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For the Moon landings, the film was not normal photographic film, it was a special thin base film mounted in special backs that allowed for 160/200 frames per b
by 4ad 8y ago
For the Moon landings, the film was not normal photographic film, it was a special thin base film mounted in special backs that allowed for 160/200 frames per back, instead of the 12 exposures you get with normal 120 film on a regular Hasselback back. Not sure what they used for the scouting missions.
Weirdly enough they used color slide film for the Moon missions. I never understood why. Color slide film has much less dynamic range compared to color negative film (5-6 stops vs. 12-14 stops, depending on the specific films) and it is much more difficult to expose for correctly (in fact, most pictures taken on the Moon are severely under/overexposed). One explanations I heard was that there was no color reference on the moon, so they didn't know how to print from negative film, but that doesn't make any sense to me. The Moon is very gray, and they could have taken a color chart with them...
- Steve44 8y agoI had a Mamiya 645 which had 120 and also 220 backs. The 220 roll had double the number of exposures, this was enabled by a thinner film and less backing paper from what I recall. I recently sold it all and was told the 220 backs were worthless now, I presume the film is no longer / not widely available.
- 4ad 8y ago120 film is widely available. I don't know why 220 film was not that popular.
- stan_rogers 8y agoWaste and the associated expense thereof, for one. Especially for professional use - there is an average waste of half of the last roll of film on every shoot, and that means 8-12 wasted frames on 220 versus 4-6 on 120. For the consumer side, a very large percentage of cameras used a window on the backing paper for frame counts, something that would be disastrous for 220. And for anything that used a pressure plate rather than just film tension to maintain film flatness, you'd need to have an adjustable plate (many cameras didn't have that).
- Steve44 8y agoThanks for the extra info. I vaguely remember the frame counters, we had a Rolli twin lens reflex too in the early days and ISTR that had the window.
- toomanybeersies 8y agoWhat I meant was that it wasn't some super exotic photographic film, printed on an unobtanium base. It was standard acetate film with a gelatin emulsion. Aside from the special Ektachrome, they also took black and white film magazines with them. The colour slide magazines held 160 exposures and the black and white magazines held 200 exposures. I believe the reason they used slide film was that the quality of colour negative film wasn't so good back in the 60's. A lot of the shots they took on the moon were bracketed for exposure, so they took 3 images of the same subject, but with different exposures. On the note of Apollo mission photography, there is an archive of a huge amount of photos taken on the Apollo missions on Flickr here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/projectapolloarchive/albums https://www.flickr.com/photos/projectapolloarchive/albums
- stan_rogers 8y ago70mm is also a "normal Hasselblad back"; it served much the same function as bulk film backs for 35mm cameras. There were, of course, issues that kept them from being the default backs for most photographers: the (relatively) small image size, which made for grainier images; the large capacity was actually a negative for most casual and professional uses (if anything was even close to time-sensitive, you'd wind up wasting a lot of film), and the size and weight of the back itself compared to the more typical A12/A24 backs.