Why is Older NASA Launch Film Footage Still the Best?
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- čas přidán 22. 05. 2024
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If you look at modern-day closeup launch footage you may well feel a little disappointed compared to the older film footage from the Apollo and Space Shuttle days. Why is this?, we have modern digital cameras which are better than the old film cameras of the 60s, 70s, & 80s right?
Look at almost every close-up shot of recent launches from SpaceX and NASA and you will see them looking grossly overexposed almost as soon as the engines start and certainly when the SRBs light up, something that didn't happen on the Apollo and Shuttle footage. In this video, we look at why image quality has gone backward as camera technology has gone forwards and that old in this case isn’t necessarily bad.
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Written, Researched and Presented by Paul Shillito
Images and footage: Images and footage : NASA, SpaceX, Bill Lawson
Intro Music : Sarabande by Paul Shillito / Debussy
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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
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.
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.
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
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 🙂
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
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 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 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 CZcams if you look for it.
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...
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!!
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.
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.. ;)
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!
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.
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").
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Grate video presentation! Your explanations were right on and the shots you used are some of the best of the best. Thank you for putting this together for us
Sodding well fascinating. I have no idea how you come up with such great subjects but please continue!
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.
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.
very well explained, im stunnend about your expertise in rocket science and camera knowledge - well done!
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
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.
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.
Very, very interesting and informative! Thanks for all your time and talent this took to put together--I thoroughly enjoyed and it learned a great deal.
Again, wonderful camera angles and exposures with first class step by step analysis and documentation, thank you with Blessings, Ken
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.
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.
Your perspective specifically on how things are viewed differently now, is incredibly revealing.
Perception is driven by many factors. What we hold close to our chest as dear memories, are largely shaped by what we receive through our senses.
Thank you so much for shedding some light on this.
Thank you. I actually learned something and was very entertained in the process. You do a great job man.
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
I am an audio engineer and used to work with analog tape.
I can tell you that what is happening with film is exact same thing that happens with analog tape: The film is compressing the brightest parts of the image, The film saturates and does not get any brighter regardless of how bright the source is. Analog tape works exactly the same way, this is why all the classic rock recordings from the '70s sound so good: tape compression.
How is hitting an audio ceiling good sound? It sounds like compressed ass. Are you talking about the loudness/fidelity phenomenon?
@@Gnefitisis the trick is that analogue saturation, particularly tape saturation, doesn't just compress away all the interesting transients and/or create a pumping of the sound level like digital compressors do. Nor does it does nasty-sounding hard-clipping. It does something in between: slightly duck the peaks whilst adding just a bit of harmonic distortion so you neither lose too much transient-punch nor fidelity. The final result is compressed enough to be easy to listen to (even with mediocre equipment and/or in bad acoustic settings) but also still dynamic enough to be a joy when hearing with good speakers or headphones.
@@leftaroundabout Nailed it. Analogue soft saturates whereas digital brick walls.
@@Gnefitisis Sounds infinitely better than digital saturation. *That* sounds like ass with a baritone fart thrown in.
@@leftaroundabout Very detailed explaination. Perfect. Thank you. So, could you explain the origin of this "soft clipping?" I'm assuming it has to do with the logarithmic nature of high-pass filtering with actual capacitors and inductors?
I say again: BEST researcher and editor on CZcams.
Wow! What a great video!!! I had been thinking about this very thing for a couple of weeks. I was thinking that the pictures/video today should be so much better, but they’re not! Thank you for this it was an amazing thing to learn! Keep up the great work!
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"
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
God level HDR.. decades ago...😮
These films are indelibly etched into my memory, having watched the Apollo Missions as a small boy. Great research
Great stuff and much appreciated,i do feel that this stuff should be digitised cleaned up if needed and made available to the public! Thank you!
Why don't they just use both? Then you get the best qualities that both digital and analog provide.
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
Inspiring bit of history and always, very informative. thanks Paul.
Very good, from an old school film smudger with good memories of pushing and up rating film to get the shot, pretty much the opposite of this, but the same wide dynamics of film in a way. In the eighty's I remember program cameras coming onto the seen and photographers with them missing the most important shots through these cameras themselves refusing to take the shot because of their basic exposure technology not knowing how to cope with the lighting situation and then at the same time the good old manual Nikon FM2's grabbing the shot without refusal and with the knowledge of the under exposure using a four stop or so up rate in the dark room to produce a publishable photograph, most satisfying. Plus memories of using neutral density filters to extend exposures sometimes to 15 seconds or more adding run around flash fill in, the good old wonders of film, yes I'm talking about still photography. Good on ya for a great YT video... ;)
My only gripe is that my folks took me round as a kid to their friends house who had an early Colour TV to watch the / a Moon Landing live, the colour TV's were not so good then and we would have been better off staying at home and watching it on our black and white TV... ;)
You forgot the link to the film/digital comparison:
czcams.com/video/idepJM8iHpY/video.html
Oops, a minor bit of forgetfulness from Paul. (Heck, by the end I forgot there was supposed to be a link, so Paul's not as bad as me). Thanks for sharing the link. Hopefully a few more likes and comments will boost your reply up to the top of the comment section.
czcams.com/video/GLSDfPqgsCs/video.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
I was actually wondering about this very thing.
Always great to see a Curious Droid video in my feed! :D
One of the most educational videos I've seen on CZcams ever. Thank you so much for this insight.
I'm not sure "better" is the correct word. Instead, I would say that, even though the shots are of great quality even by today's standards, it was the first time that man reached for the moon and beyond, and in that way, those films show one of the most monumental moments in human history and will always fill us with awe, no matter what age we are or what culture we come from.
He has just explain why the old films were better. It is obvious from the footage that digital cameras don't have as good dynamic range.
@@MrLeighman What I am saying is, not only did they do a great job back then, they also were the first, so nostalgia helps paint a prettier picure
@@khukri_wielderxxx1962 but no nostalgia needed.
The pictures are just better...
@@Jehty21 agree, film has a ‘wow’ factor not matched by the digital cameras used today. Sure, you can get some interesting shots but nothing you would want to see over and over again. That USA shot is ingrained in my brain and is one of the few images I will take to the grave.
Film is really something, will probably be able to mach and exceed its performance with digital some day but it has a vibe to it that looks incredible to me
What way do you think it can't be matched by digital today? Other than by the many points in this video that are wrong?
Extremely well researched and presented. Kudos and thank you
This youtube channel is such a work of passion.
Sometimes, the old ways are still the best ways. Film is amazing stuff, and people think because it is old tech, its no longer useful, but this proved a point I made to a friend. Film captured not only these glorious shots, but was used in ever recording of nuclear bomb testing we see today. And with film, they were able to see detail in those tests that still boggle minds to this day. Though, high speed digital camera tech has come a LONG way in just the last 10 years.
Practical SFX will always be better than modern CGI. Wink
Stanley Kubrick insisted on shooting it on-location.
I love those close ups of the Saturn V. Thanks for another amazing video!
Thank you Paul for this!! Yes, all these decades later, it still causes an emotional roller-coaster ride like no other!! 😎👍
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.
@@Jehty21not 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 CZcams if you're interested.
@@Jehty21 not that more expensive for a couple of cameras.
Here before the flat earther "critical thinkers"
Post your evidence below flatties
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!
What an excellent and informative video! There was so much footage there that I've never seen before. Many thanks Paul.
It wasn't informative. All of its main points were quite mistaken. At the end he even comes out and basically says, if you read between the lines, if there's any viewers that actually understand the subject, please set him straight. I've done so.
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
Very good writing and Edition. Top quality video 👏🏽👏🏽
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.
What a fascinating deep dive into the technical limitations and advantages of film versus digital photography. Thank you!
Thanks for this video, I’ve always wondered how the launches were filmed
OUTSTANDING VIDEO and analysis - thank you for posting!!!
Thank you for this amazing video. It gives us one more reason to pay respect to file-based photography while enjoying the convenience of digital photography. Hope the two will coexist.
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
Great analysis of those epic shots from the 60's. I think one was used in the opening few minutes of Koyaanisqatsi. It is magnificent when married to the Philip Glass soundtrack.
Fascinating video! Really reignites my passion for space exploration
Thank you! A lot of interesting facts and information! I watch your channel for years.
Fantastic and very informative video, Mr. Droid!
Another great topic Droid. Oh boy. Many thanks.
Thank you very much.
Excellent in all aspects, as always; well researched, well thought out, excellently communicated
What an absolutely fascinating analysis. Before l even hit play, my guess was the magic of real film vs digital. But l see that there is also more to it. Thank you for posting this!
Hey Paul. I know what you mean about emotional footage. There is an iconic scene in the very historical and well shot Ron Howard movie 'Apollo 13' where two of the wives are standing there watching the launch, and one of them starts crying as it lifts off. Now part maybe due to her husband being on board, but for me it's just the sheer power and magnificence of the launch. Incredible. Yes that was a Hollywood movie, but having that clarity, and seeing sheets of ice fall off is a fantastic look. Cheers mate.
Great content as always, Droid. Thanks for making such informative videos.
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.
I always wondered,thanks for the great video and explanation😁
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 CZcams. 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.
...and you're such a masterful narrator... I even watch your ads...! Well done...
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.
Great video! That whole they don't bulid them like they used to. As digital video sensors improve and better digital processing takes over, we'll start to see more high quality footage of launches. NASA raced to upgrade their pad cameras to 4k for the SLS launch. Some of the best footage so far is from Cosmic Perspective (in cooperation with Everyday Astronaut).
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.
Nice Piece, I learnt a few things along the way. A co-worker is the son of an engineer behind the Hasselblad's carried by the Apollo Astronauts for use on the Moon. Another Kewl group of camera angles came from the Perseverance entry & landing on Mars. I heard those were "off the shelf" cameras used for those shots. Maybe one day the Digital cams will match the Old School quality. 👍 😊
Great way to start the show, U S A that was exactly the stand out image for me. I was on the Cape Canaveral launch pad in 1990, holidaying from England. I have never recovered lol I am a space-flight lover now and forever more. The heavens never deny me new wonders each time I look upon them.
It's amazing the odd solutions they came up with back in the day. One particularly interesting system is the Baker-Nunn design. The lens was (and still is) incredible.They wanted a long focal length AND a massive aperture so they could track satellites. The lens they came up with was 500mm f0.75 monster that -with it's mount included - weighed 3.5 tons