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I wish the cameras used film like NASA did for Saturn V. The digital cameras used on these launches basically show a white blob with no detail due to digital ca

by vFunct 2y ago

I wish the cameras used film like NASA did for Saturn V. The digital cameras used on these launches basically show a white blob with no detail due to digital cameras having such low dynamic range compared to film. And this is made worse with the night launches that Blue Origin are doing. In Saturn V launches you could see see detail in the bright flame structures along with background detail. Maybe some of the upcoming digital cameras chips will have higher dynamic range eventually. I know Nikon has a paper talking about stacked sensors that are trading off high frame rate for high dynamic range: https://youtu.be/jcc1CvqCTeU?si=DuIu4BK48iZTlyB2 https://youtu.be/jcc1CvqCTeU?si=DuIu4BK48iZTlyB2

trhway 2y ago
> talking about stacked sensors why not just stacked cameras with a range of filters? modern cameras cost and weight nothing (and that rocket puts 45 ton into LEO)
ArnoVW 2y ago
those engineering cameras were not your regular run-of-the mill cameras neither. NASA published a 45 min documentary of the 10-15 engineering cameras of an STS launch., with comments on the engineering aspets of the launch procedure. Very beautiful, relaxing, has an almost meditative quality. Highly recommend it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFwqZ4qAUkE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFwqZ4qAUkE
- philipwhiuk 2y ago
  Yeah and Shuttle cost a fortune per launch. Views are distinctly secondary to an affordable launch program.
  - sandworm101 2y ago
    And the cost of the camera program was paid back a hundred times as that footage was used to diagnose, correct and improve countless systems. Accident investigations would have taken ten times as long without that footage.
    - nickff 2y ago
      I absolutely love that beautiful film footage, particularly well-exhibited in one of my favorite documentaries, the spectacular "When We Left Earth" (a lovely and lengthy series). That said... Modern rockets have the ability to stream a great deal more data, including live camera streams, than the Mercury/Gemini/Apollo or Space Shuttle could. This increased real-time data bandwidth is probably much more valuable than high-dynamic-range cameras were.
      - sandworm101 2y ago
        Telemetry only records what you deem interesting prior to flight. When something goes really wrong it probably came from something you were not expecting, like foam insulation. Cameras recorded everything visible, even the stuff you don't think important.
  - bell-cot 2y ago
    I'd assume that BO has plenty of high-res/high-contrast-range imagery - that's just too useful for engineering analysis, post-launch. What they release to the public is a separate issue.
throw0101a 2y ago
> The digital cameras used on these launches basically show a white blob with no detail due to digital cameras having such low dynamic range compared to film. Film negatives have a dynamic range of between 12 to 15 stops, but a whole bunch can be lost when transferred to optical print (perhaps less if digitally scanned). The Arri ALEXA Mini LF has 14.5 stops of dynamic range, and the ALEXA 35 has 17 (Table 2): * https://www.arri.com/resource/blob/295460/e10ff8a5b3abf26c33f8754379b57442/2022-09-28-arri-dynamic-range-whitepaper-data.pdf https://www.arri.com/resource/blob/295460/e10ff8a5b3abf26c33...
- aziaziazi 2y ago
  > a whole bunch can be lost when transferred to optical print I’m not sure if by "optical print"[0] you mean a film developing process (like C41), but the info is not lost and stays on the film. The developer job is to fine tune the parameters to print the infos you’re seeking, and that include adjusting white and black points thresholds (range). You can also do several print if you want to extract more infos, and print it so large you see the grain shapes! If there’s is something lost it’s when the picture is taken, after that it’s up to you to exploit it the way you need. It’s very similar to a numeric device capturing RAWs and the developer finishing the picture on a software like Camera Raw, or what some modern phone does automatically for you. 0 not English native, perhaps this is a synonym of developement?
  - throw0101a 2y ago
    > I’m not sure if by "optical print"[0] you mean a film developing process (like C41), but the info is not lost and stays on the film. You have a negative, which you develop. For photos you then have to transfer that to paper. For cinema you want to distribute it, so you have to take the originally captured image(s) and make copies to distribute. In both cases, because it's an analog process, and so things will degrade. Of course if you scan the negative then further copies after are easy to duplicate.
- zipy124 2y ago
  I believe it's possible to get higher than that, this work by kodak for examples shows 20!! stops on film[1]. I seem to remember reading somewhere that for example Kodak TMax 100 can be pushed up to 18 stops, maybe higher. The limitation is not usually the film itself but the development process' used I think? Its also crucial to note at what SNR they use for their cutoff when stating their dynamic range in stops, in addition to their tone curve. I'm only a hobbyist though, perhaps someone else can enlighten me further. Digital is mostly limited by bits, since a 14 bit image with a linear tone curve will have at most 14 stops of info right? So we won't expect to see values pushing higher until camera manufacturers leave behind 14 bit as a standard and go higher, as in the arri cameras. They use a 16 bit sensor, and squeeze the last stop out by using a more gradual tone curve in their shadows. This means technically the shadow stops contain less information than the highlight stops, thus meaning not all stops are equal I believe (quite confusing). [1]: "Assessing the Quality of Motion Picture Systems from Scene-to-Digital Data" in the February/March 2002 issue of the SMPTE Journal (Volume 111, No. 2, pp. 85-96).
tambourine_man 2y ago
It could be an exposure issue. Film has a response curve with a big “shoulder” in the highest values. It makes it really hard to blow out highlights. Digital sensors have a linear response to light, so if the highlights are a bit over a threshold, they are gone. If you’re willing to tolerate more noise and shoot RAW, you could underexpose, perhaps by as much as 4 stops, and apply a strong curve in post. It would pretty much guarantee no blown out highlights. Most people find luminance noise aesthetically pleasing up to a point and digital is already much cleaner than film ever was, so it’s a worthy trade off, if you ask me. But “Expose To The Left/Right” is a heated topic among photographers.
- shagie 2y ago
  Spitballing, but a HDR digital camera could be designed with a beamsplitter similar to that of the 3CCD ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-CCD_camera https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-CCD_camera ) designs that projects to an assembly with only a sensor behind it, another to an assembly that has a 4 stop neutral density and sensor, and another to an assembly that has an 8 stop neutral density and and sensor. This way it wouldn't suffer from any parallax issues and sensor images should then also line up to allow it to be reconstructed from the multiple sources. That said... HDR images can be "bland" with it being washed out. It would probably take a bit more post processing work to get the image both high dynamic range and providing the dynamism of what those old Saturn V launches showed.
  - numpad0 2y ago
    I think what you need is a plain old half-silvered beam splitter, not the 3CCD prism. The dichroic prism uses combinations of coatings to separate RGB into different optical paths. You don't need that.
    - shagie 2y ago
      Half silvered would work too. I was using the 3CCD prism as an example of splitting an image into multiple parts and avoiding issues with parallax. If you stacked cameras on top of each other with their own lenses, you'd inevitably get slightly different focal lengths, focal distances, and camera positions. Aside with the dichotic filter... there was a neat trick that was lost (and refound) with a sodium 589nm dichromic (notch) prism. https://youtu.be/UQuIVsNzqDk https://youtu.be/UQuIVsNzqDk
lm28469 2y ago
I don't think it's a technical issue, they probably just don't care, we lost a bit of the magic and ideals we had back then
- stouset 2y ago
  I think the last thing you could probably say about the teams involved in this is that they don’t care.
  - lm28469 2y ago
    We must not have seen the same footage, they even had rain drops on the lens, that was an amateur move in the 60s, in 2025 it should be a crime lol Like, what the fuck is this ? https://imgur.com/6sVSXGd https://imgur.com/6sVSXGd Did they strap an iphone 12 on the launchpad and leave it on auto settings ? The flood light is aimed straight at the lens too... This is an amateur shot from 5 years ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/coppj8/a_dramatic_closeup_look_at_thursdays_atlas_v/ https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/coppj8/a_dramatic_cl... I'm telling you, they didn't care one bit about that video, it looks like absolute ass
    - mulmen 2y ago
      The detailed Apollo shots were not live. The Blue Origin frame is from a live video feed. The ULA picture is a post-processed still photo.
powderpig 2y ago
You should check out the Artemis I engineering footage.
CarVac 2y ago
Even on film, if you expose for the rocket you don't get any flame detail. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_V#/media/File:Apollo_11_Launch_-_GPN-2000-000630.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_V#/media/File:Apollo_11...
hackeraccount 2y ago
This is footage hours after the event. It's no doubt been stomped on for streaming and other reasons. I wouldn't give up on something better being out there for a little while yet.
johnp314 2y ago
What am I missing? I can sit in my den and watch SpaceX and now Blue Origin launches, in real time see the telemetry data, see stage separation, reentry burns, etc, etc. As for Saturn V, to quote the Byrds "I was so much older then..." but I don't recall any of that. Doesn't film require taking the exposed product to a lab for after the fact processing? While the Blue Origin images this morning were not nearly as good as the SpaceX, to me the images are absolutely incredible. I am a serious amateur photographer and I do still shoot film on occasion but I see little dynamic range differences now in 2025.

by vFunct 2y ago

trhway 2y ago

> talking about stacked sensors why not just stacked cameras with a range of filters? modern cameras cost and weight nothing (and that rocket puts 45 ton into LEO)

ArnoVW 2y ago

those engineering cameras were not your regular run-of-the mill cameras neither. NASA published a 45 min documentary of the 10-15 engineering cameras of an STS launch., with comments on the engineering aspets of the launch procedure. Very beautiful, relaxing, has an almost meditative quality. Highly recommend it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFwqZ4qAUkE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFwqZ4qAUkE

philipwhiuk 2y ago
Yeah and Shuttle cost a fortune per launch. Views are distinctly secondary to an affordable launch program.
- sandworm101 2y ago
  And the cost of the camera program was paid back a hundred times as that footage was used to diagnose, correct and improve countless systems. Accident investigations would have taken ten times as long without that footage.
  - nickff 2y ago
    I absolutely love that beautiful film footage, particularly well-exhibited in one of my favorite documentaries, the spectacular "When We Left Earth" (a lovely and lengthy series). That said... Modern rockets have the ability to stream a great deal more data, including live camera streams, than the Mercury/Gemini/Apollo or Space Shuttle could. This increased real-time data bandwidth is probably much more valuable than high-dynamic-range cameras were.
    - sandworm101 2y ago
      Telemetry only records what you deem interesting prior to flight. When something goes really wrong it probably came from something you were not expecting, like foam insulation. Cameras recorded everything visible, even the stuff you don't think important.
- bell-cot 2y ago
  I'd assume that BO has plenty of high-res/high-contrast-range imagery - that's just too useful for engineering analysis, post-launch. What they release to the public is a separate issue.

throw0101a 2y ago

> The digital cameras used on these launches basically show a white blob with no detail due to digital cameras having such low dynamic range compared to film. Film negatives have a dynamic range of between 12 to 15 stops, but a whole bunch can be lost when transferred to optical print (perhaps less if digitally scanned). The Arri ALEXA Mini LF has 14.5 stops of dynamic range, and the ALEXA 35 has 17 (Table 2): * https://www.arri.com/resource/blob/295460/e10ff8a5b3abf26c33f8754379b57442/2022-09-28-arri-dynamic-range-whitepaper-data.pdf https://www.arri.com/resource/blob/295460/e10ff8a5b3abf26c33...

aziaziazi 2y ago
> a whole bunch can be lost when transferred to optical print I’m not sure if by "optical print"[0] you mean a film developing process (like C41), but the info is not lost and stays on the film. The developer job is to fine tune the parameters to print the infos you’re seeking, and that include adjusting white and black points thresholds (range). You can also do several print if you want to extract more infos, and print it so large you see the grain shapes! If there’s is something lost it’s when the picture is taken, after that it’s up to you to exploit it the way you need. It’s very similar to a numeric device capturing RAWs and the developer finishing the picture on a software like Camera Raw, or what some modern phone does automatically for you. 0 not English native, perhaps this is a synonym of developement?
- throw0101a 2y ago
  > I’m not sure if by "optical print"[0] you mean a film developing process (like C41), but the info is not lost and stays on the film. You have a negative, which you develop. For photos you then have to transfer that to paper. For cinema you want to distribute it, so you have to take the originally captured image(s) and make copies to distribute. In both cases, because it's an analog process, and so things will degrade. Of course if you scan the negative then further copies after are easy to duplicate.
zipy124 2y ago
I believe it's possible to get higher than that, this work by kodak for examples shows 20!! stops on film[1]. I seem to remember reading somewhere that for example Kodak TMax 100 can be pushed up to 18 stops, maybe higher. The limitation is not usually the film itself but the development process' used I think? Its also crucial to note at what SNR they use for their cutoff when stating their dynamic range in stops, in addition to their tone curve. I'm only a hobbyist though, perhaps someone else can enlighten me further. Digital is mostly limited by bits, since a 14 bit image with a linear tone curve will have at most 14 stops of info right? So we won't expect to see values pushing higher until camera manufacturers leave behind 14 bit as a standard and go higher, as in the arri cameras. They use a 16 bit sensor, and squeeze the last stop out by using a more gradual tone curve in their shadows. This means technically the shadow stops contain less information than the highlight stops, thus meaning not all stops are equal I believe (quite confusing). [1]: "Assessing the Quality of Motion Picture Systems from Scene-to-Digital Data" in the February/March 2002 issue of the SMPTE Journal (Volume 111, No. 2, pp. 85-96).

tambourine_man 2y ago

It could be an exposure issue. Film has a response curve with a big “shoulder” in the highest values. It makes it really hard to blow out highlights. Digital sensors have a linear response to light, so if the highlights are a bit over a threshold, they are gone. If you’re willing to tolerate more noise and shoot RAW, you could underexpose, perhaps by as much as 4 stops, and apply a strong curve in post. It would pretty much guarantee no blown out highlights. Most people find luminance noise aesthetically pleasing up to a point and digital is already much cleaner than film ever was, so it’s a worthy trade off, if you ask me. But “Expose To The Left/Right” is a heated topic among photographers.

shagie 2y ago
Spitballing, but a HDR digital camera could be designed with a beamsplitter similar to that of the 3CCD ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-CCD_camera https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-CCD_camera ) designs that projects to an assembly with only a sensor behind it, another to an assembly that has a 4 stop neutral density and sensor, and another to an assembly that has an 8 stop neutral density and and sensor. This way it wouldn't suffer from any parallax issues and sensor images should then also line up to allow it to be reconstructed from the multiple sources. That said... HDR images can be "bland" with it being washed out. It would probably take a bit more post processing work to get the image both high dynamic range and providing the dynamism of what those old Saturn V launches showed.
- numpad0 2y ago
  I think what you need is a plain old half-silvered beam splitter, not the 3CCD prism. The dichroic prism uses combinations of coatings to separate RGB into different optical paths. You don't need that.
  - shagie 2y ago
    Half silvered would work too. I was using the 3CCD prism as an example of splitting an image into multiple parts and avoiding issues with parallax. If you stacked cameras on top of each other with their own lenses, you'd inevitably get slightly different focal lengths, focal distances, and camera positions. Aside with the dichotic filter... there was a neat trick that was lost (and refound) with a sodium 589nm dichromic (notch) prism. https://youtu.be/UQuIVsNzqDk https://youtu.be/UQuIVsNzqDk

lm28469 2y ago

I don't think it's a technical issue, they probably just don't care, we lost a bit of the magic and ideals we had back then

stouset 2y ago
I think the last thing you could probably say about the teams involved in this is that they don’t care.
- lm28469 2y ago
  We must not have seen the same footage, they even had rain drops on the lens, that was an amateur move in the 60s, in 2025 it should be a crime lol Like, what the fuck is this ? https://imgur.com/6sVSXGd https://imgur.com/6sVSXGd Did they strap an iphone 12 on the launchpad and leave it on auto settings ? The flood light is aimed straight at the lens too... This is an amateur shot from 5 years ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/coppj8/a_dramatic_closeup_look_at_thursdays_atlas_v/ https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/coppj8/a_dramatic_cl... I'm telling you, they didn't care one bit about that video, it looks like absolute ass
  - mulmen 2y ago
    The detailed Apollo shots were not live. The Blue Origin frame is from a live video feed. The ULA picture is a post-processed still photo.

powderpig 2y ago

You should check out the Artemis I engineering footage.

CarVac 2y ago

Even on film, if you expose for the rocket you don't get any flame detail. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_V#/media/File:Apollo_11_Launch_-_GPN-2000-000630.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_V#/media/File:Apollo_11...

hackeraccount 2y ago

This is footage hours after the event. It's no doubt been stomped on for streaming and other reasons. I wouldn't give up on something better being out there for a little while yet.

johnp314 2y ago

What am I missing? I can sit in my den and watch SpaceX and now Blue Origin launches, in real time see the telemetry data, see stage separation, reentry burns, etc, etc. As for Saturn V, to quote the Byrds "I was so much older then..." but I don't recall any of that. Doesn't film require taking the exposed product to a lab for after the fact processing? While the Blue Origin images this morning were not nearly as good as the SpaceX, to me the images are absolutely incredible. I am a serious amateur photographer and I do still shoot film on occasion but I see little dynamic range differences now in 2025.