital cinema cameras for these shots would solve the rolling shutter problem and at least mitigate the overexposure but probably they're impractical for the size or for the fact that they require an operator so they're seen as not needed
You can control a cinema camera remotely. They could use proper cinema cameras with wider dynamic range than film for rocket footage but rhey wouldn't be able to shoot at the frame rates needed for engineering footage like that of Apollo
Fantastic video, thank you. As a photographer starting my career in the 1990s, through to digital in the early 2000s, I was hoping you'd discuss film's incredible dynamic range and how digital is still trying to achieve. I was thinking that many rolling shutter cameras will be switched out to global shutter cameras for future launches. Really glad you made this video and thank you again for being so thorough.
As a videographer I just wanted to offer a quick correction, while the majority of CMOS sensors do not have better dynamic range then many film stocks, professional grade cameras these days often significantly outperform filmstock. And many consumer cameras handle shadows better than film. I've never used Red Cameras but do think the Sony Venice probably would be quite close in terms of highlight recovery. I've made some pretty awful mistakes on Sony and Arri cameras in terms of overexposure and it usually is recoverable. The big issue with CMOS is what happens to your colours when you hit the limits of the sensor. I feel like Nasa could fix their issues if they worked one of the leading companies like Sony. Personally I would engineer a camera system that uses a rotating ND filter system and have two video outputs saved, each genlocked to the rotating ND, so one footage gets a bright exposure and one gets a darker exposure. Depending on the speed of the system you could even have multiple levels of exposure.This can be done in software as well but the ND would help with other issues too. It's just photo bracketing but with high speed cameras.
The moral of the story is… film still has its place, but digital can also do some amazing things (like the live shots from orbit / staging etc). Very much a “best use case” choice between the two where each has it’s specialisation.
TLDR Because its on film. They should never had stopped using film for space travel imo, its just more real and a big reason why the Apollo images were so powerful
Lovely stuff, Paul. These films were the visual track of my childhood. And they are still just as impressive today, 60 years later. To this day, I still don't know if the Saturn Vs really took off that slowly or not. But, whatever the answer, in my mind, this is how a real rocket takes off!
I was in my late 20s when we got to the moon. When they lifted off the moon, I was so used to seeing the Saturn rocket slowly rise up, I was completely taken aback by the speed of the lander. Like you, I'm not sure if the Saturn really rose that slowly, but that was a lot of mass to get moving, so it probably was that slow to start with, otherwise the G forces would have been tremendous.
I think SpaceX is bringing back this sense of grandeur in their shots. The test of Starship seen from above is one of the best example of marvellous technique
6:02 is one of my favorite video clips of all time. I just love the raw power it captures with such perfect stability. Then the rewind action when the flame gets sucked back down after ignition. And mostly the dark exhaust for the first couple feet out of the engine bell has always intrigued me. Why is it so much darker than the flame a few feet further? Just not fully combusted? Was this intentional or inefficiency? It’s a beautiful shot.
I am watching Apollo rocket launch footage with beautiful dynamic range recorded on film. I have been searching for the answer to this for a long time in my mind. No one has given an explanation about this. Excellent technical explanation. thankyou
This is one of the best videos I have seen regarding the space program. Thanks for putting this together as I learned a lot about how all of the stunning images were captured and produced.
It's not a good video. Almost everything it tries to teach is mistaken. By using half-silvered mirrors and neutral density filters you can take multiple exposures at different exposure levels simultaneously, and later combine in software in various ways. As soon as camera A is nearing max brightness, camera B is just starting to record something besides black. As B in turn is nearing max white, C is moving past black and so on. You can thus get any amount of dynamic range you need with digital and film. And he's also wrong to imply all sensors have rolling shutter. They don't.
Interesting that none of the clever people at Nasa or SpaceX have, as you suggested Paul, thought to just use old film cameras to capture the very bright exhausts of the engines. As well as giving everyone at home a better spectacle, surely the engineers still want to see exactly what's going on during the launch?
My assumption: We can collect much more data with sensors nowadays compared to back then. So getting failures on film is no longer relevant for troubleshooting. And spending a lot of money just for the spectacle just isn't worth it.
For Artemis 1, NASA used both digital and film cameras to capture the launch. You can find some of the high-speed film footage on RUclips if you're interested.
Absolutely outstanding!! You did a fabulous job of explaining the differences between film and digital video technology and I thoroughly enjoyed all of the Saturn V and Space Shuttle engine ignition footage!! Great job! 👏
I had only ever seen these videos growing up but was fortunate to see the third last shuttle launch. Holy cow, it is bright in real life. And although it is cool to watch on TV or now a smartphone, this doesn’t even come close to seeing it in person.
A couple of things. Everything in a photographed scene is either underexposed or overexposed except a very narrow band of brightness in the scene, and that ideal or average brightness in the scene is what the camera exposure is set for. Compared to digital, film handles under- and overexposure much better, thus captures the scene in its entirety better. This is a very important video and hopefully will lead to better video of the launches we're seeing now. Second, the great film of the old launches that we see today, we rarely saw any of it at the time! The first time I saw any of that great old Saturn footage was probably around 2010, and on RUclips. The thing was there was no outlet for it except TV, and the amount of footage that we saw then on TV was about the same as you'd see on normal network TV today, which is practically none.
Perfect video. I didn't learn much here but I have been desperate for someone to make a video talking about the over-exposure and rolling shutter issues that ruin all modern launch footage. Of course the most well -known last remaining advantage of film is the ability to pull back details out of the highlights in post without underexposing in the first place. The only way to deal with this with modern cameras is fast shutter and always under-expose and use a very expensive camera with high dynamic range and hopefully a global shutter. I have always wished that SpaceX would invest heavily in such cameras as whilst they are expensive, they are a fraction of their overall budget, and this footage is so immensely important to be captured as gloriously as possible for historical purposes, just look at how often we see that fantastic old NASA film footage! With the recent integrated Starship test I was also longing for the close-up quick disconnected footage like we see on the recovered 16mm film from those old NASA film. I was also publically critical to SpaceX on their slomo closeup launch footage which had terrible rolling shutter and poor Twixtor style frame multiplication work done on it with screen tearing visible. Anyway, good work mate, love your work as always!
It is not a "perfect video." Each of its main points is mistaken. I've explained in a longer comment how this actually all works. You can get all the DR you want from digital and if you don't want rolling-shutter just use a sensor that doesn't have rolling shutter.
The Apollo launch was visually Iconic, something for the ages. Simply put, it was the first true major step forward. To this day it gives many, myself included, goosebumps. The movie Apollo 13 has been the only other film that even comes close the intensity.
Great video, and while I think everything you say is true, you're missing the main issue. Modern digital RAW video from a professional movie camera is superior to film in most ways when the camera is setup correctly and AFTER a lot of processing. I think what's happened here is that there has been a switch to real-time, networked cameras - these are not comparable to high quality movie cameras, but do give the operators exactly what they need most - a realtime view of their rocket. There's absolutely no reason why you couldn't get even more amazing footage today with digital cameras if you invest the time and effort to do that. There are youtubers doing this today, especially around the Space X launches - they just don't have access to the up-close locations and expensive, protective enclosures NASA had.
Exactly, raw digital footage has to be 'developed' to achieve optimal results, just like film. The viewing medium (screen or print) has a much lower dynamic range than the sensor or film. Manual processing of (underexposed) digital footage will likely result in much better presentation of the highlights in web video, compared to the automatic scene exposure used for live streams.
Yup, it's annoying this trend lately of youtubers talking about film as if it's amazingly better than digital without considering what you can do with digital cameras that aren't just smartphones
I miss film so much. The peace and solitude that came with losing track of time in the dark room, and listening to vinyl record albums all the way through or making mix tapes. And dont get me started on Kodachrome, Ecta-K, or cinematic sizing like todd-ao. When digital was peaking i remember seeing an ex-photo journalist first gen Nikon photomic pro grade camera with bulk film cans and a motor winder that took a handfull of AA batteries. It was what i dreamed of owning when i was a teenager, and it was in the 2nd hand stand up for $200. I wish now i had bought it because i have a feeling that like analogue sound media, that film has not had a its day
Fantastic explanation and video to illustrate with. Love it. There's an undeniable romanticism with film, but to see it quantified in the way you have, about *why* it's great not just whimsically, but also technically, is amazing. Thanks a ton
NOVA had a special about the space program about the time my older boy was understanding the difference between true stories and made up stories. He seemed rather puzzled, so I asked him. "These space ships are so small," he said. I asked, "are you thinking about the other space ship we watch?" (Star Trek). "Oh," I said. "That space ship is made up. These were real." He was completely glued to the program. It ended with a sequence of a Saturn 5 taking off. Water pouring, ice falling, flame rising, flame getting sucked back under, gantry retracting, cables disconnecting, clamps releasing, rocket starting to rise..... I don't think that kid even breathed for several minutes! (He is 32 now)
That expression "They don't make them like they used to" comes to mind. But you'd think we'd have better stuff these days... Great video! I'm a new subscriber and this was truly a great video and I liked your narration.
Modern digital cameras cannot handle the intense bright light of a large rocket launch and over expose, compared to film cameras. Modern digital cameras produce their own kind of artifacts. I saw the 2019 documentary film of Apollo 11 and was stunned by the quality of the cleaned up film footage.
Consumer/prosumer 35mm film cameras had a rolling shutter effect. Past a certain shutter speed (1/125 on my Pentax ME Super), the opening shutter blade doesn't make it fully open before the closing blade operates. So, at 1/250th second and faster, the shutter opening is indeed scanning the image across the film. Many other brands had this limit at 1/60th second.
There's another effect that occurs in digital photography that doesn't occur with film. When a portion of a film image is overexposed, it whites out, but the whiteout doesn't affect the rest of the image. Digital cameras, by contrast, rely on the photoelectric effect to free electrons within the pixels of the sensor. Unlike the photographic emulsion on a film, those electrons can move. If one portion of a digital image is severely overexposed, the excess electrons spill over into neighbouring parts of the image. As we've seen in some of the footage, this effect can blow out the entire image.
Speaking as someone with a Global Shutter Cinema Camera, yes, the motion capture is superior, however, the nature of the Cmos sensors construction leads to them having a more limited dynamic range then Rolling Shutter cameras, 12 to 15 is about the current limit, along with a lower sensitivity. CCD sensors are even less sensitive, but can have a wider range. Then there's the Colour Science applied, and whether the manufacturer took the time to write code that fully uses the whole dynamic range, and not just the base range.
Excellent : as a child , my family followed the SATURN rockets with those huge USA painted on them and we were amazed and so proud of the engineering prowess of our people. Yes : Film is incredible , I shoot Film in my cameras 35mm and 120mm and I have 4x5 inch film too. The detail of the film image grows exponentially in hundreds of megapixels as you go into larger formats. Thank you for creating this wonderful and beautiful video , and explaining for many the gains and losses , of the digitization of imaging. Wonderful beautiful the 16mm film images of the Saturn engines and the beautiful sky in its blue even clouds , as those rockets majestically rise up into the air. Magnificent. 🇺🇸
I'm always amazed at any and all the pictures and film of any rocket or satelite going about it's buisiness. And all those who strove to get those images. My hat is off, I salute them all.
Really interesting video, but I think there are a few incorrect takeaways here. The dynamic range of film is something that seems to be incredibly vague and without consensus. Brands such as IMAX will imply it’s north of 16 stops, but just as RED claim 17 stops, it’s almost entirely marketing. There are two main points I want to emphasise: firstly is the cost and practicality between the Apollo cameras and contemporary, and secondly are the differences between film and digital negatives. What people are forgetting about the SLS footage or SpaceX webcasts is that these camera setups aren’t in nitrogen-filled containers, are designed to be set-and-forget, and probably cheaper to run overall. In the case of SLS they seem to be set up more as CCTV cameras than anything approaching cinematic or maximum detail. There are far less cameras overall, and they tend to be placed in less interesting locations. Secondly, dynamic range is a measurement that is affected as much by specific highlight rolloff characteristics as specific shadow rolloff characteristics. While film has vastly superior management of highlights (though digital is slowly finding ways to recover detail), the exact opposite is true in the shadows, where digital + minor noise reduction can vastly exceed the effective dynamic range of film. I believe that if you were to take a decent camera that records in RAW, exposed for the highlights, and colour graded it to recover shadow detail, you’d end up with the kind of shot you’re looking for, with the added bonus of vastly higher resolution. If you look at real world examples of film, it is always a stylistic choice that results in less detail. I am astonished that film has continued to have a reputation of fidelity as long as it has, but I guess it comes down to the way film forces people to put more energy into the shots they’re getting.
There's been a trend in recent years (although it has always existed in photography circles) of claiming that film has superior DR but it's never substantiated and it's never said by someone who understands the pros and cons you've outlined. The video showing CCTV footage as an example of digital being worse shows that Curious Droid also made the argument without understanding it.
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This video needs to be sent directly to Elon Musk. I want to the Starship with film.
Don't forget to add the link to the Bill Lawson video to the description!
The camera covers look strangely like mail boxes....
.
It would have been great if you told us where to watch the footage. Or even where you got it from.
@@InconsistentManner
Yeah,
This dude does have his head up his azz a little bit.
Good with content, but lacking in delivery...
The nozzle shot of the Saturn Vs has a sense of scale and power that I haven’t seen on any other launch video before or since
Remember that was super slow motion (high shutter speed), reflected off a mirror to the camera that was housed in a flame/heat proof enclosure with a clear mica opening for the camera lens to look thru.
That'd be the 10mm lens and 500fps. Most modern digital cameras that aren't something specialized (like a Phantom) top out at 120fps while the really good ones can do about 240fps. Combine that with the larger lenses & you just don't quite have that same sense of scale and power even with a more powerful launch like Starship.
one thing I really love about that shot is as the rocket rises, there's a clear boundary where the dark engine bell ends and the orange fire begins. But looking just a little closer, you can see that's NOT the engine bell, the bell is quite a bit farther up. So there's this region of exhaust that's almost black as it erupts from the bell. And then at a very specific and even point, it switches on a dime to orange fire.
@@nathanfisher6925 That's the film of unburned kerosene fuel that coats the inside of the nozzles to keep them from melting. F1's burn fuel-rich to protect themselves from their own heat.
@@wmarkwitherspoon
It was clear quartz
The Saturn V was, and still is, the most majestic and beautiful rocket that has ever flown.
Ya I saw the Houston Sat5 while it was still outside in the early 90's. Big, Bold, Beautiful .. especially those F1's. Funny thing is I was just outside Waco not that long before the ATF/FBI slaughtered the Branch Davidians. Memorable trip
SpaceX has a simple elegant design on the Superheavy and it's ship, but those 5 F1's with the fins is iconic.
Saw the Saturn V at Johnson and it’s inside laying down with each stage separated a bit. What a magnificent sight!!! Standing in the back (1st stage) the scale of the F1 is unbelievable!!!!
@@dovydenaspdx
Elegant?
Superheavy+starship looks like huge flying dildo.
And the most powerful, I believe. 😍
As a photographer this was interesting to watch. One more challenge digital cameras have is a much larger sensitivity to infrared than film. This shows the hot exhaust even brighter than it already is. This can easily be seen if you try to take a picture of a bonfire etc with your phone
@@wumpoleflack they already have it
@@wumpoleflack Phones already have it. To prevent accidental/on purpose involuntary porn seeing through thin clothing that is opaque in visible and semi-transparent in near-IR. Consumer cameras like the Canon DSLRs were often available in 2 versions, one that had an IR filter for a more faithful to the human eye color gamut, and an 'astronomy' version without a filter that could see the entire spectrum available to the sensor.
@Richard Cranium yup. Without them, and with some IR flashlight you have nightvision-ish.
Even not as a photographer this was interesting to watch. And I don't need to be a photographer to understand what I can clearly discern with my own eyes. 🙄
dSLRs have IR filters, unlike cell phone cameras which not only pinch pennies but are trying to be flat so they avoid having more layers than necessary.
The first time I saw a shuttle launch I was amazed at how different it looked to the images I was used to on tv and film. The exhaust plume is intensely red, not orange or white like it is shown here. It was like looking at a road flare.
@stargazer7644 Agree! I had the same experience watching STS-34 from the Causeway. Definitely more like two molten gold flames than anything captured on film!
Same colour as a K- to M-type star.
Its the sound that cannot be matched. I saw the first STS launch and the last, and a lot in between.
I remember watching the Gemini and Apollo launches as a kid. Later, when working at NASA as an adult, I saw multiple shuttle launches. One of the things I remember about the mover is that you could feel the pulsing of the hydraulic pumps as it moved the shuttle through your feet. That and the feeling of your internal organs being pounded by the infrasound waves from a shuttle launch are unlike anything I'd felt before or since.
I watched Columbia from the gates at Patrick AFB in 1981. I couldn't hear it, but I could feel it.
not jealous. definitely not jealous!
I watched a couple from a beach across the water. Even at 7-8 miles away don't bother hollering at your buddy, you couldn't yell loud enough to even hear yourself when the sound hit.
@@yourhandlehere1 I was lucky enough to watch all but one from the causeway on the Canaveral (USAF) side. The other one I was on duty in the LCC and couldn't see it in person.
@@HikaruKatayamma The last one I got to see was a night launch and it lit up Orlando like daylight. I couldn't make it out but found the highest point I could, a bridge downtown.
Glad im not the only person to wonder if all the recent launches with their big 'media show' and live streams are actually filmed with a Logitech webcam from 2006.
😂😂😂
Terrific video. For those who haven't seen it, the 2019 documentary 'Apollo 11' shows just how good the footage is, especially after it has been digital restored to remove all the scratches it has acquired over the years. If you see it advertised on the big screen - go see it!
And for stills, 'Apollo Remastered' by Andy Saunders shows just how much more information can be recovered from under and over exposed film. There are images in the book that simply take your breath away. It's not cheap - but any child of the Space Age will love it.
Now a question - where is all the high quality Soviet footage from the Space Race? All of it looks like garbage. The Soviets had access to some of the best lenses in the world through Zeiss and they could obviously 'acquire' Western film stock. And yet, everything we see looks terrible. Are we only seeing copies of copies of copies of the originals, and is there a mountain of stunning footage of Sergei Korolev, Vostok and the N1 rocket sitting in an archive somewhere?
Saw it in imax, extremely amazing.
Thanks for the recommendation
Hard to believe anybody hasn’t seen Apollo 11
@Stefan Krzemiński It was used before, for Moonwalk One documentary from 1972, but its quality there was nowhere near now and they scaled it down to 35 mm.
I can vouch for ‘Apollo Remastered’ it’s truly stunning
My dad taught me a lot about traditional film. I truly think it still has a place in today's world, for both artistic and practical considerations.
Some years ago, a friend-who-knows-stuff told me that the Navy went digital, got rid of their darkrooms. And, that aircraft carriers ended up getting their darkrooms back. Cuz there's just stuff that film can do.
The 65mm footage in Apollo 11 (2019) looks stunning.
Yeah i recommend everyone that hasn't seen that documentary, to see it right away. Because holy crap, it's like going back in a time machine.
They had to make custom scanners so no one has to ever go back to that film, 8k and 16k scans.
@@FrankyPi Nice
It was shot on SuperPanavision 70. Slightly diff than 65mm. But stunning none the less
Definitely I was blown away watching it on a 94" screen using the Panasonic DP UB9000 4k player it was like being there 🙂
Key thing - Those old lenses that NASA was using still would NUKE anything being made today - We arent seeing optics being made specifically for the government's scientific research as often anymore - theyre being made for consumers today in mass produced factories - often with far less rigorous quality control than what these lenses that captured this footage had going for them.
Also, analogue film is FAR better at rendering highlights than digital sensors are - which are better at shadow detail and rendering the darker areas of a photo than with film, so these shots are much easier to gain detail with from film, since they are such bright subjects (you notice the space shuttle launches are far less detailed not only because the SRB's are so bright but also because they were often taken using multiple sensor CCD video cameras.
As someone in the field of optics, that statement on lenses is simply not true. Optics have never been more advanced, and that extends to camera systems too. Of course, cheap is default, and I have no idea what they are using to film rocket launches, but saying more advanced and higher quality lenses than the ones nasa used is just wrong.
I do think it’s worth mentioning that there was footage similar to shuttle for the Artemis 1 launch. I think it’s on film considering has the little red number counters just like shuttle too. It’s here on RUclips if you look for it.
It´s not only the dynamic range of the cameras, it´s also the mounting. The old Saturn V footage with cameras as close as 5 meters to the F1 engines are rocksteady. When you watch the footage of SLS... it´s not the rolling shutter, it´s the wobbling of the whole camera and it´s mounting.
Excellent video. High speed film cameras were indeed used on Artemis. One problem with using film today is lack of places to process the film. During Shuttle, and previous missions, the photo contractor for NASA and the Air Force at the Cape had their own motion picture and still film processing labs. A massive operation. That went away after the Shuttle program ended.
Getting miles of movie film processed is dramatically easier than getting a few rolls from a still camera processed. Movie film is still a huge industry compared to the consumer side.
@@patreekotime4578 True, but in manned spaceflight they want a quick turnaround to look at potential damage to the spacecraft. This is the reason they had labs on site at the Cape.
This is BS. Processing film is pretty simple. Even in WWII we had reconaisance aircraft that developed the footage while in the air and landed with it developed. You make it sound like what could be done in an airplane 80 years ago now is suddenly hard to do on the ground! What is wrong with you?
@@lqr824 I didn't say it was hard to do. They needed a quick turnaround of thousands of feet of film during Apollo and Shuttle. That's why they had labs on site.
Did they also use Kodak in Titusville? The building is still on US 1 and it looks like it’s from the 60’s. It’s been abandoned for at least a decade, I would bet they developed film there as well.
To answer the RED question: Shooting in RED RAW format makes the ISO just metadata. So for example, if you set your ISO to 800 and your shot is significantly overexposed, you can just change the ISO to 200 (or whatever you’d like) in post as if you shot it that way to begin with. It has no effect on quality.
But in saying that, that still doesn’t affect dynamic range and will change your overall exposure. I’ve not tried dynamically ramp up or down the ISO during the clip (like an auto exposure), and I’m not sure if that’s even possible.
RED footage has incredible quality and dynamic range, but film will always be able to hold better detail in highlights without affecting your mid-tones.
Also there’s 70mm film footage of the Apollo 11 launch which just blows every camera/format out of the water.
You just use multiple sensors with ND filters and beam splitters, assemble resulting footage in software, and get all the DR you want. You're throwing around camera buzzwords like you know what you're talking about but clearly you know nothing about photography.
@@lqr824 digital you still get blown whites (albeit much better nowadays). Also the image is too clean in regard to noise and frame rates. Film still has the edge
@@peanuts2105 There is no digital that will blow out with sufficient ND. Read my comment before responding and if you don't understand, respond with a question and I will be happy to explain it to you. You probably have no idea how fast high-speed digital photography can go.
@@lqr824 Lmao "camera buzzwords" and I "know nothing" 😂 I'm a professional cinematographer, have shot on both film and digital cinema cameras, and own a RED my dude.
Also, using multiple sensors with ND filters, beam splitters etc, sounds like an absolutely ridiculous and borderline stupid way to "exposure bracket". Firstly, the RED can exposure bracket in-camera without the need of convoluted, bulky, custom hardware . It can also be done in post-production thanks to the R3D format.
Secondly, we're talking about how digital sensors do not hold dynamic range in the highlights compared to film negative (but digital holds better in the shadows/low-light) - you can technically exposure bracket on film too which makes your argument totally irrelevant.
So back to the point of non-exposure bracketing (EB significantly changes the look of your shot and introduces other issues anyway), you can ND filter all you want... all you're doing is reducing your exposure. A ND filter doesn't magically reduce highlights while preserving everything else 😂
But of course, you would know all of that if you knew what you were talking about :)
@@111BR > multiple sensors with ND filters, beam splitters etc, sounds like an absolutely ridiculous and borderline stupid way to "exposure bracket". Firstly, the RED can exposure bracket in-camera without the need of convoluted, bulky, custom hardware
The RED products haven't been around as long as NASA, and the REDS would melt or explode from the heat, so you're going to be doing a shitload of custom fab for this shoot. RED is also not necessarily the most cost-effective solution either, and NASA probably likes having extremely high frame rates the RED can't manage. I bet you anything NASA's not using RED. How much money you got? I will bet you your entire net worth that NASA does not shoot the majority of its launch footage with RED's. I think they had a RED on the ISS for a while but why bother when cheap R5's and the like can shoot 8k now.
> Firstly, the RED can exposure bracket in-camera without the need of convoluted, bulky, custom hardware . It can also be done in post-production thanks to the R3D format.
Not over an infinite range of exposure. This freaking rocket exhaust, Billy, and half the launches are at night.
> you can technically exposure bracket on film too which makes your argument totally irrelevant.
1) no shit, Sherlock, I pointed that out days ago in this very comment section, so search for my earlier comment to that effect. 2) the fact that you can use my method for film hardly means it CANNOT be used digitally, and that was the main point of contention. I NEVER said multiple exposure ranges could be simultaneously captured by digital but not by film. But in response to the misinformed video, my main point was only that you could capture as much DR as you needed with digital sensors even back in the 70s. It's not a question of needing to wait for some improvement. The sensors ALWAYS could do it. There was no time we had sensors but COULDN'T do it.
> EB significantly changes the look of your shot and introduces other issues anyway
Not necessarily. It depends. In my example of post processing, for example, you could have the processing software automatically assign the brightest area to max output value, or use an absolute maximum value. Then you could simply map then next 6-12 stops linearly down to zero, do an S curve, or even vary scaling over the picture a la HDR. So your output can be high contrast, low contrast, variable contrast, compress a lot into Zone II and VII, pretty much whatever you want, in a few lines of code. I write digital signal processing code, which I imagine you'll say you have a PhD in next...
Just wanted to mention, we still do use film for engineering cameras on Artemis-1 and some people were able to make them public fairly recently on Twitter. Don't remember who though.
Well it is public from NASA, they just shared the content from NASA websites, it is a bit difficult to navigate there and find what you need.
@FrankyPi Well yes, but it was only made public this rapidly because someone asked for them, a bit of the footage has to go through a few people first to ensure ITAR content is blurred out. Not to mention, yes NASA does a great job at publicizing it's content, bit it only really makes public on its own fruition what it believes the public wants to see, anything extra needs to be requested
I always am amazed at how good the launch footage from then was but I had never given it any thought! Really great video!
Yeah right.. Cameras 60 years ago were so much better than today's.. man.. you yanks believe anything they though at you as fact
I've worked in the film industry for almost 20 years now and I can assure you this is not a shortcoming of digital technology. There absolutely exist sensors that can handle that much dynamic range and overexposure no problem. There has to be some other reason the Artemis and SpaceX shots look so mediocre. One possibility is that they record in some high dynamic range format and it's been 'downsampled' incorrectly to some normal colour space like rec709 for web use. .Also judging by the image i'd say there are using some not exactly high quality (picture wise) lenses due to the high amount of chromatic abberation present.
That Artemis launch, I thought it was a low dynamic rec709 too. They probably could have state of the art cameras newest have 15-16f stop range. Film especially 16mm maybe it has high resolution but always has a softness issue. 16mm could have HD resolution but a modern camera could look sharper because there's no gaussian diffusion before photons hit sensor.
maybe its because they just don't care enough and they don't have dedicated photographers for the photogenic, they are there to record data
Arri has a new camera with even more dynamic range than the RED, but highlight rolloff is always a tricky deal because luma once it peaks it goes white and on film there are always shifts in the chemical crystals no matter how intense the light source is. this not only allows the rolloff to have information and a linear falloff but also contaminates the clipped or over exposed parts with texture and the fundamental colour. This information gets lost or sharpened in digital, loosing halation and going ugly and pure white is the result.
i absolutely love comments like this, i am going to guess here but i bet you have some experience with a camera or two.
Bayer sensors have the problem that only 50% of the incoming light is dedicated to the red and blue channels and the other 50% is coded/ receptive to green. An example would be a 60 megapixel camera sensor where 30mp receives green, 15mp for blue and 15mp for red. Shadows are cooler/ blue and highlights are warmer/ red, everything else just sits in the middle which is why 50% of a digital cameras sensor is dedicated to the green channel. Interpolation is used to make a "best guess" estimate of what the colors should actually be. The more resolution to work with the better/ more accurate that guess will be. A tri-linear sensor from the 90's is still better for full RGB capture, the downside is they can't be used for single shot purposes.
@@dtibor5903 did you even read my comment? Or was this a reply to another comment?
If not, then what is wrong with my explanation since you don’t seem to get that this is about dynamic range and not a basic and subjective comparison about what’s better or not. What a salad of concepts you are making..
@@phiberoptick thank you! Yes I have worked in the film industry for 14 years.
> Arri has a new camera with even more dynamic range than the RED
It doesn't matter what the camera's dynamic range is because you can simply use more than one camera with half-silvered beam splitters and neutral density filters.
As far as the rolling shutter issue, Red has a series of lens mounts called "motion mounts" that are essentially LCD gates. A transparent screen between the lens and sensor goes opaque to gate the full image which then gives the sensor time to offload the sensor while not exposed to light. It also can go semi opaque to act like a neutral density filter. This does nothing to extend the dynamic range of the camera / sensor, but it is something you can dynamically control without effecting what the lens is projecting onto the sensor (like riding the iris does). Red is already working with NASA so I'm sure if this technology could be put to good use it already would be.
I miss the previous technology, CCD, especially because it doesn't have the rolling shutter problem at all. Two prosumer DV cameras I used extensively until about 2011 had three CCDs (R, G, and B) - they were large cameras and only recorded SD, but the image quality was good. But apparently everything is CMOS now in the HD era.
@@L4JP GS is also possible with CMOS but it appears that you'll need to trade a stop or two of dynamic range.
@@hbp_ That would be a good trade in some circumstances (not rocket launches, of course - we need all the dynamic range we can get for that). But I have never owned any CMOS cameras (video or still) that had GS as an option. I guess that's not surprising - I don't shop at the pro level (I'm more of a "prosumer").
I love how you make a topic that I would never even bother to research myself (because I have very little interest in cameras and photography) so fascinating!!
In reviewing many old aerial survey photos I was disappointed that only the 1950’s ones were very sharp - you could still make out individual trees and rocks from 20,000 ft. It was said that survey companies were then using surplus military recon lenses from WW2 - apparently were not later on.
You are very right about digital cameras not being able to handler over exposure as well as film. In photography we have two rules for exposure on film and digital that goes; when in doubt underexpose on digital and overexpose on film. On digital though, you are able to recover much more data from underexposed pictures.
That also has to do with the dynamic range compression on digital, at least if you’re shooting video & very likely not a raw format. The dynamic range is garbage with compressed digital video.
I suspect it’s a deliberate design strategy.
I once saw a Nikon vs Hassleblad test, and the Nikon had much better shadow detail, but highlights were blown out. With the Hasselblad, it was the opposite, one could recover detail in highlights, but not shadows.
@@honeysucklecat No, it's the inherent nature of how the medium works. Film is logarithmic: think of raindrops falling on a checkerboard. A square is either wet or dry, period. Incoming rain falls randomly, but the first 10 drops probably hit dry squares. But once half the squares are wet, half the falling drops land on already-wet squares so don't do anything. So the same number of drops that caused 32 squares to become wet now only causes an additional 16 squares to become wet -- *not* the other 32. The next batch only wets another 8 squares, and so on.
Digital counts linerarly, so the overexposure maxes out the count and that's it.
But, on the dark side, it's much more sensitive and counts about as many photons as it's possible to catch. Modern sensors are very close to the limiting quantum efficiency.
@@JohnDlugosz I just wish they could capture full RGB in a single frame. The highlights and shadows suffer for it due to the limitations of a Bayer sensor.
@@thephantomchannel5368 Not true, Bayer has nothing to do with it.
As a photographer/cinematographer, I'd like to suggest that there's some important digital settings that can be changed to actually capture very close to what film used to for rocket launches.
1) Autoexposure Bias (AE): The difference we see in these 16mm shots is mainly due to auto exposure preference leaning very heavily on a setting that doesn't allow over exposure at all, so they will darken enough to expose the exhaust on the SRBs. The digital examples are using an AE setting that ignores extremely bright parts and tries to keep recognized objects in frame at a reasonable exposure. So they will not darken enough or at all in these scenarios.
A digital camera set to the same AE setting that the 16mm shots were set to would look very similar, as sky at midday is already very bright and relatively similar in brightness to the exhaust (compared to the night sky).
2) Frames Per Second to Exposure Time relationship: Most 'proper' video will strive to show a smidge of motion blur instead of showing a perfectly 'frozen' image in each frame because it looks more cinematic. This means that your exposure time (per frame) must be close to the same amount of time each frame of film is in front of the lens, but not much faster.
The 16mm 500fps shots show some motion blur which means that the Exposure time is close to 1/500s. This is important because the digital systems shown in this video are not capturing 500fps, probably 50 or 60fps, so their Exposure Time when set on Auto Exposure will likely be around the same 1/500 or less. This makes the footage look cheezy and choppy compared to the original 16mm shots. The exposure time is much much less than each digital frame's time on screen.
Because this is not the case on the original 16mm shots, they come across to us as "cinematic" and "epic", instead of cheesy.
2b)If we compared similar digital high fps launch shots, during the day (I wonder if they exist?), we would also see the sky darken to expose the exhaust, and there would be no overexposure like in the digital examples we see here, or at least a lot less.
Filmmaker here: just a heads up: RED famously markets their camera's with (way) higher dynamic range then they actually have. RED is not to be trusted, ARRI's estimates of their new alexa35 has 17 stops of dynamic range that has been confirmed by other testers. I also shoot quite a bit on 16mm and can confirm that film has absolutly amazing latitude!
That’s not really “dynamic range” so much as “static range stops”, isn’t it now? The point Paul made in this video is that they dynamic range at a given exposure setting is greater on film than a modern digital sensor. And relatedly that the digital clipping of overexposed highlights is a severe shortcoming on digital that the operator has to anticipate when setting up for a shot.
It doesn't matter. This video's completely wrong. You can get 300 stops DR if you need it! Just use half-silver mirrors and ND filters, and combine resulting exposures in software. I could write the software in 45 minutes. It's not complicated. It's hard to believe RED is lying: you can't lie about anything in the movie industry. You can't even call an f/1.4 lens an f/1.4 if it actually transmits T/1.5. It has to be accurate. I assume RED is simply using a different definition of DR than you are.
@@fosterlewis7360 i'm using the language Paul used, talking about RED's claim about 17stops of dynamic range which is a false claim by RED. Secondly, I'd say that actually now the Alexa35 might surpass Film's dynamic range, because the highlights are extremely well retained, and digital's dynamic range of underexposure has been way better then film for more then 15 years now.
mind you, this is coming from a cameraman (me) how just now came home after picking up my processed s16mm filmrolls after shooting two shoots on film. And I also shoot digital. Also I have never heard of static range stops!
I'd highly recommend looking up the alexa35... That camera is finally "there" when it comes to film, but, its about 100k us dollars so i'm not sure if any company wants to put them close to a spacerocket :)
Some say that pricey $50k Sony cameras are better, while others disagree. Who is right?
I guess, the reason for the difference between film and digital images is that for CCD sensors at least there is a linear relation between exposure time/intensity and signal level (up to saturation), while for film it is kind of logarithmic (almost linear in log-plot) although limited, something like ~1-exp(-t) I guess.
I.e. for digital images an object twice as bright will be appear twice as bright in the image, while on film it will appear less than twice as bright. Hence you can "fit" a wider range of brightnesses into the image without over-/under exposure.
To be more specific, I assume that with each time step less and less chemicals are available for reaction, so less chemicals are likely to interact with photons in the next time step size and so on i.e. less significant change in intensity in the image.
@@phillipbanes5484 if the "bucket" size up to saturation for each physical pixel is high enough, that can be. But then those videos of the rocket launches are using digital sensors that don't have more dynamic range or the post processing wasn't good.
Great to see your content again Paul. Rocketry is one of my most favourite topics and I still get chills watching original Apollo footage, like you do. I'm British too, and waw born 5 years after Armstrong and Aldrin landed on the Moon. I take pride in the knowledge that many of the brains that contributed to Apollo and other programmes were also from these shores.
To this day, Moonwalk One is my favourite movie of all time and I really enjoyed seeing some of the footage it used, in your film, together with a similarly unusual and 'of its time' musical score.
Thanks so much!
No camera man were harmed in these video's.
Absolutely fantastic. I have used both film and digital cameras for years and the digital white point as I call it has alway been an issue over traditional film. Also black and white film has a superb dynamic range of tone, especially glass plates which are over 100 years old.
I could watch as many of these interesting films as you can produce, Paul!
Always fascinating. Thanks for creating and sharing!
It's pretty footage but his main point is quite mistaken. You can get all the DR you need with digital.
Very interesting, as always, Paul. Amazing that those original Apollo shots weren't available immediately and were 'discovered' quite some time afterwards and became some of the most iconic material from the entire program.
They certainly has all bases covered.
They wanted footage of everything, whether it worked right or failed.
THAT is how U.S.A. made it to the moon.
Film has *amazing* dynamic range. I worked as a darkroom guy for a small newspaper when I was younger and the reporters would bring back film from nighttime sporting events that, when developed, the negative looked like a clear piece of film. However, when enlarged and printed using the old techniques, a usable image almost always could be recovered. Post-processing and exposure-stretching can be done from the negative that takes a few bits of dynamic range and expands it to a nearly full dynamic range again - albeit with some graininess. Great video and I'm glad that folks are still pointing out how much further digital needs to go before it can truly replace film. Cheers!
p.s.: Next, do CRT dynamic range vs. modern LCD/LED/OLED screens - the dynamic range of 'old' analog electronics is still quite amazing.
When it comes to dark images, modern CMOS sensors basically count every photon. Or rather, something like 92% due to the limiting "quantum efficiency". That is, it does better than film, and as good as anything *can* do.
It's on over exposure that film wins: the inherently logarithmic nature of analog media means that each doubling of the light will manage to hit a few more silver halide crystals. With buckets that count photons, you need to double the counter capacity to add one stop.
The human eye is pretty good at what it can do, too, even though it's a single-element Huygens-type of focal length ~22 mm with an automatic variable aperture.
@@RideAcrossTheRiver Because it has two seperate sets of sensors, one set optimized for bright light and color, and a second set for low light. The human eye is also only sharp at one point, but can scan so quickly and do compositing so quickly that the amassed composite image in the brain can be sharp across different focal ranges and show detail across a wide range of lighting conditions. The human brain is the ultimate HDR/image stitching machine.
@@patreekotime4578 Here's a good test: when Venus or Jupiter are at favourable distance, check them out in a low-contrast dusk (or dawn) sky. See if your eyes can perceive a 'dot' rather than a point!
@@patreekotime4578
I have a question for you.
There is no satisfactory answer on the Internet to this question -
I know - i looked! l
If you could convert the analogue human eye to digital megapixels how many megapixels can the human eye see in - assuming of course such a direct conversion was possible?
This is a great explanation of the technical differences between film and digital and why that makes it harder, but the old footage also just has great composition.
Very good point about the older footage having great composition
As I'm a bit of a film technology nerd. 35mm is still used in modern film making because of the large dynamic range; film noise, incredible depth of field and detail. For example Breaking Bad was shot on 35mm which makes perfect sense with the intense contrast of those beautiful desert shots - bright sun and shadows
Any updates on this, are any current TV or movie productions still using 35mm? I know a few years ago people like Quentin Tarantino were still holding on but I wonder if anyone now is still using film. I'm sure there are still some independent films created in 35mm but I wonder if any studio movies or TV shows.
@Steve Pemberton independent films might struggle to get the funding as film is pretty expensive process. I'll have to do research to see if anyone is using 35mm or even 70mm
The camera E-8 footage is even more intense when you know the camera mount is 1/2" solid steel and is being buffeted like it's mounted on a slinky.
I love those old Saturn V gantries as they swing away to clear the rocket for launch at the last second. They look so cool!
Seeing that shot of a V2 taking off in the context of Saturn V development, brings home how incredible the rapid development of rocketry at that time was - just over 25 years from the first successful V2s to Appolo 11. That's like getting a supersonic jet from New York to New Zealand in 1928 - 25 years after the Wright Brothers' first flight!
*V2. Known by the Germans as the A-4. The V-1 was the Buzz Bomb cruise missile.
@@RCAvhstape Ta - senior moment! Corrected it.
@@paulhaynes8045 Roger that.
My gramma went from riding in a covered wagon to a Central Montana homestead for the first time to watching every second of the Apollo missions on her own tv... in sub 40 years. 🤯
Werner Von Braun's giant leap from Pennemunde (V2) to Kennedy Space Center (Saturn V), must have brought a tear to his eye.. ;)
I think you missed the most important advantage of digital cameras: the images are real time. No film to recover and develope, far less things that can go wrong.
Do both.
True, but quality matters when the purpose is serious investigation, science and engineering, not just snap shots and selfies. I think you missed the whole point of what was said. 🙄
@@ChessIsJustAGame You just don't understand at all.
@memonk11 On the contrary, you entirely missed the point of this video
@@PTANV-x2gNope. You simply don’t understand how film works, and the capabilities of modern digital photography.
I have a Pentax K1000SE 35 millimetre camera. It takes photographs superior to any digital camera. For photographs of the 2024 solar eclipse, I did not even consider any digital camera. I took my father's old Pentax camera out and took incredible photographs.
One of my pet peeves is people who say they don't build them like that anymore.
They actually build them better. You just can't afford it.
100.00% correct.
A potentially big issue is whether or not the special film needed for these cameras is even produced anymore.
Quentin Tarantino for example on his last film that he shot with real film, had trouble acquiring enough of it.A potentially big issue is whether or not the special film needed for these cameras is even produced anymore.
Quentin Tarantino for example on his last film that he shot with real film, had trouble acquiring enough of it.
I remember the embroidered badges NASA use to issue for every mission back in the day. Things of absolute beauty to a little kids eyes.
Didn't the Saturn 5 test flights (Apollo 7 particularly) have film cameras mounted in interstage sections, or were they in other parts of the rocket? The recovery of the images was possibly a little more tricky than a realtime digital stream, but it's pretty incredible how they did recover the film once ejected from the rocket. Not to mention the mind-blowing quality (and subject). Was there much 70mm film taken of launches? I'm certain I've seen some that was said to be 70mm (or some other large format).
35mm was commonly used for NASA launches, but not for the very high speed film rates. As Droid said, !6mm Photosonic cameras up to 500 frames per second (for a slow-motion look) but 35mm usually only up to about 125 fps. I don't know it but I quite expect 70mm - maybe even IMAX - might be used for especially glorious shots in some cases. There was another type of film camera - polygonal scanning prism - for frame rates up in the thousands per second for scientific/engineering analysis. Rather poor image quality, probably not often seen by the public.
I LOVE THE OLD FILMS! The lighting is just right, the slomo gripping. And now, for the 1st time, I can watch that in HD because I have a newer display, now.
Film is definitely superior to digital for certain niche applications such as this. One benefit of digital, however, is that you can livestream HD digital video from the launchpad in real time. With film you can't see it until it gets processed. In the Apollo days they had analog TV cameras for real time broadcast but none that close to the pad. Looking at the comments here it seems NASA is still using film after all, so they get the best of both technologies.
See the "NASA’s new High Dynamic Range Camera Records Rocket Test" video
It's good seeing the shuttle pull away diagonally from the tower as it ascends in the first few seconds.
When travelling in polar regions, I always slightly overexposed film otherwise snow/ice looked grey. Not for slide film as I found it could not cope so well as print film. Still miss the days of film despite the convenience of digital. The higher cost meant every shot mattered.
It’s easier to up-rez and clarify 35mm film, frame by frame than video. Depending on quality of the film formula -and it’s storage.
I have worked in the film and broadcast industry full time for 43 years. I restore footage now forensically for various agencies daily 🎥
Wonderful channel !
I had some fun with a Fairchild 70mm aerial camera. The 70mm format would be staggering to use on one of these launches, it could be projected clearly onto a massive vertical flat plane.
SLS did have film cameras rolling but some got very blown out. The footage was released only a week or two ago, hopefully even better quality to come too!
No doubt NASA ever considered the artistic beauty of all those high speed films, especially those of the Saturn V. Thanks Paul, this was really interesting! 👍👍
Yeah and they didn’t even bother to save the original videos of the moon landing smh
@@thecoldglassofwatershow "People have seen them. We don't need to keep them." - someone at NASA, probably
@@thecoldglassofwatershow They had saved the original SSTV tapes of Apollo 11 EVA, those were likely overwritten later, but NTSC copies have always existed so the only difference is that those are a bit worse quality. They did remaster it for 50th anniversary. The original SSTV broadcast from Apollo 11 is worse quality than in the later missions, which are available, they upgraded their bandwidth capabilities and TV cameras, so the TV camera footage of Apollo 15-17 has more detail and is in color.
NASA spent millions on cameras and put them everywhere. They filmed from planes, helicopters and those “bright eyes”. One of my favorite shots was a Mercury Redstone launch from a helicopter at a high altitude. It’s a rare shot that’s hard to find, but it’s amazing. In other words, NASA really made a herculean effort to capture great footage. No one these days wants to spend that much money on filming launches. But the current Go Pros mounted on the side of rockets is really good.
Don’t forget that the main reason behind the race into space in the 1960s was, at the end of the day, a propaganda contest between the USA and the USSR and as such, the quality and quantity of images was a meaningful issue.
There ARE special digital cameras that were used when TESTING the SRB's that were able to retain contrast in both shadows and the exhaust itself.
Might have been too expensive to risk that close to the fulln rocket, though. Otherwise not sure why they wouldn't be used there, too.
When I see that Apollo footage, I always hear the Sunrise fanfare from Richard Strauss's Also sprach Zarathustra, the 2001 Space Odyssey theme. It's too much grandeur for words. I was an Apollo kid, and when we had an Apollo mission up there, the moon looked magical. I stared at it, still trying to wrap my head around it, even during Apollo 17. We were there!
Why don't they just use both? Then you get the best qualities that both digital and analog provide.
It's worth comparing the movie Grand Prix (1966) with modern Formula One coverage. The movie managed the same quality of footage just without the live transmission capability, for the same reasons mentioned here. The shuttle launch footage narrated by the engineers is facinating with all the detail revealed by the cameras.
Paul, this video only shows up in your playlists, didn’t get an alert that you have uploaded it.
It was in my subscription feed tho
I got a notification for it.
I got a notification
@@jayasuriyas2604this was 41 mins ago so he probably fixed it lol
You must have been to early.
Thank you for not posting "first"
Amazing video. As a film photographer and lover of movies shot on film I'm so happy that you talked about the technical properties of film in such detail.
I think using high end digital cinema cameras for these shots would solve the rolling shutter problem and at least mitigate the overexposure but probably they're impractical for the size or for the fact that they require an operator so they're seen as not needed
sensors exist without rolling shutter. This video was really misleading in that respect, as well as genrally.
You can control a cinema camera remotely. They could use proper cinema cameras with wider dynamic range than film for rocket footage but rhey wouldn't be able to shoot at the frame rates needed for engineering footage like that of Apollo
Fantastic video, thank you. As a photographer starting my career in the 1990s, through to digital in the early 2000s, I was hoping you'd discuss film's incredible dynamic range and how digital is still trying to achieve. I was thinking that many rolling shutter cameras will be switched out to global shutter cameras for future launches. Really glad you made this video and thank you again for being so thorough.
As a videographer I just wanted to offer a quick correction, while the majority of CMOS sensors do not have better dynamic range then many film stocks, professional grade cameras these days often significantly outperform filmstock. And many consumer cameras handle shadows better than film. I've never used Red Cameras but do think the Sony Venice probably would be quite close in terms of highlight recovery. I've made some pretty awful mistakes on Sony and Arri cameras in terms of overexposure and it usually is recoverable. The big issue with CMOS is what happens to your colours when you hit the limits of the sensor. I feel like Nasa could fix their issues if they worked one of the leading companies like Sony. Personally I would engineer a camera system that uses a rotating ND filter system and have two video outputs saved, each genlocked to the rotating ND, so one footage gets a bright exposure and one gets a darker exposure. Depending on the speed of the system you could even have multiple levels of exposure.This can be done in software as well but the ND would help with other issues too. It's just photo bracketing but with high speed cameras.
The moral of the story is… film still has its place, but digital can also do some amazing things (like the live shots from orbit / staging etc).
Very much a “best use case” choice between the two where each has it’s specialisation.
TLDR Because its on film. They should never had stopped using film for space travel imo, its just more real and a big reason why the Apollo images were so powerful
Lovely stuff, Paul. These films were the visual track of my childhood. And they are still just as impressive today, 60 years later. To this day, I still don't know if the Saturn Vs really took off that slowly or not. But, whatever the answer, in my mind, this is how a real rocket takes off!
They were high-speed cameras so that when played back at a slower rate, the engineers could better see what was happening at any particular instant.
Saturn V was pretty slow off the pad, taking ~10 secs to clear the tower. My impression of the first Shuttle launch was how fast it got up and went.
I was in my late 20s when we got to the moon. When they lifted off the moon, I was so used to seeing the Saturn rocket slowly rise up, I was completely taken aback by the speed of the lander. Like you, I'm not sure if the Saturn really rose that slowly, but that was a lot of mass to get moving, so it probably was that slow to start with, otherwise the G forces would have been tremendous.
These films are indelibly etched into my memory, having watched the Apollo Missions as a small boy. Great research
I think SpaceX is bringing back this sense of grandeur in their shots. The test of Starship seen from above is one of the best example of marvellous technique
6:02 is one of my favorite video clips of all time. I just love the raw power it captures with such perfect stability. Then the rewind action when the flame gets sucked back down after ignition. And mostly the dark exhaust for the first couple feet out of the engine bell has always intrigued me. Why is it so much darker than the flame a few feet further? Just not fully combusted? Was this intentional or inefficiency? It’s a beautiful shot.
ruclips.net/video/GLSDfPqgsCs/видео.html
Here is some film footage from one of the tail service umbilicals from Artemis 1.
Cool video.
Go4gordon is the youtube channel and this I legitimate link. Scott Manley has the top comment
Practical SFX will always be better than modern CGI. Wink
Stanley Kubrick insisted on shooting it on-location.
I am watching Apollo rocket launch footage with beautiful dynamic range recorded on film.
I have been searching for the answer to this for a long time in my mind. No one has given an explanation about this.
Excellent technical explanation. thankyou
This is one of the best videos I have seen regarding the space program. Thanks for putting this together as I learned a lot about how all of the stunning images were captured and produced.
It's not a good video. Almost everything it tries to teach is mistaken. By using half-silvered mirrors and neutral density filters you can take multiple exposures at different exposure levels simultaneously, and later combine in software in various ways. As soon as camera A is nearing max brightness, camera B is just starting to record something besides black. As B in turn is nearing max white, C is moving past black and so on. You can thus get any amount of dynamic range you need with digital and film. And he's also wrong to imply all sensors have rolling shutter. They don't.
Interesting that none of the clever people at Nasa or SpaceX have, as you suggested Paul, thought to just use old film cameras to capture the very bright exhausts of the engines. As well as giving everyone at home a better spectacle, surely the engineers still want to see exactly what's going on during the launch?
My assumption:
We can collect much more data with sensors nowadays compared to back then. So getting failures on film is no longer relevant for troubleshooting.
And spending a lot of money just for the spectacle just isn't worth it.
@@Jehty_not sure film is much more expensive then digital though.
More work for sure.
@@baronvonlimbourgh1716 more work means more expensive...
For Artemis 1, NASA used both digital and film cameras to capture the launch. You can find some of the high-speed film footage on RUclips if you're interested.
@@Jehty_ not that more expensive for a couple of cameras.
This is why movies recorded on film still look better than digital ones even though the resolution is higher.
Yep!
Analog beats digital, again.
Absolutely outstanding!! You did a fabulous job of explaining the differences between film and digital video technology and I thoroughly enjoyed all of the Saturn V and Space Shuttle engine ignition footage!! Great job! 👏
I had only ever seen these videos growing up but was fortunate to see the third last shuttle launch. Holy cow, it is bright in real life. And although it is cool to watch on TV or now a smartphone, this doesn’t even come close to seeing it in person.
Doing the testing on those camera housings must have been the best job ever. Buggest problem; finding a pyromaniac with an engineering degree
A couple of things. Everything in a photographed scene is either underexposed or overexposed except a very narrow band of brightness in the scene, and that ideal or average brightness in the scene is what the camera exposure is set for. Compared to digital, film handles under- and overexposure much better, thus captures the scene in its entirety better. This is a very important video and hopefully will lead to better video of the launches we're seeing now.
Second, the great film of the old launches that we see today, we rarely saw any of it at the time! The first time I saw any of that great old Saturn footage was probably around 2010, and on RUclips. The thing was there was no outlet for it except TV, and the amount of footage that we saw then on TV was about the same as you'd see on normal network TV today, which is practically none.
Perfect video. I didn't learn much here but I have been desperate for someone to make a video talking about the over-exposure and rolling shutter issues that ruin all modern launch footage. Of course the most well -known last remaining advantage of film is the ability to pull back details out of the highlights in post without underexposing in the first place. The only way to deal with this with modern cameras is fast shutter and always under-expose and use a very expensive camera with high dynamic range and hopefully a global shutter. I have always wished that SpaceX would invest heavily in such cameras as whilst they are expensive, they are a fraction of their overall budget, and this footage is so immensely important to be captured as gloriously as possible for historical purposes, just look at how often we see that fantastic old NASA film footage! With the recent integrated Starship test I was also longing for the close-up quick disconnected footage like we see on the recovered 16mm film from those old NASA film. I was also publically critical to SpaceX on their slomo closeup launch footage which had terrible rolling shutter and poor Twixtor style frame multiplication work done on it with screen tearing visible. Anyway, good work mate, love your work as always!
It is not a "perfect video." Each of its main points is mistaken. I've explained in a longer comment how this actually all works. You can get all the DR you want from digital and if you don't want rolling-shutter just use a sensor that doesn't have rolling shutter.
@@lqr824 and if you want to suck eggs, I take it you just suck them?
Super cool - thanks for sharing! Those U S A shots, and the films and photos of the US space program, are icons of 20th century film and photography!
The Apollo launch was visually Iconic, something for the ages. Simply put, it was the first true major step forward. To this day it gives many, myself included, goosebumps. The movie Apollo 13 has been the only other film that even comes close the intensity.
the sound too, the countdown, the "cleared the tower" every few seconds were like a horserace of excitement..
"Hey, that picture's not scheduled!" Frank Borman, Apollo 8, just before _Earthrise_ was snapped
11:35 As convenient as digital imaging may be, film still kicks its butt hands down all the time, in every situation.
...and you're such a masterful narrator... I even watch your ads...! Well done...
Great video, and while I think everything you say is true, you're missing the main issue.
Modern digital RAW video from a professional movie camera is superior to film in most ways when the camera is setup correctly and AFTER a lot of processing. I think what's happened here is that there has been a switch to real-time, networked cameras - these are not comparable to high quality movie cameras, but do give the operators exactly what they need most - a realtime view of their rocket. There's absolutely no reason why you couldn't get even more amazing footage today with digital cameras if you invest the time and effort to do that.
There are youtubers doing this today, especially around the Space X launches - they just don't have access to the up-close locations and expensive, protective enclosures NASA had.
Exactly, raw digital footage has to be 'developed' to achieve optimal results, just like film. The viewing medium (screen or print) has a much lower dynamic range than the sensor or film. Manual processing of (underexposed) digital footage will likely result in much better presentation of the highlights in web video, compared to the automatic scene exposure used for live streams.
Yup, it's annoying this trend lately of youtubers talking about film as if it's amazingly better than digital without considering what you can do with digital cameras that aren't just smartphones
Thank you! A lot of interesting facts and information! I watch your channel for years.
I miss film so much. The peace and solitude that came with losing track of time in the dark room, and listening to vinyl record albums all the way through or making mix tapes. And dont get me started on Kodachrome, Ecta-K, or cinematic sizing like todd-ao. When digital was peaking i remember seeing an ex-photo journalist first gen Nikon photomic pro grade camera with bulk film cans and a motor winder that took a handfull of AA batteries. It was what i dreamed of owning when i was a teenager, and it was in the 2nd hand stand up for $200. I wish now i had bought it because i have a feeling that like analogue sound media, that film has not had a its day
Fantastic explanation and video to illustrate with. Love it. There's an undeniable romanticism with film, but to see it quantified in the way you have, about *why* it's great not just whimsically, but also technically, is amazing. Thanks a ton
NOVA had a special about the space program about the time my older boy was understanding the difference between true stories and made up stories. He seemed rather puzzled, so I asked him. "These space ships are so small," he said. I asked, "are you thinking about the other space ship we watch?" (Star Trek). "Oh," I said. "That space ship is made up. These were real." He was completely glued to the program. It ended with a sequence of a Saturn 5 taking off. Water pouring, ice falling, flame rising, flame getting sucked back under, gantry retracting, cables disconnecting, clamps releasing, rocket starting to rise..... I don't think that kid even breathed for several minutes! (He is 32 now)
That expression "They don't make them like they used to" comes to mind. But you'd think we'd have better stuff these days... Great video! I'm a new subscriber and this was truly a great video and I liked your narration.
Modern digital cameras cannot handle the intense bright light of a large rocket launch and over expose, compared to film cameras. Modern digital cameras produce their own kind of artifacts. I saw the 2019 documentary film of Apollo 11 and was stunned by the quality of the cleaned up film footage.
Apollo 11 was amazing.
Consumer/prosumer 35mm film cameras had a rolling shutter effect. Past a certain shutter speed (1/125 on my Pentax ME Super), the opening shutter blade doesn't make it fully open before the closing blade operates. So, at 1/250th second and faster, the shutter opening is indeed scanning the image across the film. Many other brands had this limit at 1/60th second.
There's another effect that occurs in digital photography that doesn't occur with film.
When a portion of a film image is overexposed, it whites out, but the whiteout doesn't affect the rest of the image. Digital cameras, by contrast, rely on the photoelectric effect to free electrons within the pixels of the sensor. Unlike the photographic emulsion on a film, those electrons can move. If one portion of a digital image is severely overexposed, the excess electrons spill over into neighbouring parts of the image. As we've seen in some of the footage, this effect can blow out the entire image.
Sodding well fascinating. I have no idea how you come up with such great subjects but please continue!
Speaking as someone with a Global Shutter Cinema Camera, yes, the motion capture is superior, however, the nature of the Cmos sensors construction leads to them having a more limited dynamic range then Rolling Shutter cameras, 12 to 15 is about the current limit, along with a lower sensitivity.
CCD sensors are even less sensitive, but can have a wider range.
Then there's the Colour Science applied, and whether the manufacturer took the time to write code that fully uses the whole dynamic range, and not just the base range.
Excellent : as a child , my family followed the SATURN rockets with those huge USA painted on them and we were amazed and so proud of the engineering prowess of our people.
Yes : Film is incredible , I shoot Film in my cameras 35mm and 120mm and I have 4x5 inch film too. The detail of the film image grows exponentially in hundreds of megapixels as you go into larger formats. Thank you for creating this wonderful and beautiful video , and explaining for many the gains and losses , of the digitization of imaging.
Wonderful beautiful the 16mm film images of the Saturn engines and the beautiful sky in its blue even clouds , as those rockets majestically rise up into the air. Magnificent. 🇺🇸
They should use both digital and film cameras. Those old shots are beautiful.
Nice, was wondering why I loved the old shots of the Apollo so much. Did not give it much thought.
But now it makes sense, thnx for explaining.
I'm always amazed at any and all the pictures and film of any rocket or satelite going about it's buisiness. And all those who strove to get those images. My hat is off, I salute them all.
Really interesting video, but I think there are a few incorrect takeaways here. The dynamic range of film is something that seems to be incredibly vague and without consensus. Brands such as IMAX will imply it’s north of 16 stops, but just as RED claim 17 stops, it’s almost entirely marketing.
There are two main points I want to emphasise: firstly is the cost and practicality between the Apollo cameras and contemporary, and secondly are the differences between film and digital negatives.
What people are forgetting about the SLS footage or SpaceX webcasts is that these camera setups aren’t in nitrogen-filled containers, are designed to be set-and-forget, and probably cheaper to run overall. In the case of SLS they seem to be set up more as CCTV cameras than anything approaching cinematic or maximum detail. There are far less cameras overall, and they tend to be placed in less interesting locations.
Secondly, dynamic range is a measurement that is affected as much by specific highlight rolloff characteristics as specific shadow rolloff characteristics. While film has vastly superior management of highlights (though digital is slowly finding ways to recover detail), the exact opposite is true in the shadows, where digital + minor noise reduction can vastly exceed the effective dynamic range of film.
I believe that if you were to take a decent camera that records in RAW, exposed for the highlights, and colour graded it to recover shadow detail, you’d end up with the kind of shot you’re looking for, with the added bonus of vastly higher resolution.
If you look at real world examples of film, it is always a stylistic choice that results in less detail. I am astonished that film has continued to have a reputation of fidelity as long as it has, but I guess it comes down to the way film forces people to put more energy into the shots they’re getting.
There's been a trend in recent years (although it has always existed in photography circles) of claiming that film has superior DR but it's never substantiated and it's never said by someone who understands the pros and cons you've outlined. The video showing CCTV footage as an example of digital being worse shows that Curious Droid also made the argument without understanding it.