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"In the summer of 1962, Walter Schirra — who would soon become America's third man to orbit the Earth — walked into a Houston photo supply shop looking for a ca
by mongol 7y ago
"In the summer of 1962, Walter Schirra — who would soon become America's third man to orbit the Earth — walked into a Houston photo supply shop looking for a camera he could take into space.
He came out with a Hasselblad 500C, a high-end Swedish import that had been recommended to him by photographers from Life and National Geographic.
"He was sort of an amateur photographer," Jennifer Levasseur, a curator in charge of the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum's astronaut cameras, says of Schirra. "Somewhere along the line, the decision was made that he could select what camera was flown on his flight."
Schirra's was a much more sophisticated — and pricey — choice than the simple Ansco Autoset that John Glenn bought for $40 at a Cocoa Beach, Florida, drug store. Glenn used it to take pictures from orbit on Friendship 7 in February 1962. The Hasselblad retailed for about $500 and used a much larger negative than Glenn's 35 mm camera. It also sported interchangeable, Carl Zeiss lenses and removable film magazines."
https://www.npr.org/2019/07/13/735314929/the-camera-that-went-to-the-moon-and-changed-how-we-see-it https://www.npr.org/2019/07/13/735314929/the-camera-that-wen...